Not Quite the Blond Savior: Greeks and the Russian / Soviet Empire

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

The discussion of relations between Greece and Russia often focuses on their strong cultural ties supported by common (orthodox) religion. The Greek legend of “the blond savior” who helped the Greeks gain independence from the Ottoman Empire and sympathies of the Greek left to the USSR also contribute to this picture. This panel aims to focus on the Greek experiences of Russia and the USSR as an empire that treated them as subalterns. Being one of the ethnic minorities in the Russian and Soviet Empire, the Greeks were subject to the empirical policies that treated them as “the other.” The positioning of the Greeks in the USSR was structured both as that of a local minority and as a reflection of the Soviet international relations with Greece. The papers of the panel explore different angles of the Greeks’ interaction with this Empire: the identity of the Mariupol Greeks, an ethnic minority of Ukraine; the changing perception of Greece in Soviet periodicals; the experience of the Greek writer, Alexis Parnis, in the USSR; the pertinent archival materials that can be found at the Library of Congress. The panel aims to shed new light on Russian and Soviet practices regrading Greeks inside and outside the empire.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Svitlana Arabadzhy, Mariupol State U (Ukraine)

Papers

• Identity and Language: Understanding the Mariupol Greeks’ Community - Tatiana Liubchenko, Union of the Greeks of Ukraine in Greece (Greece)

• Greeks in the Soviet Imagination: The Case of the Magazine Crocodile - Nataliya Karageorgos, Wesleyan U

• The Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas Parnis: The Soviet Cycle of a Greek Partisan of Letters - Viktoriia Chelpan, Mariupol State U (Ukraine)

• Library of Congress Resources on Greeks in the Soviet/Russian Empire - Nevila Pahumi, Library of Congress

Discussant

• Georgios Argiantopoulos, Royal Holloway, U of London (UK)