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Sudaba ZEYNALOVA
Ph.D. (Hist.), senior fellow at the Bakikhanov Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan (Baku, Azerbaijan).
ETHNODEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES IN THE CAUCASUS: EMERGENCE OF EUROPEAN ETHNIC COMMUNITIES (THE 19TH-EARLY 20TH CENTURIES)
Abstract
The author discusses several issues related to the reasons for the czarist migration policy, traces its course, and looks at the results. Acting in this way, czarism noticeably changed the ethnode-mographic structure of the Caucasus in the 19th-early 20th centuries. The author pays particular attention to the process which
created the ethnic communities of European peoples: Slavs, Germanic, Romanic, Baltic and Finno-Ugrian peoples, and Greeks. She relies on statistical data and population censuses to reveal the quantitative dynamics of the European communities in the Caucasus in the period under review.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
The Caucasus is one of the world’s culturally diverse regions. Its geographic location on the borderline between the West and the East has made it an interesting geopolitical region with a rich history and variegated ethnic representation. The contradictions never interfered with the centuries-long cooperation of different ethnic cultures, which together can be described as the region’s cultural phenomenon. For many centuries, the Caucasus, a region rich in natural resources, historical and cultural heritage, and ethnic diversity, has been attracting European travelers who described their
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
impressions and supplied interesting information about the region and its peoples. Late in the 18th century, Europeans began moving to the Caucasus in great numbers; this process continued into the 19 th century and went on unabated. Due to the favorable local conditions for socioeconomic development and preservation of ethnocultural identity and values, as well as ethnographic specifics, European ethnic diasporas appeared in the Caucasus in the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Migration Policies of Russian Czarism and Its Impact on the Ethnic Map of the Caucasus
New ethnosocial processes and changes in the region’s ethnic structure were triggered by the Russian Empire’s conquest of the Caucasus. Throughout the 19th and the early 20th centuries, the Caucasus remained an arena of wide-scale migration processes: the region received huge masses of alien population from other countries and from the Russian interior. The history of migration in the Caucasus is complicated; the process unfolded under the impact of military-political, socioeconomic, national-cultural, confessional, and other factors which were prominent either separately or in all sorts of combinations. In the 19th century, migrations were mostly deliberate and carried out by the czarist authorities on a voluntary basis or under pressure. On the other hand, in the latter half of the 19th century, spontaneous population movements were caused by the region’s economic and industrial development.
All sorts of political forces, as well as social and ethnic groups, were involved in the resettlement policy of Russian czarism intended to strengthen the Russian presence in the region and tie it to Russia. This was the general principle and main strategic task. The czarist government resolved to subjugate the Caucasus (a recently conquered and still untamed region) politically and economically by relying on its migration plans. Colonization was expected to create a solid ethnosocial base by placing aliens among the local population, develop a firmer ideological and economic grip on the region, and supply landless and poor peasants from the center of Russia with land.
Imperial colonization of the Caucasus cannot be described as purely Russian in the ethnic sense. “The Russian colonization policy brought European and non-European (non-Russian) migrants into the Caucasian population.”1 Czarist colonization can be described as flexible—it involved not only Russians, but also other peoples (who had already been living in Russia) and also immigrants from other countries. In 1762, Catherine the Great issued a manifesto which invited foreigners to the Russian steppes and supplied the legal basis of privileged immigration. A year later, another manifesto specified the conditions and benefits: the Russian government shouldered the resettlement costs; the newcomers were free to choose their place of residence; they were allowed to pursue their faiths; and they were exempt from taxes for the next 30 years, as well as from compulsory state service. On top of this, they could expect interest-free loans with a 10-year respite to be spent on building houses and buying cattle and implements, and were exempt from conscription. These privileges also applied to the migrants’ descendants.2 This attracted Germans, Greeks, Poles, Estonians, Moldavians, Czechs, Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Letts, and other groups to the region.
After setting up the Caucasian Viceroyalty, czarism got down to the business of colonization. In the mid-18th century, the Caucasian foothills attracted numerous migrants; in the last quarter of the same century, the process extended to the Northern Caucasus. In the early half of the 19th century, Russians and Ukrainians (mostly Cossacks) moved in great numbers into the steppe zones of the Caucasian foothills. In the late 18th century, Russian and Ukrainian ethnic groups (based on the
1 N.Ia. Marr, Plemennoi sostav naseleniia Kavkaza, Petrograd, 1920, p. 32.
2 See: V.S. Belozerov, Etnicheskaia karta Severnogo Kavkaza, OGI, Moscow, 2005, pp. 42-44.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Zaporozhie and Don Cossacks) were gradually formed. The Cossacks were moved to the area to guard the border and develop the virgin soil. Over time, their ranks swelled with new arrivals from the south of Russia and Ukraine. Foreigners, likewise, arrived in the Caucasus for permanent settlement: in the 19th century, communities of Greeks, Germans, and other European nations appeared who lived in compact groups in the localities with the status of colonies.3 The Bolshaia entsiklopediia offers the following definition of a colony: “Colonies are settlements either connected or unconnected with the metropolitan country, especially those, the population of which (colonists from Lat. colonus—“land tiller, settler”) have preserved the specific features, customs and rules of their nationality either thanks to the patronage of the metropolitan country or because of their social position.”4 The newcomers were described as aliens not subject to compulsory military service; in 1867, they were allowed to settle and buy land in the Cossack territories, which increased the migration inflow to the Caucasus.5 In this way, migration movements created a special social and ethnoconfessional group in the Caucasus —aliens with or without registration.
By the early 20th century, the region had already accumulated members of over 20 nationalities (their main territories found outside the Caucasus) who lived side by side with the locals. They came
at different times, for different reasons, and under different conditions, and can be divided into two
major groups:
(1) migrations organized and carried out by the state and
(2) spontaneous migrations by small groups or families.6
The migration policy of czarist Russia can be conditionally divided into several stages: late in the 18th-first half of the 19th century, the state purposefully moved Russians, Ukrainians, German colonists, Greek migrants, Polish military, and exiles to the Caucasus in great numbers. Later, in the latter half-late 19th century after the peasant reform of 1861, the movement became partly spontaneous and voluntary; the czarist government merely supported and encouraged it. The region’s economic and industrial progress, which started at approximately the same time, lured vast masses of Russian peasants with no or little land from Russia’s center. German colonists, Estonian, Moldavian, Czech, and Bulgarian peasants, and others likewise found the region attractive. At the same time, Europeans from various countries (many of them were workers, clerks, specialists in different fields, businessmen, etc.) were attracted by the Caucasian industrial upswing.
Early in the 19th century, the czarist government moved large groups of people of different ethnic origins to the Caucasus. For example, in 1809-1811, 41,534 people of both sexes were resettled to the Black Sea area; in 1821-1825, 48,382 more; and in 1848, they were joined by 14,347 people of both sexes mostly from the Chernigov, Poltava, and other inland gubernias of Russia. In 1862-1864, the trans-Kuban areas were settled with 14,396 families.7
By the mid-19th century, the ethnic situation in the Northern Caucasus exhibited several trends: first, ethnodemographic changes were brought about by the Caucasian War, which caused fighting in the northwest and northeast of the area and drove some of the mountain peoples to Turkey. The changes induced by all sorts of reforms affected the migration processes among the North Caucasian peoples. On the other hand, various national groups which arrived in the Northern Caucasus en masse
3 See: “Poseleniia inostrantsev v Rossii,” in: Entstiklopedicheskiy slovar, ed. by F.A. Brokhaus, I.A. Efron, Vol. XXIV, St. Petersburg, 1898, pp. 672-675.
4 Bolshaia entsiklopediia, ed. by S.N. Iuzhakov, Vol. 11, St. Petersburg, 1903, p. 198.
5 See: Entsiklopedicheskiy slovar po istorii Kubani s drevneishikh vremen do oktiabria 1917 goda, Edvi, Krasnodar, 1997, p. 188.
6 See: N.G. Volkova, Etnicheskiy sostav naseleniia Severnogo Kavkaza v XVIII-nachale XX veka, Nauka, Moscow, 1974, pp. 193-197.
7 See: L.Ia. Apostolov, “Geograficheskiy ocherk Kubanskoi oblasti,” in: Sbornik materialov dlia opisaniia mest-nostei i plemen Kavkaza, Issue 23, Tiflis, 1897, pp. 223-233.
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can be described as one of the most important factors that left traces in the region’s ethnodemo-graphic structure. Some of the groups arrived within the wide-scale czarist resettlement policy; some of them were driven by socioeconomic and political factors, but they too were supported and encouraged by the state. The Caucasian War changed the ethnic map of the Northern Caucasus beyond recognition: during the war and after it (in 1858-1865), North Caucasian mountain-dwellers emigrated in large numbers to Turkey, thus changing the ethnic composition of their home areas. This and the inflow of people from other places changed the size, percentage, and settlement areas of the local ethnic groups. By the late 1860s, the mountain stretch of Circassia had been depopulated, while Cossack villages moved into the foothills. Long stretches of the Caucasian Black Sea coast almost up to the Bzyb River were abandoned by some of the Adighes, Abazins, and Ubykhs who left for Turkey. In the latter half of the 1860s-early 1870s, the czarist government moved Russians, Ukrainians, Greeks, Czechs, Moldavians, Estonians, Armenians, etc. there. By the 1880s, the area was home to 10.7 thousand Russians; 2.3 thousand Greeks; 1.0 thousand Armenians; about 1.0 thousand Czechs; and 0.3 thousand Estonians.8 According to V. Kabuzan, in the 1860s, the population strength of the region dropped because about 500 thousand locals had emigrated. Russians (16.5 percent in 1858 and 30.5 percent in 1867) and Ukrainians (18.2 and 23.3 percent) increased their shares in the total population in the most noticeable way. The share of Armenians also increased from 0.8 to 1.1 percent; Germans from 0.1 to 0.3 percent, and Jews from 0.1 to 0.5 percent. At the same time, the outflow of the autochthonous peoples (Adighes, Nogais, Chechens, and Karachais) lowered their share in the region’s population.9
After conquering the Transcaucasus early in the 19th century, Russian czarism launched an active settlement policy in the region. Northern Azerbaijan was engulfed by migration flows: this was done to set up an ethnic, confessional, and social base in the region. N. Shavrov wrote on this score: “Our colonizing activities in the Transcaucasus were started not by settling Russians there, but by moving people of other nationalities in. First of all, in 1819, we moved 500 families of Germans there from Wurttemberg. They formed their colonies in the Tiflis and Elizavetpol gubernias. Later, after the war of 1826-1828, over a span of two years (1828-1830), we moved over 40,000 Persians and 84, 600 Turkish Armenians to the Transcaucasus and put them on the best state-owned lands in the Elizavetpol and Erivan gubernias, where Armenians were in the obvious minority, and in the Tiflis, Borchali, Akhaltsikhe and Akhalkalaki uezds.”10 Armenians, Russian dissident peasants—raskolniks (schismatics), Molokans, Dukhobors, and a relatively small number of German colonists, Greek migrants, and Polish exiles figured prominently in the migration policy of Russian czarism.
The czarist migration policy changed the ethnodemographic situation in Georgia to a great extent. According to K. Antadze, throughout the 19th century, the size of the ethnic groups involved in state migration policy within the territory of contemporary Georgia changed in the following way: in 1832, there were 0.5 thousand Russians; 1.8 thousand Germans; and 7.3 thousand Greeks; the figures for 1864 were: 19 thousand Russians; 12.1 thousand Greeks; and 4 thousand Germans; in 1897, the Russians numbered 76.4 thousand; the Greeks, 34.2 thousand; and the Germans, 7.8 thousand (not counting the troops deployed there and foreign subjects).11 This means that the Russian government moved large groups of Greeks, Russians, German colonists, Polish exiles, and other ethnic groups into Georgia.
8 See: N.G. Volkova, op. cit., p. 241.
9 See: V.M. Kabuzan, Naselenie Severnogo Kavkaza v XIX-XX vekakh. Etnostatisticheskoe issledovanie, St. Petersburg, 1996, pp. 98-100.
10 N.I. Shavrov, “Novaia ugroza russkomu delu v Zakavkazie: predstoiashchaia rasprodazha Mugani inorodtsam,”
in: Istoriia Azerbaijana po dokumentam i publikatsiiam, Elm, Baku, 1990, p. 60.
11 See: K.D. Antadze, Naselenie Gruzii v XIX veke, synopsis of doctorate thesis, Tbilisi, 1974, p. 20.
Demographic Changes in the Caucasus in the 19th-Early 20th Centuries
Migration and ethnodemographic changes directly affected the sizes of the local and migrant ethnic groups. Indeed, over a relatively short period of time, new European ethnic communities ap-
Table 1
Distribution of European Ethnic Communities in the Caucasus in the 1870s12
Administrative Units Russians Poles Czechs Germans Moldavians, French, Italians s k e re Gr Estonians
| The Northern Caucasus |
Stavropol Gubernia 367,881 1,216 — 1,353 — 1,540 1,015
Terek Region 167,811 — — 2,974 — — —
Kuban Region 733,007 2,522 — 4,682 — — —
Total for the Northern Caucasus 1,268,699 3,738 — 9,009 — 1,540 1,015
|| The Transcaucasus |
Black Sea District 10,692 111 868 75 604 1,941 —
Sukhum Department 138 — — — — — —
Kutaisi Gubernia 1,158 — — 29 3 551 —
Tiflis Gubernia 36,390 1,872 32 4,896 439 15,161 16
Baku Gubernia 18,201 — — — — — —
Elizavetpol Gubernia 8,891 — — 1,326 — — —
Zakataly District — — — — — — —
Daghestan Region 4,727 — — 18 — — —
Erivan Gubernia 4,339 1 — 4 — 1,090 —
Total in the Transcaucasus 84,750 1,984 900 6,348 1,046 18,753 16
Total in the Caucasus 1,353,449 5,722 900 15,457 1,046 20,293 1,031
12 See: Sbornik svedeniy o Kavkaze, ed. by N.K. Zeidlitz, Vol. VII, Tiflis, 1880, pp. I-XXVIII; Ibid., Vol. V, “Spiski naselennykh mest Kavkazskogo kraia,” Tiflis, 1879.
peared on the region’s ethnodemographic map; their numbers steadily grew due to the inflow of migrants that went on unabated throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. This has been amply confirmed by population censuses and statistics.
The number of Russians, as well as Greeks and Germans, in the Caucasus increased throughout the 1860-1870s: Russian peasants and German colonists were moved there from the Russian interior after the peasant reform of 1861; Greeks arrived from Turkey, while Poles (and other Europeans) were exiled to the Caucasus after the 1863-1864 uprising.
In the 1880s, there were several reasons for the increase in numbers of foreigners (including Europeans) in the Caucasus: the ongoing migration policy; demographic growth of the ethnic groups that arrived in the early and middle 19th centuries; and massive resettlement, in the post-reform period between 1860 and the 1880s, of peasants of various ethnic affiliations (Russians, Ukrainians, Moldavians, Estonians, Czechs, Bulgarians, etc.) with little or no land from the interior gubernias of Russia. According to information supplied by family lists dated to 1886, there were 140,095 Russians; 5,843 Poles; 9,260 Germans; and 57,156 Greeks in the Transcaucasus alone.13
Table 2
Statistical Data Related to the Numerical Strength of European Peoples in the Transcaucasus in 188614
Gubernias and Regions gg .1 "■ si in sa ur k 3 c Bulg arians, Czechs, Slo vaks Po les, Lithu anians 2 <fl.c andes lish CO OT SI'S Fre nch, Ita l i ans, Mold avians, Rum anians Greeks
fem ale fem ale fem ale fem ale le al m fe
male male male male male
Baku 23,421 19,011 807 325 980 741 — — — —
Elizavetpol 4,236 3,853 3 3 940 962 1 1 47 55
Tiflis 18,610 17,145 757 522 2,582 2,484 8 10 11,754 10,417
Kutaisi 2,835 2,170 455 177 294 174 154 90 4,087 2,516
Erivan 2,109 2,043 25 15 2 5 — — 547 479
Daghestan Region 2,703 1,921 100 55 24 15 — — — —
An ethnographic boom occurred in the Caucasus in the late 19th century when the region embarked on the road of capitalist development; its growing economy and industry caused even more active migration and attracted even greater numbers of people from other countries and other parts of the Russian Empire. The data of the First General Population Census of the Russian Empire of 1897 can be described as the most reliable demographic source of the time.
13 See: Kavkazskiy kalendar na 1895 god, Tiflis, 1894, p. 229.
14 See: Svod statisticheskikh dannykh o naselenii Zakavkazskogo kraia, izvlechennykh iz posemeinykh spiskov 1886 goda, Tiflis, 1893, pp. 177, 317, 415, 531, 649; Kavkazskiy kalendar na 1896 god, Tiflis, 1895, p. 63; Kavkazskiy kalendar na 1895 god, p. 225.
Table 3
Quantitative Distribution of the European Ethnic Communities in the Caucasus Based on Native Language (according to the 1897 Census)15
Administrative- Territorial Units Russian, including Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian Polish Lithuanian, Latvian Romanic, including French, Rumanian, Moldavian German k e re Gr Finno-Ugric, including Estonian
Baku Gubernia 77,681 1,439 371 158 3,430 — 622
Elizavetpol Gubernia 17,875 616 148 143 3,194 558 16
Zakataly District 434 115 — — 11 2 —
Daghestan Region 16,044 1,630 537 78 261 — 50
Kars Region 27,856 3,243 956 51 430 32,593 484
Tiflis Gubernia 85,338 6,167 1,420 814 8,329 27,116 199
Kutaisi Gubernia 7,476 793 242 184 290 4,372 8
Batum Region 9,956 911 191 160 369 4,717 31
Sukhum District 6,011 234 123 138 406 5,393 607
Black Sea Gubernia 34,546 731 88 1,091 748 5,969 821
Erivan Gubernia 15,937 1,385 485 363 210 1,323 403
Stavropol Gubernia 803,192 961 199 110 8,601 1,715 1,532
Kuban Region 1,737,908 2,719 1,086 5,444 20,778 20,137 2,446
Terek Region 314,644 4,173 841 221 9,672 958 203
Late in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the ethnodemographic picture of the Caucasus became more variegated than ever. In some places of the Northern Caucasus, migrants outnumbered the locals. They settled in compact groups or dispersed; some moved to the countryside, while others preferred the cities and towns. Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Greeks, Estonians, and other ethnic groups lived in compact groups; they set up villages and colonies or lived side by side in towns. Poles, French, Italians, Swedes, and other European ethnic groups lived mainly in cities and were employed by administrative services, the army, scientific and pedagogical institutions, industry, trade, etc.
The European ethnic groups were represented, to different degrees, in the demographic composition of the rural and urban population of the Caucasus. In the late 19th century, for example, the
15 See: Kavkazskiy kalendar na 1908 god, Tiflis, 1907, pp. 108-124.
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ethnic composition of the state peasant population in the Transcaucasian gubernias was the following: Greeks (2,037 chimneys, 17,027 persons of both sexes); Poles (53 chimneys, 231 persons); Germans (850 chimneys, 4,943 persons); and Russians (7,309 chimneys, 44,531 persons). The state peasants of various nationalities were distributed across the Transcaucasian gubernias in the following way: the Tiflis Gubernia—Greeks, 16,277 persons of both sexes; Russians, 15,946; Germans, 3,319; Poles, 231; the Baku Gubernia—Russians, 17,675; the Elizavetpol Gubernia—Russians, 7,275; Germans, 1,624; the Kutaisi Gubernia—no information of European ethnic communities; and the Erivan Gubernia—Greeks, 750; Russians, 3,635.16
The ethnodemographic composition of the Caucasian cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries can be best described as a patchwork. According to the 1886 figures, for example, a large number of members of the European ethnic communities lived in the Transcaucasian cities. In Baku, there were 21.4 thousand Russians; 1.7 thousand Germans; and 1.1 thousand Poles. In Tiflis, there were 14.3 thousand Russians; 0.2 thousand Greeks; 1.2 thousand Germans; and 0.8 thousand Poles. In Kutaisi, there were 1.5 thousand Russians; 0.2 thousand Greeks; and 0.3 thousand Poles; and in Batum, 1.7 thousand Russians; 3.0 thousand Greeks; and 0.3 thousand Poles. Russians comprised 24.6 percent of the total population of industrial Baku; 18.1 percent in Tiflis, and 11.2 percent in the city-port of Batum. Greeks were concentrated in Batum (20.1 percent); their population in other cities (Poti, Tiflis and Kutaisi) was small—about 200 to 500 in each.17
The populations of Baku and Tiflis, two large cities and gubernia administrative centers, were even more varied. West Europeans had been moving there throughout the 19th century, which created large compact European ethnic groups in both cities in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Twenty-five German families from Wurttemberg, moved by the state in 1817-1818 and settled on the Kuka shores, were the first European settlers in Tiflis. They preferred to live as a compact group in a colony which later became part of Tiflis. Germans from Bavaria, Saxony, and Prussia also lived in Tiflis in 1831. After the peasant reform, Germans from Warsaw also moved to Tiflis. In 1901, there were 3.2 thousand Germans in Tiflis, which was also home to other West Europeans. They were mainly French; while Italians, Austrians, Swiss, English, and Poles came next in terms of numbers. Gradually the number of people of West European origin increased for several reasons. In addition, when the Polish Uprising of 1863 was suppressed, the Polish population of Tiflis swelled with Polish exiles. Later, more Poles arrived from the Warsaw Gubernia and other cities of the Russian Empire (Voronezh being one of them). By 1901, there were 5.1 thousand Poles in Tiflis.18 According to the 1864 one-day census conducted in the winter, there were 12,302 Russians; 949 Poles; 172 French; 1,119 Germans; 119 Italians; 24 English, and 119 Greeks in the city.19 According to a one-day census of 25 March, 1876, there were 1,592 Poles in Tiflis; 2,005 Germans; 27 Swedes, 32 Czechs; 15 Lithuanians; 10 Letts; 52 English; 267 French; 163 Italians, 9 Rumanians, and 388 Greeks.20
In the last third of the 19th century, the industrial and oil boom in Baku and economic growth attracted Europeans in great numbers. By the early 20th century, its ethnic context included Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Germans, Poles, Swedes, French, Italians, Greeks, Estonians, Lithuanians, Letts, Fins, and others. According to the 1913 Baku population census, there were 214,672 people of both sexes living in the city: 76,228 of them were Russians; 1,770 were Poles; and 3,274 were Germans.21 According to a one-
16 See: I.G. Antelava, Gosudarstvennye krestiane Gruzii v XIX veke (poreformenny period 1864-1900 gg.), Vol. II, Academy of Sciences of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic Publishing House, Tbilisi, pp. 281-283.
17 See: N.G. Volkova, “Izmeneniia v gorodskom naselenii Zakavkazia v kontse XIX-XX veke,” Sovetskaia et-nografiia, No. 6, 1968, pp. 43-44.
18 See: Iu.D. Anchabadze, N.G. Volkova, Stary Tbilisi. Gorod i gorozhane v XIX veke, Nauka, Moscow, 1990, p. 41.
19 See: Sbornik svedeniy o Kavkaze, Vol. IV, Tiflis, 1880, p. 60
See: Ibid., pp. 134-138.
20 <
21 See: Perepis Baku 1913 goda, Part III, “Naselenie Baku,” 1916, pp. 5, 11.
day census of 1917, there were 234,277 people of both sexes in Baku (77,123 of them were Russians; 1,982 were Poles; 89 French; 2,777 Germans; and 795 Greeks.22
By the early 20th century, the European ethnic communities in the Caucasus had assumed their final shape. The Europeans who settled in the Caucasus lived in large and compact groups in cities and the countryside and formed ethnic communities. In the 1920s, their numerical strength remained the same. The all-Union census of 1926 reflected, in the widest way, the region’s ethnic composition. According to the census, the Russian, Ukrainian, German, Polish, and Greek communities were the largest in the Transcaucasus; while in the Northern Caucasus, the Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Polish, German, Greek, Czech, Moldavian, and Estonian communities were the largest. This is explained by the specifics of the migration policy and distribution of ethnic groups in the Caucasus.
Table 4
The European Population of the Transcaucasus according to the 1926 Census23
People Transcaucasian S.F.S.R. Azerbaijanian S.S.R. Georgian S.S.R. Armenian S.S.R.
Russians 336,178 220,545 96,085 19,548
Ukrainians 35,423 18,241 14,356 2,826
Byelorussians 3,767 2,867 540 360
Germans 25,327 13,149 12,074 104
Poles 6,324 2,460 3,159 705
Greeks 57,935 904 54,051 2,980
Estonians 1,043 168 871 4
Letts 944 569 363 12
Lithuanians 572 285 283 4
Moldavians 316 156 142 18
French 347 58 282 7
Italians 257 77 172 8
Czechs and Slovaks 237 87 143 7
Bulgarians 203 40 160 3
During the Soviet period, the social-political and social-economic processes affected the region’s ethnodemographic structure. In the 1920-1940s, when Soviet power was finally established in the Caucasus, mass immigration began. The ethnic composition and demographic situation in the
22 See: Izvestiia AzTsSU, No. 4, 1922, p. 34.
23 See: Naselenie Zakavkazia. Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1926 goda. Kratkie itogi, published by ZakTsSU, Tiflis, 1928, p. 8.
European Population of the North-Caucasian Area and the Daghestanian A.S.S.R. (according to the 1926 Census)24 Table 5
North Caucasian Area Daghestanian A.S.S.R.
People Total population Urban population Agricultural population Total population
Russians 3,841,063 1,009,342 2,831,721 98,197
Ukrainians 3,106,852 353,791 2,753,061 4,126
Byelorussians 51,317 28,697 22,620 178
Poles 18,425 12,588 5,837 460
Czechs and Slovaks 3,780 1,286 2,494 20
Serbs 277 133 144 1
Bulgarians 2,798 762 2,036 44
Letts 4,573 2,582 1,991 73
Lithuanians 2,292 1,718 574 69
Estonians 5,201 962 4,239 33
Germans 93,915 12,734 81,181 2,551
English 59 40 19 —
Swedes 82 70 12 1
Dutch 10 8 2 13
Italians 308 242 66 1
French 164 135 29 10
Rumanians 562 201 361 58
Moldavians 9,546 446 9,100 491
Greeks 32,178 11,125 21,053 82
Finns 322 128 194 9
Caucasus developed amid repressions against well-to-do peasants and other social groups and deportations of the autochthonous Caucasian peoples and alien ethnic groups; the hostilities of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) also played their role. All the Germans living in the Caucasus, Greeks, Poles, and members of other ethnic groups were deported from the region. Later, rehabilitation returned only a small part of them to the Caucasus.
24 See: Vsesoiuznaia perepis naseleniia 1926 goda, Vol. V, “Crimean A.S.S.R. North Caucasian Area. Daghestanian A.S.S.R.,” Moscow, 1928, pp. 52-56, 342.
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Specifics of the Emergence of the European Ethnic Communities in the Caucasus
The European ethnic communities took a long time to take final shape; they traveled different roads, while migration and social adaptation had its specific and common features. On the whole, the phenomenon of diaspora primarily rests on cultural specifics which help the ethnic mechanism survive and function. Detached from their historical homeland, the migrants were determined to preserve and develop their national culture and resisted assimilation. Obviously not each and every ethnic group can form a diaspora; it is described by the following: adequate numbers; clear awareness of ethnic-cultural interests; high level of cohesion and consolidation; and active economic, public, and cultural self-organization. Adaptation of diasporas can be described as a special type of adaptation of alien ethnic groups caused by the specifics of their everyday life in the context of their existence as a diaspora. The specifics of their adaptation are determined by the relatively large distance between them and the local communities.
Throughout the 19th-early 20th centuries, diasporas of European peoples (Germans, Greeks, Poles, Czechs, Bulgarians, Estonians, Letts, Lithuanians, Moldavians, etc.) appeared as part of the region’s ethnic structure. Their numerical strength, social composition, and degree of incorporation into the local economy and sociocultural milieu were different. They set up institutions of all sorts (cultural, educational, religious, and charitable) and schools to preserve their identity.
The majority of ethnic groups that were either moved to the Caucasus in the 19th and early 20th centuries or came there themselves covered a long road before they formed diasporas. At first the newcomers were isolated from the locals by the new conditions of their day-by-day existence, strange culture, and everyday life. Later, economic integration brought the migrants and the locals much closer in the social and cultural respects. The high level of ethno-religious tolerance of the local people (especially obvious in the zones of social contacts) contributed to the process.25
The German, Greek, and Polish communities were the largest European diasporas in the Caucasus; they acquired their final shape in the early 20th century. Germans and Greeks lived in numerous compact (and mostly monoethnic) settlements in the Caucasus; great numbers of them lived in large cities. Early in the 20th century, both had their national public organizations and press; under Soviet power, there were national administrative districts—Greek and German (Vannovskiy)—in the Krasnodar Territory. Their economic activities were varied and ramified; they actively contributed to the region’s industrial development. The Poles, most of them being exiles, formed a large and socially diverse community which lived in big cities. Their community had no national settlements; Poles were scattered mainly among the cities; the majority of them belonged to either the intelligentsia or civil servants. The Czech, Bulgarian, Estonian, Moldavian, and other European communities in the Caucasus were relatively small; they lived in their settlements in the Northern Caucasus and along the Black Sea coast and were mainly employed in agriculture. French, Italians, English, Swedes, Dutch, and other representatives of European peoples lived in small groups in large cities—administrative, industrial, and trade centers such as Baku, Tiflis, Ekaterinodar, Stavropol, and Vladikavkaz—and were employed in industry or trade. Their small numbers and the fact that no large compact groups of them were found anywhere meant they had no ethnic diasporas. They sided with the German, Polish, and other large European religiously and culturally kindred communities.
25 See: A.E. Mamedli, Sovremennye etnokulturnye protsessy v Azerbaijane: osnovnye tendentsii i perspektivy, The Khazar University Press, Baku, 2008, pp. 147-149.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
The European ethnic groups in the Caucasus had many common and many different features in terms of their linguistic, confessional, economic, and sociocultural characteristics. Recent ethnological studies of their ethno-linguistic traits describe them as members of the Indo-European and Ural language families. The Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, and Serbs), the Germanic peoples (Germans, Swedes, Swiss, Dutch and English), the Greek peoples (Greeks), the Romanic peoples (Moldavians, Rumanians, French and Italians), and the Baltic peoples (Lithuanians and Letts) represented the Indo-European group of languages. The Ural group was represented by Finno-Ugric peoples—Estonians, Finns, Hungarians, Mordovians, and Mari.
The absolute majority of Europeans in the Caucasus were Christians, either Orthodox or Protestants or Catholics. There was a certain number of followers of non-orthodox sects: German col-onists-separatists, Mennonites, and Russian raskolniks and Old Believers. The European communities of the Caucasus had many common features in terms of their geographical distribution, the time they came to the Caucasus, the circumstances that brought them there, and the economic activities they engaged in. The same features, however—territory and places of settlement, dates and specific reasons of migration, and preferred economic branches and occupations—described them as different groups. Throughout the long period during which they remained part of the Caucasian ethnic picture they preserved their cultural images and were involved, on an equal basis, in ethnic cooperation across the region; they did a lot to promote the historical, economic, and sociocultural development of the Caucasus.
C o n c l u s i o n
The migration policy of Russian czarism in the 19th-early 20th centuries brought migrants to the region; ethnic groups appeared who settled in areas far beyond the Caucasus. Some of them came on their own free will, others were forced to move. The migrants were diverse in origin: there were peasants who belonged to various sects whom the authorities wanted to tuck away; peasants with no or little land; and exiles and people of highly varied ethnic and social backgrounds who came to the region to profit from its economic boom. The migration waves which reached the Caucasus one after another throughout the 19th century increased the size of the European communities. By the early 20th century, for example, the number of Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, and Byelorussians in particular, as well as Poles, Czechs, and Bulgarians) increased. Germans and Greeks formed the largest ethnic European communities in the Caucasus; there were relatively fewer Moldavians, Estonians, Letts, Lithuanians, French, Finns, Italians, Swedes, and others. The European ethnic communities appeared in the Caucasus for different reasons and at different times; the settlement process and places of residence (cities or countryside), their economic activities, numerical strengths, and social affiliations also differed. The migration processes of the 19th-early 20th centuries were directly responsible for the changed ethnodemographic structure of the Caucasus: they brought new ethnic communities which left their trace in the region’s history.
