Armenia's Disappearing Greeks

Armenia's dwindling community of Greeks, brought in to mine silver more than two centuries ago, could soon disappear altogether.

At the end of the Soviet Union, the village of Madan was the centre of Armenia's ethnic Greek community. Its 800 residents were almost entirely Greek, descendants of miners invited in the 1760s by King Irakliy of Georgia, which then included parts of modern Armenia.

Today, only 75 people remain in the village – and just 19 of them are Greeks, all of them pensioners.

“We are sad about Madan. In a village that was once all Greek, there are now just five families of old folk. The village is abandoned and ruined, like after a war,” Arcadiy Khitarov, chairman of the Greek non-governmental organisations of Armenia, said.

The village does indeed look like a war zone, but the ruins were not caused by fighting. Greeks had been among the most skilled and hard-working miners at the Alaverdi copper factory, but were thrown out of work with the economic collapse that followed the end of the Soviet Union.

Greeks could take advantage of Greece's invitation for them to move “home”, although they originated in what is now Turkey, and most of them did so. In 1979, 5,653 Greeks lived in Armenia. In 2001, just 1,176 remained.

Considering the deteriorating living conditions in places like Madan, it is not surprising so many Greeks took the chance to get out.

Madan residents say they suffer most from the lack of drinking water, which has been cut off since the pipes collapsed a couple of years ago. The locals, who mainly live on the produce from their gardens, and the berries they collect in the forest, cannot afford to repair the pipes themselves.

As a result, they have to bring clean water two kilometres either on foot or by donkey, and the local authorities say they have no money to resolve the problem.

“We plan to investigate and make recommendations, and only after that we need to think whether to include this question in the next development project or look for other ways to solve it,” said Arthur Nalbandyan, mayor of Alaverdi, which Madan is part of for administrative reasons.

Geneos Aslanov, an 80-year-old ethnic Greek from Madan who now lives in Greece, said the village lacked a clinic and a school. In Soviet times, Armenians, Russians and Greeks travelled to Madan to attend school, but now children have to leave Madan by bus to Alaverdi to study.

“If someone here gets ill, we phone Alaverdi, and they tell us they can come to check only if we supply the petrol ourselves. But while they're getting here, the person could just die. There isn't even a nurse here,” said his brother Vasiliy, while they sat together in his backyard.

“For a few years a nurse worked here thanks to Simon Zakharov, director of Hippocrates, the Greek medical centre, but now even he can't do anything because of the crisis. All the same, he comes here once a month with his portable apparatus and medical personnel, to check people and diagnose problems.”

The residents also suffer from the difficulty of reaching shops or other facilities.

“There is no transport to Alaverdi. You have to take a taxi, and one trip there and back costs 1,500 drams (around 4 US dollars). The farmers have to go to town even to buy matches, since we have no shop,” Varvara Apostolova, 84. said.

She has nine grandchildren in Greece, while Geneos Aslanov lives there with his three sons and their children.

“All our people are there now and they don't even think about coming back. But I feel bad there, my heart hurts, and the air is bad. I come here to see my brother Vasiliy every summer, just to breathe the air,” said Geneos Aslanov, in words echoed by his brother.

“No one thinks about the village, no one worries about it. There are just a few of us left, so what should we do? Gather our things and leave? One day this won't be here any more. This is a Greek village, all Armenia knows this, but if things carry on as they are, the village will be completely abandoned, like the houses in it that are already collapsed,” Vasiliy Aslanov said.

These few Greek residents are left to contemplate how the village might look after they are gone. Now at the cemetery there is just a small chapel repaired by the Greek government, but they all remember how they used to mark the passing of their relatives.

“We had a priest, and the bells called us to church, people got together and marked christenings and burials. In the Soviet years, the church was turned into a club, where we went to watch films, and artists came from Yerevan to give concerts. But now, there are just cows grazing there. They could at least clean up and repair the church, so we could light candles,” Vasiliy Aslanov said.

Vahagn Antonyan is a correspondent of Armenpress, in the Lori region.