THE GREEKS OF GEORGIA: MIGRATION AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROBLEMS

Mamuka KOMAKHIA

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Mamuka Komakhia, Research associate, Institute of Political Studies, Georgian Academy of Sciences (Tbilisi, Georgia)

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Greeks first came to western Georgia in the 8th-7th centuries B.C., yet the ancestors of most of the Greeks now living in the country came in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, the once large diaspora (which comprised a significant part of Georgia’s population) has shrunk to several thousand people.

The first wave of Greeks from Asia Minor (the Anatolian Greeks) was generated by Czar Irakly II’s economic projects implemented in the 1770s and the policies of the regional countries. Under the Kuchuk-Kaynardji Peace Treaty of 1774 between Russia and Turkey, the Russian Empire acquired a protectorate over the Greeks; this was followed by Greek migration to Russia. It was at the same time that Irakly II invited Greek artisans from the Erzurum and Kars regions to work at the newly-opened silver and copper plants in Akhtal and Alaverdi. (About 800 Greeks with families moved to Georgia from the industrial centers of Asia Minor.)

In fact, Russia deliberately created a Christian area in Georgia (where…………….

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