ABSTRACT
This chapter provides with a historical background to the Greek presence in the Caucasus and southern Russia. This is necessary because the issues discussed both to the distant and the recent pasts of the Pontic Greeks in general and of the two examined communities. The chapter describes the history itself becomes an important reference point in the construction of ethnic and cultural identity, providing a foundation for meaningful engagement between the past and present. It explores the histories of the Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii Greek communities are presented in comparative perspective, because differences in their formation are reflected in the specific ways in which contemporary Greek ethnicity, local identities and transnational migration are understood by people in these settlements. In both cases of Vitiazevo and Gaverdovskii there is a tendency to regard the locals on an official level in the first place as ethnic collectives. The political representation of local communities to acquire for the construction of the local Greek identity.
