ABSTRACT
The demarcation of Pontic cultural boundaries is occurring within discourses of regional cultural and identity politics. Pontic cultural identity in southern Russia is a post-Soviet phenomenon and the ideology of the Pontic Greek cultural revival has been imported by the Russian Greeks in the course of their transnational migration to and from Greece. This chapter focuses on local concerns in the representation of the globalised Pontic Greek culture and its political implications in the region. The ideology of Pontic cultural revival influences different aspects of everyday life and also brings the ethnonationalist agenda to the Greeks religious practices. Ordinary people closely associate their new Pontic identity with Orthodoxy and a communalist morality. Although Orthodox Christianity was already an integral part of Pontic revivalism, in the contemporary Russian Federation these religious overtones have been strengthened because they coincide with the current resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church and public quest for a moral foundation in the uncertainty of post-Soviet transition.
