Ethnocultural Synthesis in the Realm of Conventional Men's Clothing of the Azov Littoral Greek Population

Author

Ponomariova Iryna

a Doctor of History, a professor at Donetsk National Medical University the Department of Linguistic and Humanitarian Disciplines

Ethnocultural Synthesis in the Realm of Conventional Men's Clothing of the Azov Littoral Greek Population

Abstract

The Greeks of Mariupol living on the territory of Ukrainian Cis-Azov region, descend from the city of Mariupol, they have founded. The Christian Greeks of the Crimean Khanate have migrated on the territory of Mariupol district of Katerynoslav province in 1778–1780. They have been headed by the Metropolitan Ignatiy, the migration initiator. 18 thousand of Greeks have given up their prosperous Crimea and got administrative and religious autonomy in the Cis-Azov region. Nowadays the number of Greeks living in Donetsk Oblast run third in its ethnic structure (1.6 %). According to the census in 1989 the number of Greeks has come to 98 thousand, but according to the census results of 2001 the number of population has decreased to 92.6 thousand of people because of the migrations to Greece.

Scientific interest is in the fact that during a long period of time the Greeks have preserved their culture, traditions and language while being constituent parts of various ethnic and social systems, such as the Byzantine and the Ottoman Empires. Besides, the other ethnic surroundings haven’t almost influenced the transformation of their self-consciousness. The investigation of ethnic processes taking place among the Greeks of the Azov region makes it possible to describe the most difficult phenomena in the international interactions and in the processes of national and cultural identity.

The stages of the ethnic history of the Greeks of Mariupol have been considered in various reviews and scientific works, but still there are many aspects that require a complex investigation.

There is no still a unified picture of the ethnic history. The majority of researches are aimed at the investigation of ethnic and historical phenomena in the Crimean and the Azov periods. In fact, the pre-Crimean history of the Greeks of Mariupol and the current state of the Greek Diaspora in the Cis-Azov region remain insufficiently known.

The term The Greeks of Mariupol unites two linguistic groups: Roumeans whose language is divided into five dialects referred to the Greek group of the Indo-European language family, and Urums, speaking four dialects of the Turkish group of the Altaic language family. The both call themselves Greeks, but each group has separated itself from the other one. They haven’t also communicated till the early 20th century, though they have a common language – Tatar. They haven’t married and have different ethnonyms. Though their religious adherence to Orthodoxy is one of the main criteria of their being Greeks.

Keywords

Greeks of Cis-Azov region, ethnocultural ties, the Urums, the Roumeans, ritual habits, material culture, Hellenic phones, Turkic phones, ethnonational processes, traditional culture, transformation.

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