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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1426

Part of Session 133: Ethnicity, Language and Culture in a Post-Soviet Multi-Ethnic City (Other abstracts in this session)

A sociolinguistic reformatting of the Pontic Greek community in a Russian post-Soviet town

Authors: Zoumpalidis, Dionysios; Papapavlou, Andreas
Submitted by: Zoumpalidis, Dionysios (University of Cyprus, Cyprus)

This paper examines the current sociolinguistic situation of the Pontic Greek community in the town of Essentuki, which is located in the area of north Caucasus, in the southern part of Russia. The major influx of Pontic Greeks into Essentuki took place in the mid 1950s/beginning 1960s, mainly from the mountainous villages of Tsalka (the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia) where they compactly resided. After their settlement in Essentuki, Pontic Greeks, who in their vast majority were Turko-phone, came into linguistic and socio-cultural contact with the local, predominantly Russian-speaking, population. This process of urbanization as well as the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 had a specific sociolinguistic impact on the Pontic Greek community. More specifically, the present study focuses on the linguistic and cultural changes that the Pontic Greek community has undergone during the last 20 years in “new” Russia and on how socio-political changes in the early 1990s have contributed to the current sociolinguistic situation within the community in question.

111 questionnaires were used and 19 interviews (17 individual and 2 group) were conducted for the purposes of the present study. The preliminary results suggest that there has been a significant linguistic and ethno-cultural transition within the Pontic Greek community since their settlement in the town of Essentuki and especially since the break-up of the Soviet Union. On the linguistic level, Pontic Greeks are actively trying to shift from Turkish to Russian as the language of home. On the ethno-cultural level, ethnic allegiance of Pontic Greeks has not been shattered and is manifested in the foundation of various non-governmental, usually culturally-oriented, organizations where Pontic Greeks practise traditional dances and are given the opportunity to learn Standard Modern Greek. It is important, therefore, to identify those factors that have contributed to the ethno-cultural prosperity of Pontic Greeks and to the rapid process of language shift and how these factors influence each another.