1. The First Migrations from the Pontus to Russia and the Caucasus

In modern years the Greeks of the Pontus communicated regularly with the regions of the Caucasus and Transcaucasia, particularly with the Orthodox kingdom of Georgia. However, the available rare and vague information about the Greek settlements in the Caucasus in the period after the fall of the Empire of Trebizond (1461) does not provide a clear picture of the size and the importance of the Greek presence there at least until the second half of the 18th century. It was then that the king of eastern Georgia Hercules II (1744-1798) decided to reopen the old gold and silver mines of his territory in the area of Ahtala. For this reason he attracted hundreds of experienced Greek miners from the neighbouring Ottoman territory, particularly the regions of Gümüşhane (Argyroupoli) and Erzurum (Theodosioupolis). But this migration, which took place in a period of serious conflicts between Georgia and Persia, was a tragedy for Greek miners: the Persian attacks, whose worst part was the massacre of the citizens of Tbilisi in 1795, resulted in the decimation and captivity of a large number of Greek miners and their families, the destruction of the mines and the desolation of the region. Besides, the efforts of the Russians, the new masters of the region (1801), to reopen the mines with the help of Greek craftsmen from Kars and Mus were fruitless.¹

However, the Russians did not abandon the idea of colonising their new, still unsafe, possessions in Transcaucasia (modern Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) with Christian populations, as indicated by the establishment and activities of a “Migration Committee”(Epitropi Metoikesias) in Tbilisi (1806-1812). The “Committee” planned to attract Greeks and Armenians from the adjacent Ottoman territory and Azerbaijan and settle them in the harbour of Poti and the region of Akhaltsikhe, a junction along the road to Tbilisi.² Despite the dismal results of the efforts made in the first twenty years of the 19th century, a period when the Russian domination had not been consolidated yet, it is clear that the Russians had also launched a plan for changing the ethnographic map of Transcaucasia³ by attracting Christian populations from neighbouring territories.

Occasional migrations from the Pontus to the new Russian possessions of Transcaucasia also took place in the early 1820s and particularly in 1821-1823. The migrations, as evidenced by various sources, were largely due to the tense atmosphere prevailing at that time along the Russo-Turkish borderline because of the constant changes of rulers in the region as well as due to the successive rebellions of the Muslim populations of Transcaucasia against the new masters Russians. However, as regards Orthodox populations, there was a negative attitude towards them due to the Greek War of Independence.

2. The Migrations to Russia after the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829

These rare and few migrations increased immediately after the end of the Russo-Persian War (1826-1827) and mainly the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829, during which the Russian vanguard advanced as far as Erzurum and Gümüşhane (Argyroupoli). When the two wars ended a considerable part of the Christian population of the above regions followed the retreating Russian troops in a state of panic as the Orthodox and Armenian inhabitants of the region had compromised themselves because they had accepted the Russians as their liberators and had helped them to advance against the Ottoman mainland.⁴ Besides, the successful outcome of the Greek Revolution and the establishment of the independent Greek state probably nurtured their hopes too.

The vast majority of the Orthodox migrants of that period (1829-1833) settled in the mountainous region of Calka, not far from Tbilisi. Calka was selected because the villages of the area were either abandoned by their inhabitants for reasons of safety or were occasionally inhabited by Tatar nomads. According to Russian sources, in the spring of 1832 Calka included 18 Greek settlements with 532 families (3381 people, including 1336 children). The Orthodox migrants (mostly Turkish-speaking) usually gave the new places the names of the Turkish villages they had abandoned. On rare occasions they maintained the original Georgian place name, which was often ignored even by the Russian “Migration Committee”, which was probably reactivated to deal with the issue.⁵

3. The Migrations between the End of the Crimean War and 1882-83 ⁶

3.1. General

The changes noted during the migrations of the Greeks of the Pontus to the Russian territory, Crimea and mainly Transcaucasia in the second half of the 19th century are connected with the spectacular increase in the number of migrants and the spread of the phenomenon, apart from the hinterland, along the coast of the Pontus as well. The reasons for the new migrations are complicated and various and can probably be found among the conditions prevailing in both the host country and the Ottoman Empire:

a) The state of uncertainty prevailing among the people before, during and after the Russo-Turkish conflicts, particularly in the period of the Crimean War (1853-1856) and the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878.

In the above period the relations between the Russians, the masters of Transcaucasia, and the local Muslim populations were always tense, often leading to armed conflicts. Besides, the constant movements of the opposing troops during the war also affected civilians from both sides, thus driving Curds, Circassians (Cherkess), Abkhazians and Laz from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, and Christians, mainly Armenians, from the Ottoman Empire to Russian territories. Finally, the people were also suffering from the rapacious attitude of the drifting Ottoman troops towards the Christians, particularly those living in the borderland.

The unpleasant consequences of these developments at first affected the Christian populations of the eastern Pontus, both Orthodox and Armenians. They also affected the life of local Muslim people, as it happened in the case of 800 Muslims of Çoruh Su, a commercial station near Batumi within two hours from the Russian border, who asked to advance to Russian territories and adopt Christianity in a relatively early migration period (1849).

b) The difficult state of the natives of the Pontus (Christians and Muslims), who were suffering due to the arrival of several thousands of Muslim refugees from the Russian Caucasian territory in the Ottoman Empire.

The consequences of the afflux of thousands of wretched refugees to the Ottoman territory were becoming more serious year after year. But the spread of dangerous epidemics mainly among the refugees was alarming. In Trebizond, apart from the smallpox epidemic, towards the late 1863 and the early 1864 there was also a typhus epidemic, which soon spread widely mainly when the central water pipeline of the city was contaminated by the dead body of a Circassian refugee.

Things became worse as the maintenance of the refugees was largely undertaken by the local population (Muslims and Christians): from the early 1860s until the end of the century the villagers (and some citizens) of the Pontus, including Muslims and mainly Christians, suffered because the Ottoman authorities demanded almost by force that they take care of the refugees by sharing with them food, their arable land and even their houses. At the same time there was constant disorder due to the uncontrollable gangs of homeless and wretched Circassians. The gangs of the refugees of the Caucasus often cooperated with locals and irregular Curds of the area.

Besides, the Orthodox population had to deal with the revenge of the Muslims, who were burdening the Orthodox with excessive chores and other difficult jobs after the outbreak of the Cretan Revolt (1866-1869), while the rumours about massacres of Christian populations spread panic and made things easier for the Russian propagandists of migration.

c) The prolonged sluggishness of the Ottoman authorities to recognise the Kurumli, the cryptochristians of the Pontus,⁷ who revealed their Christian identity after 1856.

The refusal of the Ottoman authorities to recognise the Kurumli as Christians, despite the sultan’s declarations about equality of rights and impartiality through the Hatt-i Humayun of 1856, as well as their persecutions led some of them to migrate to the Russian territory.

d) The ethnographic adulteration pursued by the Russians in their Caucasian possessions through the attraction of Christians from the neighbouring Ottoman territory as well as the propaganda about privileges granted to prospective emigrants.

The departure of a considerable part of Caucasian Muslims helped the colonising plans of the new masters of the region, the Russians, who did not hesitate to fill in the gaps with Christian settlers attracted from either other places of the Czarist Empire or regions of the Ottoman Empire. The same attitude, which resulted in a form of an indirect population exchange, was followed after the end of the Crimean War as well as during and immediately after the end of the following Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878). Besides, during these crises and almost until the late 1870s there was a quite positive attitude among a number of Russian circles towards the Orthodox element, thanks to either traditional relations or the pro-Russian feelings of the national centre (as it happened in the first phase of the Crimean War) and the Greek communities and centres of the Empire.

In any case, the Russians did not follow this practice only in the colonisation of their relatively recently captured Caucasian provinces, but also in the case of possessions incorporated into Czarist territories several decades earlier, as it happened with Crimea. The incentives provided by the Russians in 1861 to the Christians (Orthodox and Armenians) of the coasts of the Black Sea, who were to colonise Crimean areas, from where the Tartars were expelled, involved: a) financial support after they arrived at Russian land, b) reassurance about basic foodstuff by providing 25 kilos of wheat per person every month for one year, c) arable land granted to every five-member family along with a ten-year tax exemption and the necessary domestic animals.

However, from the early 1880s the Russians started to express their interest in the Orthodox rather than the Armenian emigrants, which is clearly underlined by the sharp-sighted British consul in Trebizond Alfred Biliotti. The British consul repeated his earlier expressed suspicions that the Russians did not actually aim at moving the Armenian element from the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire to Transcaucasia, but preferred them to stay in the so-called “Armenian vilayets”. The reason for this change was political: they wanted to send pure Armenian populations to these vilayets so that they could ostensibly protect them in order to further expand to the west. Their optimism also resulted from the successful outcome of the Congress of Berlin (1878), where they managed to be ceded the Ottoman regions of Batumi, Kars and Ardahan.

These population exchanges were aided by special Russo-Turkish agreements incorporated in a special (supplementary to the Congress of Berlin) Protocol signed by the representatives of St Petersburg and the Sublime Porte in Constantinople on February 8, 1879. The agreements provided that the inhabitants of the ceded regions could migrate to both adjacent territories. By virtue of this Protocol, any Muslim could sell their property and move to the Ottoman Empire within three years.

3.2. The Attitude of the Muslim, Orthodox and European Authorities

Due to the above reasons the rural populations of the Pontus displayed a marked tendency towards migration. However, because the Sublime Porte did not seem to be particularly worried about the attitude of its Christian subjects towards migrating to Russia it did not adopt any special restrictive measures in the early days. Even later, when the local Turkish authorities activated and seemed to be trying to restrict migration, they were impeded by the Russo-Turkish agreements on voluntary departure of border populations, particularly the former Ottoman subjects, who had been granted the Russian nationality (1863). On the other hand, for several years the Greek state had not been interested in the fate of the Orthodox element of the Pontus and, as a result, there was no specific policy against the migrations of Orthodox people to Russia. Its representatives in Trebizond were interested mainly in the small number of Greek subjects, while their activities were decisively affected by the relations of Greece with Russia and Great Britain. This also explains the initial alignment of the Greek vice consuls with the efforts of their Russian counterparts to encourage migration, as it happened in 1857, when the Greek vice consul Κ. Ν. Κypriotis (1851-1858), in close cooperation with the consul of Russia, the Greek S. Dendrinos, tried to help the migration of builders from Santa to the Russian harbour of Poti and cancel the negative interventions of his British counterpart Ο. Α. G.A. Stevens.

In the same period the consuls of Great Britain and France were worried about the Russian nationality that had almost massively been granted to the Christian inhabitants of the vilayet of Trebizond because they thought that this action created the necessary situations for the future transfer of new Russian subjects to the Caucasus. They were not anxious because the “exchange” of populations would have negative results for the Ottomans because the Orthodox subjects, who were mainly craftsmen, would be replaced by inexperienced Circassians, but were particularly concerned for the fact that the Russians were consolidating their presence in the region of the Caucasus and could therefore undermine commercial transactions with Persia.

Towards the late 1860s the heads of the Orthodox urban communities started to worry for their own reasons, too. A part of the senior clergy, the scholars and the influential entrepreneurs of the Pontus discerned the danger of a demographic and economic decline of the Orthodox element of northeastern Asia Minor due to Orthodox migrations. The Greek concerns should by all means be combined with the general atmosphere of Slav-phobia, which had started to penetrate several upper classes of Greek society both in Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Among others, responsible for this atmosphere in the Pontus were the Greek consuls, particularly after the prevalence of pan-Slav circles in St Petersburg and the strong Russian preference for the Bulgarians.

The concerns of the Greek heads of the Pontus about the serious migration problem of the region should also be evaluated within this framework. As for these concerns, the attitude of the Greek club “Xenophon” of Trebizond, established in 1872, should also be noted.⁸ During a special discussion among the members of the club on the reasons for the Greek migrations, the majority supported that “the Greeks living there had better remain” in the countries they had been living for centuries. But in case the migration was unavoidable, then the expatriated Greeks should choose any other country (preferably Greece) but Russia.

3.3. From the Old to the New Fatherland. Demographic Details and Places of Settlement

As a matter of fact, the powers that seemed to oppose the general Russian colonisation plan proved in practice unable to stop tenths of thousands of Orthodox and Armenians, who finally sought a better fate in Russian lands in the 1860s. The migration fever that had gripped the inhabitants of the Pontus caused the movement of considerable numbers of families from the coast: the Russian proposals were particularly popular with the rural populations of the provinces of Kotyora (Urdu), Kerasounta and Amisos (Samsun), as in that specific period the inhabitants of these regions were desperate because of the additional taxation imposed by local ağa in cooperation with the representatives of the Sublime Porte. There were also migrations from the hinterland.

A part of the Orthodox and Armenian emigrants of that period settled in the Russian administrative district of the Black Sea, near the border with the modern independent Republic of Abkhazia. Some researchers believe that certain settlements were founded by emigrants: Kabartinga,Gelendzhik and Krasnaya Polyana. The settlers were granted special privileges so that a region previously unsuccessfully colonised by farmers and Kuban Cossacks could be developed before long. Another three Greek villages were founded in Abkhazia in the 1860s and were named after the members of the Greek royal family (Georgievskoe, Olginskoe, and Alexandrovskoe). In any case, Abkhazia had some decades earlier attracted the interest of Greek merchants, as evidenced by their presence in the most important harbour of the area, Sukhumi (modern Sokhumi).

Apart from the region of Calka, where the Greek element existing since 1830 was reinforced with new arrivals, the Greek emigrants created new settlements in other regions of Georgia as well, in mountainous and inaccessible villages abandoned by their native inhabitants (Tsikhisvari andMikeltsminda). The new settlers were usually prevented from choosing their place of settlement. In some cases the difficulty in adapting to the new environment as well as the inobservance of the Russian promises led some families back home.

The migrations to the Caucasus declined in the 1870s despite the war events of 1877-1878. The migration surge from the Pontus to Russia became massive in the early 1880s. There were so many and persistent rumours about a forthcoming general exodus of Orthodox and Armenians that the then British consul in Trebizond Alfred Biliotti decided to visit key points of the eastern Pontus in order to confirm the accuracy of the rumours. Once again the Orthodox rural settlements of the Pontus were gripped by migration fever.

The families that migrated in that period to Russia settled in old and new settlements in Abkhazia and founded new settlements in the formerly Ottoman part of Lazistan (modern independent Republic of Ajaria), which was annexed to Russia through the Congress of Berlin (1878). However, it should be noted that the few Greek merchants settled in Batumi already from the 1850s had contributed to the spectacular development of the harbour before it fell to the Russians. The initial core of settlers was reinforced by the arrival of new emigrants in the last quarter of the 19th century. But most of the emigrants were channeled to the formerly Ottoman district of Kars due to benefits announced by the Russians and the direct proximity to the Ottoman fatherlands of the emigrants.

The available information about the number of the Orthodox emigrants who moved from the Pontus to Russia in the 19th century is piecemeal and inaccurate. The first official Russian census of 1897 was disputed. According to the census, 105169 Orthodox people (mainly descended from the Pontus) were living in the Caucasus and Transcaucasia out of a total of 207536 settled in the entire Russian Empire. The same census showed that the largest concentrations of Orthodox descended mainly from the Pontus were settled in the guberniya (administrative subdivision) of Kars (32593), Tbilisi (27118), Kuban (20137) and Kutaisi (14482).

4. Seasonal Work in Southern Russia

Regardless of the accuracy of the statistics concerning the demography of the Pontus and the Russian areas that first hosted the emigrants, the Greek migrations to Transcaucasia continued in the following years until the early 20th century. However, both their extent and character were different. The expatriations were neither massive nor took place in a state of panic. On several occasions, the migrations were brief and concerned seasonal workers, mainly builders from mountainous and barren lands, particularly Kromni (Kurum) and Santa. These seasonal emigrants sometimes settled permanently in the northern Caucasus and Transcaucasia, the regions where a giant railway project had got under way since the mid-1880s in order to connect those regions with European Russia to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east. The final plan aimed at extending the railway line to Central Asia and Siberia. Among the contractors of the railway project in the Pontus, the Caucasus (1868-1879, 1880-1900) and in parts of the Trans-Siberian (from 1891 onwards), as well as the contractors of other relevant works (pertaining to road works, constructions and harbour works) there were some Orthodox, who often employed Greeks from either Russian regions of the Caucasus or Ottoman territories of the Pontus (mainly Santa).

Another important factor that contributed to the enforcement of the Greek element in the northern Caucasus was the favourable conditions created by the Russians mainly thanks to the protective measures of 1887 and 1891 for developing tobacco cultivation and trading. The Orthodox of the Pontus responded to the invitation because it was combined with the crisis provoked in the meanwhile in this field within the Ottoman Empire a few years after the establishment of the tobacco monopoly (1860), the increase in the number of tobacco farmers and mainly the drop in prices. The drop (which lasted for only a few years) was also accelerated after the overall production and trading of the Ottoman tobacco was assigned to “Régie Cointeresse des Tabacs de l’ Empire Ottoman” in 1883.

Most of the Orthodox tobacco farmers of the Caucasus were earlier migrants from the Pontus as well as later migrants from almost the same provinces of the Pontus to the same host places. Broadly speaking, tobacco was the product of the majority of Orthodox farmers, who were settled in most of the villages of the guberniya of Kuban and the provincial administration of Sukhumi, the place that produced the best Russian tobacco of the so-called “Turkish type” in the early 20th century.

4.1. An Afterword

The Greek settlements in the northern Caucasus and Transcaucasia were mainly rural. In some cases, the urban character of some communities was absolutely conventional, as the settlers maintained their houses in the city but worked in the fields. They were widely dispersed in the guberniya of the Caucasus and usually had a weak presence in the capitals (Kars, Tbilisi, and Yerevan). Probably the only exception was the Greek community of Novorossiysk, the capital of the guberniya of the Black Sea, where the number of Orthodox people increased along with the growing economic prosperity of the city and its harbour: in the first two decades of the 20th century there were approximately 1400 Greeks mainly descended from the Pontus, trading breadstuffs and tobacco and even running small industrial units. The same happened with the Greeks of Batumi, the southernmost Russian (from 1878 onwards) harbour in the Black Sea and an important oil-export centre of Baku. After the region was incorporated into Russia the increase in the number of Greeks from the Pontus was followed by the spectacular economic development of the city: shortly before the outbreak of World War I there were 3500 Greek inhabitants out of a total of 7469 included in the namesake guberniya. Moreover, in comparison with other cities there was increased Greek presence in Sukhumi, the capital of the then namesake province of the guberniya of Kutaisi: 1200 people were descended from the Pontus out of a total of 20000 inhabitants.

Before the outbreak of the Great War the number of the Greeks of the Caucasus amounted to 180123 people distributed among the guberniya of Tbilisi (50306), Kars (48994), Kuban (28300), Kutaisi (27564), Black Sea (6682), Stavropol (2801), Yerevan (2210), Baku (1500), Terek (950), Elisavetpol (661) and Dagestan (155). The overall population of the above administrative districts was 11460000.

5. Τhe Migration Flow after the Retreat of Russia from World War I

The outbreak of World War I and the different sides Russia and the Ottoman Empire chose put an end to the controlled migrations of Greeks from the Pontus to Russia. Once again Transcaucasia became the theatre of bitter Russo-Turkish conflicts and, as a result, a large part of the population, both Muslims and Christians, living in the disputed areas were forced to become refugees.

The alleged Germano-Ottoman landing operations on the eastern coasts of the Black Sea, which drove the consular services of Batumi (including the Greeks) to Tbilisi, increased the anxiety and uncertainty of the prosperous communities of the region. However, it was the Greek settlements situated to the west of the guberniya of Kars that suffered invasions and plundering, violence, death and the risk of being completely eliminated when the Ottomans advanced (1914-1915) and took the Russian troops of the region by surprise. There would have been an extremely large number of casualties if most of the Greeks living in the borderland had not decided to abandon their places and escape to safer areas.

The following redeployment of the Ottoman forces along with the successful march (January 1916) of the Russian army to the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire as well as the temporary capture of key points like Erzurum (February 16), Trebizond (April 18) and Erzincan (July 25) ensured a relative safety among Christian populations but created thousands of Muslim refugees as well. The latter had to confront the expected revenge of the Armenians serving the Russian army.

Within this atmosphere the temporary Russian dominion over a part of the eastern Pontus extending as far as Platana (a small town to the west of Trebizond) was consolidated and some peace was secured in the area. The sense of safety among the Greeks was increased by the fact that both the Ottoman authorities that had abandoned Trebizond and their Russian counterparts that followed them appointed the metropolitan Chrysanthos as their deputy.

However, the startling developments in the political matters of Russia after the revolution of February 1917 initially directly affected the war. The revolution was a catalytic event for the cohesion of the Russian forces. In occupied Trebizond the Russian soldiers removed their officers and formed a soviet (council) of soldiers and workers with an anti-war attitude prevailing among them. This fact gave the tsetes (irregular bands consisting mainly of Kurds and Laz people) the opportunity to act violently against the Greek villages of the area.⁹

Things became worse a few months later due to the outbreak of the October Revolution and the orders for the recall of the Russian troops from the Ottoman Empire. While the Russians were preparing to leave, which finally happened between November 1917 and January 1918, there were increasing rumours about a Georgian military corps that was planning to protect the Christians as well as about Armenian resistance in Erzurum and the formation of two divisions of Greeks in the Russian army that aimed to defend their compatriots. Various other rumours were also spread.

Despite the hidden truth in the diffused news, the Greeks of the province of Trebizond had to face a different reality: violence against farmers living in areas under Ottoman control, elimination of the Greek element of Rizaion and Gemoura, and an attempt towards the self-protection of the Greeks of Sourmena (Sürmene). Amidst these circumstances the metropolitan Chrysanthos supervised the supply of 7000 guns to those who were in Trebizond in order to defend their lives.¹⁰ This gesture actually aimed at the psychological support of the people so that they could be persuaded to remain in the city. As a matter of fact, Chrysanthos was certain that if he had not encouraged his congregation in this way, his entire ecclesiastical territory “from Trebizond to Erzincan and from Rizaion [Rize] to Elevi [Görele] would have been deserted”.¹¹ Although the available information about the number of Greeks who deserted their birthplace cannot be documented, his fears are confirmed. Furthermore, the information is indicative of the panic prevailing in Trebizond and the nearby areas after the departure of the Russian troops, which led a large part of the population to desperately move to a country devastated by civil conflicts and national assertions, particularly to Transcaucasia.

The exodus of 85800 Greeks of the Pontus started in January 1918 and was completed in March of the same year, one month after the Turks returned to Trebizond. Half of them (46882 people) came from the ecclesiastical provinces of Chaldia (including Kerasounta) and Theodosioupolis, 26500 from the province of Trebizond, while there were smaller groups from the provinces of Amaseia (2400), Neokaisareia (3750), Colonea (1406) and Rhodopolis (4862).¹² The Turkish government proclaimed those who left collaborators of the enemy and confiscated their properties.¹³

The arrival of the refugees from the Pontus provoked alarm in all the Greek communities of Russia: the Greeks of Batumi chartered a ship to carry refugees from Trebizond, accommodated them for a short period and redirected them to other areas. This is what the Greeks of Sukhumi also did, while at the expense of the Greek community of Tuapse several thousands of refugees were sent to other Greek communities. Delegates of the Greek communities of Kuban travelled to Novorossiysk to receive, relieve and accommodate the refugees arriving there from Trebizond. The Greek community of Kerch was also an important transit point for refugees in the region of Crimea.

The Greek communities of Sevastopol and Theodosia in Crimea and Ekaterinodar, Maykop and Vladikavkaz in southern Russia also responded the call. Central Committees were formed in the above cities in order to relieve the refugees and help them with anything they needed concerning their dealings with local authorities. It should be noted that despite the abnormal situation and the problems the Russian authorities and the people were facing, they tolerated the presence of the refugees and cooperated so that they could find shelter in military camps, state depots and commandeered houses, while the Russian trains carried them free of charge to their destinations until March 1920.¹⁴

The last movement of Greeks (refugees rather than emigrants) from the Pontus to Russia and their migration to southern Russia and the coasts of Georgia reinforced the Greek element there. According to the census carried out in 1919 by the Greek Mission of the Ministry of Relief, the total number of Greeks in Russia in that period amounted to 593700, a number more than double than that reported by the Greeks in 1897. Most of them (375000) were in the northern Caucasus and southern Russia. A considerable number of Greeks (112850) were also living in Georgia (most of them in the areas of Sukhumi and Calka). The accuracy of this census could be easily disputed due to the prevailing conditions. However, it is certain that the year 1919 signals the definite end of the migrations of the Greeks of the Pontus to Russia.