Looking for the 'Language' of Recognition among Greek Communities of Georgia

Author(s): ELENI SIDERI

Source: Anthropological Journal of European Cultures , 2012, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2012), pp.
41-59
Published by: Berghahn Books

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43234547

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 Looking for the 'Language' of Recognition
among Greek Communities of Georgia
ELENI SIDERI

Abstract

The Caucasus was a zone of encounters for centuries, gen-

erating images of regional cosmopolitanism in the past.
This vision creates expectations for the present, when it is
included in the wider discussion about the meanings of cos-
mopolitanism today, its relation to modern geopolitics, and
issues of social and political co-existence and recognition.
This essay focuses on two different photographs that belong
to different Greek families in Georgia. These photographs
represent two different historical experiences of migration
and pinpoint different understandings of cosmopolitanism.
However, they both seem to stem from specific discourses
about diasporas and their cosmopolitan character. The role
of language in the construction of these discourses is funda-
mental. The essay compares photographic representations of
the 'Greek Diaspora' in order to trace the perceptions of cos-
mopolitanism they generate, the cultural capital they carry,
and its outcome in relation to Greek diaspora politics.

Keywords

Black Sea history, diasporas, Georgia, Greece, languages/

cosmopolitanism, migration, public/domestic, vernacular/
demotic

Greeks on the Black Sea and Cosmopolitanism

The sacking of Constantinople in 1453 marks the creation of various Chris-
tian communities in different European kingdoms that claimed to have their
roots in the Byzantine capital. Some of these Christians started to become
Hellenised in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The relationship be-
tween religion and language played a significant role in this process. The
Christian subjects who remained in the Ottoman Empire were categorised
according to their religious affiliation: the Rum, the Jews and the Armenians.

Anthropological Journal of European Cultures Volume 21(1), 2012: 41-59 © Berghahn Journals
doi: 10. 3 167/ajec. 2012. 210104 ISSN 1755-2923 (Print)

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 Eleni Sideri

The first group included various ethno-cultural and linguistic groups who,
despite their differences, were represented by the Ecumenical Patriarchate
of Constantinople. The Patriarchate's sacred language was Greek, which was
different from the spoken version (Romeika) used in everyday communica-
tion (Matalas 2007). In that context, Greek united rather than divided, and
transcended rather than segregated. The shift from its aforementioned role
to that of being the national language marked the birth of a nation.
This process coincided with the formation of a Greek diasporic imagined
community. During the European Enlightenment, as Leontis (1995) argues,
the Western image of eighteenth-century Greece was of a heterotopia, a place
that existed in reality, but at the same time seemed to belong to the realm of
myth. This imagination was shared by the Hellenised merchant elite living in
the wider Black Sea region. These merchants took advantage of the economic
and socio-cultural transformations of that period, such as the expansion of
capital and the rejuvenation of trade within the context of imperial antago-
nism in the Black Sea, the modernisation of state bureaucracies that needed
educated cadres, and the values of the Enlightenment that contributed to the
gradual rise in national movements (Hobsbawm 2002; King 2004). These
merchant communities were dispersed over various European cities, started
to consider Greece as their homeland and to organise their mobilisation in
order to re-establish their imagined homeland as a sovereign nation-state.
The formation of the Greek state in the 1830s, which adopted Greek as
its official language, symbolically established a sense of continuity from an-
cient Greece and claimed a place in the family of the European nations. The
Greek state apparatuses tried to create a national cohesion by aspiring to the
equation of the language with the nation. Moreover, the limited territorial
expression of Greek statehood and the existence of extra-territorial popula-
tions sharing the same language and culture with those living within the bor-
ders of Greece gradually inspired expansionist visions, towards 'those who
shared in the Greek consciousness', the omogenis (Vogli 2007). Some of these
groups lived in Tsarist Caucasus. However, the question remains: when were
the Greek communities of Georgia formed?
Hassiotis (1997) underlines the notion that the first migration of a Greek
population to the wider Black Sea area and specifically in Russia started in
the late fifteenth century and lasted until the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury, peaking in the seventeenth century. The majority of migrants during

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 Looking for the 'Language' of Recognition among Greek Communities of Georgia

that period settled in the Crimea or elsewhere in Ukraine and consisted of

clergy, merchant families and artists (the old Byzantine elite). The second
wave of Greek migration to southern Russia and the Crimea occurred be-
tween the end of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nine-
teenth century. It involved large numbers from the Ionian Islands (Western
Greece), the Peloponnese (mainland Greece) and the islands of the Aegean
Sea. The reasons for this migration are found in the Greeks' failed revolts
against Ottoman rule; these frequently formed part of Russian foreign policy
towards the Ottoman Empire. The last wave of migration that is relevant to
this essay occurred in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and in-
volved groups, particularly the Black Sea coast of the Ottoman Empire (Pon-
tos), moving to the Caucasus.
The migrations of Christians from the Ottoman Empire to the Caucasus
were fairly diverse in terms of their causes (labour migration, forced migra-
tion, refugees, population exchange), type (collective or individual), qual-
ity (education, social profile, language) and geographical settlement (rural
or urban). In Greek historiography, these migrations are divided into four
waves: during 1829-1831, farmers, masons and mine workers from Eastern
Pontos moved to Trialeti in central Georgia; during 1869-1876, more of the
urban population moved towards Sukhumi and other areas in Abkhazia; dur-
ing 1878-1881, merchant families moved to southwest Georgia (Batumi and
Adzara area); and during 1897-1902, some families moved to the Georgian
capital Tbilisi (Aggelidis 1999; Tsatsanidis 2000).
The diversity of past migrations across the Black Sea region cultivated
current popular perceptions of these communities as cosmopolitan. This es-
say concentrates on the family portraits of two families involved in the Greek
diaspora of Georgia which I found in the context of two field trips during my
fieldwork (2003-2004), the first to Tsalka and the second to Batumi. The two
photographs represent two different historical experiences of migration, but
also two different claims for recognition that point to a historically shaped
sense of cosmopolitanism which, however, points to different understandings
and power relations. These differences are deeply embedded in linguistically
hierarchical perceptions of the self which have been produced in different pe-
riods of Greek history. I consider these heterogeneous understandings to be a
way through which Greek politics renegotiate the definition and recognition
of its identity since the 1990s.

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 Eleni Sideri

Family Portraits within Public/Private Spaces

The two grassroots leaders placed their family portraits in different locations.
The one in Tsalka preferred the domestic atmosphere of his house, while the
one in Batumi preferred the public space of his office. I consider this spa-
tial distinction to be a way of making visible the divisions within the Greek
diaspora in Georgia. I will relate my argument to definitions of cosmopolitan-
ism as vernacular or demotic, considering how the latter challenges histori-
cally formed constructions of the concept of the nation in Greece.

A Family Portrait in a Domestic Space

Tsalka is located in the administrative region of Kvemo Kartli in the lowlands
of the Trialeti range. Tsalka is one of the rural areas where the first wave
of Christians from the Ottoman Empire settled in the first decades of the
nineteenth century. Due to their religious affiliation, the Tsarist administra-
tion encouraged their settlement near the imperial southern borders. Despite
the proximity to the capital, Tsalka has faced many problems with regard to
infrastructure (transport, roads) and economic growth since Georgia's inde-
pendence in 1991. 1 had arranged to stay with a family involved in the Greek
grassroots in Tsalka. The journey there lasted five hours, starting off in bright
sunlight and ending up in snow.
I met my host, Fiodor Konstantinovich, at the bus station. He was an old
but robust man with white hair and impressive blue eyes. When we arrived
at his home, the first thing that struck me was a black-and-white photograph
hanging on the wall. The photograph shows a large and extended family. In
the middle sits the family's patriarch, a priest wearing his Orthodox clerical
clothing. He is surrounded by men and women of various ages. The older
women wear Anatolian costumes and headscarves. My host registered my in-
terest in the photograph. 'Our family came to Tsalka from Trebizond where
my great-grandfather studied in the seminary and became a priest. He spoke
Greek.' In contrast, my host spoke in Russian.
Fiodor Konstantinovich referred to the various migrations from the east-
ern Black Sea region of the Ottoman Empire to South Caucasus. Between the
1820s and the 1850s, a policy of informal population exchange pushed the
Muslim population out of the Caucasus and 'invited' the Christians of the
Ottoman Empire in by offering economic incentives and a Christian politi-
cal environment. According to Georgian archives, the population of Tsalka

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 Looking for the 'Language' of Recognition among Greek Communities of Georgia

arrived from the Erzerum area in the early 1830s, consisting of petty traders,
artisans and peasants.
These settlers lived according to the Ottoman millet system on the basis of
their religious affiliation (Braude 1982). Thus, local communities could pre-
serve their languages, social networks, customs and economy, although they
were considered to be second-class citizens. The Urumebi (Rum in Georgian),
during their settlement of Tsalka, gradually changed the Georgian toponyms
of the area, mostly giving them the names of their old villages in Turkey,
rebuilding the churches and bringing in their languages and customs, which
did not differ that much from Georgian customs, as Pashaeva illustrates in
her discussion of the religious customs of Tsalka (Pashaeva 1992: 67-80). It
is not well known whether the Urumebi became Turkish-speaking due to as-
similation or forced conversion. The former is rather more likely, as they
lived at a distance from the Pontic-speaking centres of the coast; the latter is
the most popular myth in the community, underlining their faith and their
Greekness. Their arrival in a familiar environment in terms of religion, ecol-
ogy and economy, and their settlement among communities with similar cul-
tures, such as the Armenians, contributed to the preservation of their culture.
The inhabitants of Tsalka refer to their language as 4 bizimgiV (our language),
which underlines feelings of affection and intimacy towards their language
that have solidified their communal ties, but also distinguishes them from
other Greek communities of Georgia as well as the Georgian population.
'I can see that you had many priests in the family,' I said. 'Yes, religion
was always important for us. We came from Turkey, pursued and terrified by
the Turks.' Turkey and the Turks were perceived as the source of evil and per-
secution. Fiodor, through his family's memories, translated imperial antago-
nism into national terms. Collard (1991), in her research in Greece, found
that a relevant time strategy was used when relating historical events, such
as the Ottoman period of Greek history, in order to refer to the most recent
and more painful and politically charged events of the Civil War (1945-1949).
Similarly, Fiodor compressed time and thereby transferred the reason for his
family's unfortunate fate to the historical events of a later period (the Asia
Minor Catastrophe of 1922) which, however, played a central role in the con-
struction of modern Greek identity.
The outcome of this strategy is that Fiodor's real frame of reference is not
the past but the present, and the debates within the grassroots in Georgia
with regard to the definition of the Greek identity. The local office is used as

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 Eleni Sideri

an information centre in mediations between the central federation in Tbilisi

and the Greek embassy in the Georgian capital. The office deals with Greek
officials and their definitions of Greekness. Fiodor's representation of his
family photograph emphasises religion - in other words, Greek high culture
and official perceptions of Greekness: the Orthodox tradition and the tur-
bulent relationship between Greece and Turkey. However, overemphasising
religion silences language in the public space of communal history. Although
Urum also refers to his family and community's long history of co-existence
with other communities and to the imperial policies and antagonism between
the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire, this history is represented in
a one-dimensional manner as a result of the persecution of Fiodor's family.
This description challenges Fiodor's own cultural background of heterogene-
ity and diversity in favour of clearer and more fixed boundaries.
In my host's representation, religion and language point to tension,
and specifically an internal tension - internal in the sense that it was ex-
pressed within the space of debates regarding the nation. As Hobsbawm
(2002 112-143) has underlined, nation-building during this period (1840s-
1870s) connected nations tightly with territory and hyphenated nationhood
with statehood within clearly defined, sovereign nation-states (Vryonis 1976;
Kitromilidis 1983; Veremis 1983). As a result, language played a crucial role,
strengthened by the formation of a centralised education system and the
development of the national press. Various groups with different places of
origin, places of residence and occupations began practising the 'imagined
community of the Diaspora' (Edwards 2003), dreaming and defining them-
selves in relation to a Greek homeland. In the aftermath of independence
(1830s), the young nation-state, in turn, started to imagine its diasporas as
organic parts of its national body (Tziovas 2009).
The Hellenisation of these communities aimed at creating a Greek nation
that was homogeneous in terms of culture and language. The establishment
of a network of consulates facilitated the recognition of these extra-territorial
ethnic Greeks as Greek citizens (Veremis et al. 1997; Vogli 2007). The indoc-
trination of this project was the task of Greek schools, which propagated a
homogenous national curriculum in the Greek language. New teachers and
textbooks were sent to Greek schools in Ottoman Turkey. At the same time,
this Greek project increased the demand for Greek education beyond elite
circles. Language seemed to have become the cornerstone of the nation, al-
though it could not be used as the sole criterion of citizenship. If this had

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 Looking for the 'Language' of Recognition among Greek Communities of Georgia

been the case, a significant proportion of the population both within and
beyond the borders of the Greek state would have been excluded from the
emerging imagined community.
In the Black Sea communities of the Ottoman Empire in 1860, there
were 100 Greek schools; in 1919 there were 1,401 with 85,890 pupils (Lamp-
sidis 1957: 31). The Greek press started to circulate among the Greeks of
the diaspora. As Augustinos (1992) argues, since the 1870s, readers in the
diasporic communities got more interested in the newspapers, textbooks
and other books emanating from Greece. However, this project was easier to
implement in the urbanised communities around the coast, whereas in areas
like the Caucasus, the rural character of the communities in Tsalka and the
growing nationalism in imperial Russia resulted in the linguistic continuity
of the Urum language. Education in the rural communities of Tsalka had
to rely on community resources and strategies, for example literate Greek-
speaking priests like Fiodor's grandfather. Otherwise, wealthier families sent
one male member of the family to the urban centres so that he could return
as a teacher or commission a Greek teacher.

By displaying the family photograph within a domestic space, Fiodor

points to the historical formation of a public space where language and na-
tion were equated. As Sontag (1977) reminds us, European photography, in
comparison to its American counterpart, draws our attention to the impor-
tant and the beautiful. These attributes are closely connected to the percep-
tion of national histories as unique and distinctive and therefore as something
worth memorialising and commemorating. The frozen time in photographic
instances becomes the medium through which a national memory can con-
ceptualise itself as transcendental in time and space. This perception coin-
cides with Modernity's understanding of the past as something unrepeatable,
exceptional and distinctive, and therefore memorable. Moreover, as Sontag
(1977) underlined, European photography also emphasises the picturesque
and the exotic. Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944), a chem-
ist and photographer, undertook a photography project in the 1900s under
the auspices of Tsar Nicholas II in order to capture the ethnic and cultural
diversity of the empire. Thus Tsarist colonisation turned the Caucasus into
a tableau vivant of a Russian interpretation of the Orient: savage and noble.
In this context, the Greeks of Tsalka were fellow Christians living in a colo-
nial buffer zone included in the Russification project of the late nineteenth
century.

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 Eleni Sideri

The equation of nation and language stemming from its gradual standardi-
sation shaped deep hierarchies in the Greek linguistic landscape in terms of
proximity to the Greek standard. Vernaculars gradually became considered
as mere variations, and were surpassed and purified by the standard lan-
guage. The Urum language, which is linguistically connected to the Turkic
languages, could not be considered as a Greek dialect. Moreover, Urum was
slowly equated to the 'language of the enemy' (Turkey), which increased the
difficulty of its integration within the wider Hellenic cultural space, in the
sense of Greek cultural scapes beyond the borders of Greece. However, the
closed relationship between language and locality, and the recognition of
the Urumebi in the latter, turned Urum into a vernacular, something that was
further strengthened by the Soviet choice of demotic Greek as the mother
tongue of the Greki (Greek in Russian). Urum is the language of the Greeks
of Tsalka, which, as they underline, creates a space of communal intimacy
and domesticity.
Bhabha reminds us of the relationship between the terms vernacular and
domestic, underlining how the former adds an extra quality to the latter that
is 'the process and, indeed, the performance of translation' (2001: 48). In
his discussion of vernacular cosmopolitanism, Bhabha considers the latter
as a way to historicise the domestic and to 'translate' it into contemporary
conceptualisations of subjecthood, like the cosmopolitan subject. Drawing
on Fanon's idea of 'continuance', which underlines the significance of a tem-
poral take on the dialectics of the local and the international, Bhabha ar-
gues that vernacular cosmopolitanism brings together different temporalities
and subjecthoods: the modern and colonial with the post-modern and post-
colonial. It also brings together different localities: the local and the trans-
national. These spaces, involving multiple actors, are far from unified and
ahistorical, although often represented as such in discourse. Within the trans-
national, the domestic space of the photograph in Tsalka and its language is
transformed into a claim for recognition of the local as diasporic. Through
diaspora politics, Tsalka Greeks take part in national politics and the way in
which the latter aspires to be repositioned within a transnational space. The
participation of my host in the Greek grassroots of Georgia strengthens this
conviction. This photograph triggers for Fiodor Konstantinovich memories
of intimacy, familiarity and home and challenges the narrative of the na-
tion. The vernacular exposes the domestic by making it public, both in the
context of the Georgian multicultural society and the Greek diasporic space.

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 Looking for the 'Language' of Recognition among Greek Communities of Georgia

However, if the vernacular could be suggestive of a political recognition of

the local through the connection of Tsalka's Urum language to the Greek
diasporas, what about the more 'standard' language represented by my host
in Batumi?

A Family Photograph in a Public Space

Batumi is the capital of Adzhara in southwestern Georgia, which belonged
to the Ottoman empire for almost 300 years. As a result, it includes a con-
siderable Muslim Georgian population (Sakhokia 1996). In the nineteenth
century, the city was developed into a transit harbour for oil from the Cas-
pian Sea (Pelkmans 2005: 6). After its annexation to the Tsarist Empire, the
modernisation of the Russian economy created a custom-free zone, which
attracted diverse urban groups from the Black Sea, including several Greek
merchant families from Trebizond. The subtropical climate, which favoured
cash crop agriculture, and the development of tourism, turned Adzhara into
a prosperous and autonomous Soviet region. After Georgia's independence,
this autonomous status was preserved, but the conflict between the centre
and the periphery over the revenues from customs and tourism did not stop
until the establishment of Saakashvili's regime in 2004.
In contrast to the ambiguity of representations of the Tsalka Greeks, Ba-
tumian Greeks seem to have been exemplified as an authentic Greek com-
munity. Friends from both the university and the Greek confederation of
the Greek communities of Georgia in Tbilisi had told me that, if I wanted
to see real Greeks who speak real Greek, I should go to Batumi. I travelled to
Batumi by train, arriving in subtropical Adzhara, which is full of banana and
palm trees and tea plantations first cultivated during the Tsarist administra-
tion and spread during the Soviet period. After independence, many of the
plantations were abandoned because of the economic slump, falling prices
and migration.
In Batumi, the members and the president of the local association were
Greek-speaking with a Pontic-Greek influence. The president's family is one
of the most respected in Batumi, and not only among the Greeks. In his
office, I saw on the wall a photograph of a beautiful woman in a long satin
dress. The president explained, 'My grandmother came from Trebizond. She
finished grammar school at Trebizond. Her family had roots in Rome. An an-
cestor, Markos-Antonios Metaxas, came east when the capital was moved to
Constantinople.' This photograph shows a woman in Western-style clothes,

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 Eleni Sideri

following the fashion, and very proud of her family's wealth. The photograph
was, in fact, centred on family status and wealth, and the woman represented
both. As Edwards puts it (1999: 75): 'The rising middle class . . . found in
the photograph a way of marking their visibility in society.' Both families,
however, had access to the medium of photography and wanted to 'become
visible in society', displaying a commonality that challenges stereotypes of
rural backwardness and urban progressiveness. In addition, both grassroots
leaders are making use of these family photographs today. Roland Barthes
(1981), in his Camera Lucida, underlined the belief that photographs capture
a certain air which can be transferred through different periods thanks to
what he calls 'stadium'; in other words, the spectator's attraction to a specific
photograph because of his/her cultural background, interest or curiosity. It is
to this cultural subtext that the two grassroots leaders refer in order to con-
struct their identity politics concerning their authenticity as Greeks.
In Batumi, the family history documented by the photograph shows a
connection to the grand narrative of the Greek nation. The family and the
community participate in the continuation of the nation as the latter is repre-
sented in the Greek historiography of the nineteenth century. The Batumian
Greeks speak Greek, being aware of its significance and stressing it with vi-
sual 'proofs'. Displaying the photograph, and the choice to contextualise this
photograph using family genealogy, is not only in line with the 'continuity
paradigm' (Todorova 2004) of the Greek nation, but also seems to challenge
it through its exaggeration (the claim of a Roman bloodline). It is the latter
that exposes linearity and its premises, and turns the public into a domestic
issue. The domestic, communal and regional history produce an understand-
ing of the public and its dynamics.
The Batumian Greeks, as descendants of a more urbanised past and ar-
riving in a later period than the Tsalka Greeks, had the opportunity to learn
Greek. Education emerged slowly in the late nineteenth century as a sym-
bol of not only national but also class divisions. Affluent merchant families
chose to send their sons to universities in Constantinople/Istanbul, Russia or
Western Europe. The variety of choices highlights the way in which educa-
tion was attached to the family agenda concerning economic and social op-
portunities, which often did not go along with national affiliation or rhetoric.
As Findley (1982) showed, among the non-Muslims of the Ottoman Empire,
more Greeks attended Western European universities than any other group;
they knew Turkish as well as a variety of European languages. The Greek

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 Looking for the 'Language' of Recognition among Greek Communities of Georgia

language and Western education were connected with the emergence of a

bourgeoisie that often played the role of a mediator between the Ottoman
authorities and the interests of foreign powers in the region. This education
helped many of these families to migrate successfully to the ports of the Rus-
sian Empire. The educational and financial success of these families under-
pins today's view of the Greeks from the Black Sea region as the epitome of
'Greek cosmopolitanism', although not all of these families were oriented
towards a Greek national agenda, and education in these schools must have
been limited to the urban middle classes.
Their education must have been in katharevousa Greek, while rural areas
will have used the Pontic-Greek dialect. What is significant, however, is that
within the Hellenisation process, the latter was considered to be a Greek dia-
lect (a category closer to the idea of a vernacular), which enabled the Pontic-
Greeks' inclusion in Greek identity without any doubt, in contrast to the case
of the Tsalka Greeks. According to this conceptualisation not only of a dialect
but also of a community as a sub-category of an allegedly (although histori-
cally constructed) dominant Greek language/identity, distance or proximity
to Greek language/identity played a significant role in the identification of
a linguistic code or group. In this hierarchy of languages and identities, the
language of communication of the Batumian Greeks is translated as Greek,
whereas that of the Tsalka Greeks needs further contextualisation within

specific local history. In this process, the Urum language became a vernacu-
lar which is not linguistically connected to the Greek language, although it
is connected to the history of Hellenism in the region. By contrast, the Ba-
tumian Greek links directly to the Greek Diaspora. As a result, the language
and identity in Batumi has been granted demotic1 status.
Language was fundamental to the formation of a Greek identity. The bi-
lingualism (katharevousa/demotic) that dominated the Greek linguistic land-
scape in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries produced a debate of
th e glosiko zetima (language issue) (Stavridou-Patrikiou 1999; Fragoudaki 2001).
This was a highly politicised issue which troubled Greek political and intel-
lectual circles following independence. The two main choices, katharevousa
(a descendent of the ancient Greek language) and demotic (the language
of the people) were supported by groups who varied in terms of class and
political ideology: the more conservative, right-wing people and the priest-
hood supported the former, while more liberal, leftist and secular-oriented
people backed the latter. Nevertheless, we find different views within these

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 Eleni Sideri

two dominant trends. As a result, the post-revolutionary Greek public space

was divided by multiple voices (and languages). The language issue was only
a pretext; in reality, the debate was over the hegemony of cultural space and
the meaning of Greekness.
The urbanised Greek immigrants of Batumi knew these debates. Their
educational background was in katharevousa, whereas the group's ethno-
cultural structure and their distance from Greece allowed the continuation of

the Pontic-Greek language as the dominant code for communication. Gradu-

ally, supporters of the Pontic language as the language of the community
started to emerge, without, however, finding allies in the Greek left. Standard
Greek became their mother tongue through their education during the early
Soviet period. After the purges (1937), the community turned to Russian edu-
cation, which allowed Pontic-Greek only within family circles.
In this sense, the demotic label is more of an ideological claim stemming
from a view that stresses the homogeneity of the nation with the Diaspora,
symbolised by the use of a common language. The historical language of the
Batumian Greeks, Pontic-Greek, could also be considered as a vernacular
of the Greek language. This closeness has made it easier today for both the
community and its language to translate difference not as deference but as
relevance. Although the language in Tsalka vernacularises the public, in Ba-
tumi, language, while it allegedly reiterates the dominant discourses, is also
deeply rooted in local history. By placing the photograph of his family in a
public place, the president of the grassroots association underlines this com-
monality, in contrast to his counterpart in Tsalka. Both grassroots leaders
claim recognition within the hierarchical space of Greek diasporic politics,
thereby highlighting their different experiences and histories of Greekness.
Both views seem to be formed not only in relation to each other but also
against and through another emerging space: the diasporic space.

Post-socialist Diaspora Politics

In the 1990s, globalisation gave rise to a new conceptualisation of the world.
Shami argues that (2000: 199) '[globalisation has produced new flows that
open up the potential for new imaginations and memories'. The role of
Greece as a Western fortress on the communist Balkans seemed to diminish
in importance after the end of the Cold War, although without decreasing
the country's dependency on Western political formations, such as the EU or

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 Looking for the 'Language' of Recognition among Greek Communities of Georgia

NATO. The fall of the Soviet Union brought about considerable geo-political
changes. On the one hand, Greece became a destination for immigration,
with the bulk of immigrants arriving from the Balkans and the former Soviet
Union. On the other hand, forgotten or forbidden because of the Cold War,
the diasporas were rediscovered. These two processes were not unrelated, as
a significant number of immigrants claimed Greek descent. This became an
important source of successful immigration, while at the same time it seemed
to be the ground upon which a new transnational space, a space beyond the
national borders, was built. However, 'new', in this case, does not necessarily
mean less nationally deterministic. The Greek communities of Georgia were
considered as a bridge between Greece and a region with a special interest
in the new geopolitics because of its proximity to the natural resources (oil,
gas) of the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. This bridge, therefore, could put
Greece back on the map of post-Cold War geopolitics. However, the bridge
metaphor concealed the rather complex situation concerning the definition
and membership of Greek diasporas and produced a misleading vision of
equality between the two ends of the bridge.
As Hannerz argues (1990: 245), different transnational cultures relate in
different ways to 'opportunities to cosmopolitanize'. It seems that these oppor-
tunities for a cosmopolitanisation of Greece are based on privileging and ide-
alising moments of the past when statehood was either an aspiration or very
loosely organised, and overlook that fact that in those moments, the power
relations between the metropolis and the communities did not always favour
the former. The concept of diasporas was re-launched in order to capture the
allegedly new, mobile, pluralised subjects that globalisation favoured. These
diasporas, as Werbner (2008: 346) reminds us, 'epitomize cosmopolitanism'.
In this context, the Soviet Greeks, such as the communities in Georgia, seem
to have been exemplified as cosmopolitan communities. This is illustrated by
a formal grassroots event in Tbilisi.
On 29 October 2003, under the auspices of the Central Federation of
Tbilisi, all of the Greek grassroots organisations in Georgia organised a cel-
ebration marking Greece's National Day (28 October) in the Hippocrates
Clinic, which was funded in 1999 by SAE Americas (the grassroots umbrella
organisation for Greeks in the U.S.A.) and the Greek government. The re-
ception hall was decorated with the Greek, American and Georgian flags,
the logo of the SAE and photographs of all of the members of the delega-
tion from Greece that had visited the clinic. The celebration had special sig-

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 Eleni Sideri

nificance that year because a deputy minister from the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (which is in charge of issues relating to the diaspora) would launch
a humanitarian programme to aid 'the rebirth of the cosmopolitan Greek
communities in the Black Sea area as they used to be'. In this formal setting,
the Greek state seemed to represent the historical homeland, and appeared
almost to dominate the event symbolically, economically (with the exception
of the Greek-American contribution) and politically. This applied not only
to the development aid aspect but also involved the identity politics that un-
folded in this setting, fixing apriori the categories to be discussed. The people
who attended the event formed part of the 'cosmopolitan Black Sea commu-
nities', as the deputy minister argued in his speech.
The emerging Greek interest in diaspora politics, and in particular in the
communities of the Black Sea, came about during a process of redefinition of
Greekness that gave birth to a new regime of difference. However, the criteria
used to define this regime were deeply rooted in national history. In trying
to conceptualise a historically sensitive and 'bottom-up' approach to the so-
cial, cultural and political production of difference in Greece, Papataxiarchis
(2005) proposed the concept of a 'regime of difference'. This concept captures
difference in a historically contextualised way, both in official discourses and
in unofficial everyday practices. In this way, he combines a diachronic study
of different levels with synchronic perceptions of difference, illustrating their
points of convergence and divergence. The general term 'Hellenism', which
was constructed in the mid-nineteenth century as part of the grand narrative
of the newly founded state history, lumped together populations with diverse
histories and experiences living outside of the national borders. This con-
cept of Hellenism, which had potential for cultural assimilation, evolved in
the late nineteenth century into a vision of aggressive expansionism and the
integration of all groups that were Hellenised and lived beyond the national
borders.

Today, hierarchies and divisions of the past have taken on a new signifi-
cance and seem to have produced a diasporic space between Greece and the
grassroots in Georgia, which is both diachronic and synchronic, rooted in
perceptions and understandings of the past but also calling for the renego-
tiation of the same. In this context, diaspora is being instrumentalised from
both sides, but with different vested interests as well as power relations. This
diasporic space is not only nationally produced and locally consumed; it is
also trans-nationally performed within hierarchies stemming from the past,

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 Looking for the 'Language' of Recognition among Greek Communities of Georgia

and re-signified in the present and by different fields of practice and actors
(grassroots, foreign policy, migration politics, family strategies). In this con-
text, does the idea of cosmopolitanism (or even different versions thereof)
help us understand the emerging social and political landscape?

Cosmopolitanism, Language and Recognition Today

The cultural translation of the linguistic code of the Greeks in Tsalka or in
Batumi refers to a cosmopolitan past (in terms of cultural encounters and
social experience) deeply embedded in the history of the region, but also
associated in its legitimacy and definition with the power relations between
the centre and the peripheries. Historically speaking, cosmopolitanism was
a notion that emerged during a period of political and social crisis in the
Hellenistic period. In other words, the idea of cosmopolitanism is the result
of a specific socio-political and economic system and its geopolitics. Cosmo-
politanism's moral universalism in modern European history is related to the
spirit of the Enlightenment, which has come under scrutiny. Critics of the En-
lightenment point to the fact that what has been offered historically as being
universal consisted solely of Eurocentric ideas. Furthermore, these ideas did
not prevent colonialism; instead, they fostered it and its 'white man's burden'.
In effect, universalism often claims tolerance for the different, and empathy
for its rights and obligations. Nevertheless, this tolerance remains abstract
and vague, disregarding 'the value of particular human lives, the lives people
have made for themselves, within the communities that help lend significance
to those lives' (Appiah 1998: 222-223). In this sense, universalism emphasises
humanity, but it often shows indifference towards humans.
Werbner argues (2008: 2) that 'the year 1990 was a watershed one for the
new cosmopolitanism scholarship'. However, the conceptual re-launch of cos-
mopolitanism in the last decade raised several questions vis-à-vis the socio-
political conditions that produced it. In this context, Beck (2004) believes
that one of the main questions today is the way that societies could handle
'otherness' and 'boundaries' during the present conditions of global inter-
connection. As Athanasiou (2007: 280) suggests, these conditions are closely
attached to 'moments of violent and expanding Westernization', which, on
its own agenda, privileges certain conceptualisations of subjecthood and
stigmatises others. New normative cosmopolitanism considers the human
to be a universal concept through a predominantly Eurocentric tradition of

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 Eleni Sideri

accepting difference through its cultural differentiation. The shaping of the

latter stemmed from a long imperial and colonial tradition, which today is
challenged and is therefore seeking more 'bottom-up' and rooted ideas of the
cosmopolitan. These counter-cosmopolitanisms, like the demotic or vernacu-
lar cosmopolitanisms, allegedly point to a non-Western history of encounters,
to less privileged worldviews, and to non-elite and less hegemonic forms of
cultural longing and belonging that could give voice to the marginalised as
moral subjects who envision the world.
However, what the two communities of Georgia emphasise is that both ver-
nacular and demotic could be hegemonic and elitist. Instead, the strategies
that the two community leaders have adopted with regard to visual proofs and
family histories seem to homogenise their communities' past and present in
their struggle for recognition. These strategies address their concerns regard-
ing the national centre, pinpointing their dependency on the national centre
for economic support and cultural legitimisation. The division between do-
mestic/vernacular and public/demotic rather conceals the complexities and
interrelations of these categories. The vernacular of Tsalka could not simply
be equated to Bhabha's understanding of vernacular cosmopolitanism as an
empowering category of subjecthood. At the same time, the demotic of the
Batumian Greeks is fairly ambivalent and could not correspond to demotic
cosmopolitanism in the way Ruth Mandel (2008: 50) defines it, as a way for
the anonymous people to undermine the work of 'the arbiters of cultural
production'. Both leaders have turned into arbiters and cultural mediators
using a repertoire of symbols (photographs, languages, histories) in order to
gain recognition. What differs are the strategies used: for Tsalka, recognition
is accomplished through the attachment of language to a specific place (space
strategy), which has become acceptable in the history of Hellenism. The Ba-
tumian community, on the other hand, is included in the history of Helle-
nism through the diachronic connection of the Greek language to its dialects
(time strategy). Nevertheless, this connection does not make the community's
relation to the Greek centre any easier in a pragmatic sense.
The two communities are not only acquainted with Western ideas of cos-
mopolitanism, but they have also faced Soviet ones (see Voutira 2010 for an
analysis of these). Their vernacular and demotic versions of cosmopolitanism
are rooted and situated in both the past and the present of the Black Sea,
the migrations from post-Soviet Georgia and the political agendas of Greece
anchored in old national and diasporic understandings of identity. What

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 Looking for the 'Language' of Recognition among Greek Communities of Georgia

becomes clear during an examination of the meanings of the vernacular/

demotic dimensions is that they expose the way in which hegemonic percep-
tions of the past could now play a significant role through their transforma-
tion into new - or not so new - categories. The space for diaspora politics
in Greece is highly hierarchal and ideologically loaded, and various actors
seem to intervene, not always on equal terms or through similar strategies.
In this context, cosmopolitanism should undergo a historically sensitive ex-
amination and translation in order to become meaningful and fruitful as a
conceptual framework for revealing the main issues regarding the politics of
recognition today.

E
n
h
an
th
sp
h
Y
si
ac
m

Notes

1. In this case, I have translated demotic as the standard language in Greece, whereas most
linguists prefer to use the term Nea Elliniki (New Greek), which was produced by a compro-
mise between demotic and katharevousa.

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