Greek Tea Farmers before the 1917 Revolution
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. A Group of Workers Harvesting Tea, ca. 1907-1915. Digital color rendering. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsc-04430 (32)
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was a photographer who surveyed many different regions in Russia during the early 1900’s and during one of those surveys came across the area of Chakva. As seen above, this image of farmers of Chakva was at least significant to Sergei. A picture of almost entirely Greek women working on a tea farm in Western Russia (today in Georgia). Aiming to use this image as a start of learning more about Russia before the World Wars I pursued information regarding the Greek-Russian relationships considering recent discussion of Russian aid towards the Greek crisis. We begin our journey of understanding the Greeks in Russia by looking back to the Byzantine Empire.
Apparently back in the 10th and 11th centuries when the Byzantine Empire and Kievan Rus were neighbors they got along quite well, to the point where Kievan Rus attempted to imitate the Byzantines artistically and religiously. During this time the people of the Byzantine Empire, specifically from the Greek Peninsula, often migrated to live in what was Western Russia. This it is interesting to notice that the farmers pictured above could have lived in this area for many generations dating back 800 years. The alternative times of Greece migration to Russia were during the Russo-Turkey and Crimean war, 1828 and 1882 respectively. The largest migrations since the Byzantine Empire were after World War II which is many years after this image was taken.
I doubt I am alone when I did not realize until now the ties that Russia and Greece have shared for so many years and how tightly woven their societies are/were. This may attribute to why Putin speaks about Greece as a partner and friend.
The second major question that came to mind for this image was the abundance of women in the agricultural community. In the image there appear to be about 2 men and a few boys while everyone else is either adult or child females. It makes sense for such an agricultural community to have the women working in the fields alongside the men but in this image there were so few men working the fields at the time it seemed. If this were post-World War II it may make sense being on the western edge considering the Russian casualties, but I could not find an answer as to why the men were not present here.
Sources:
https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/1780979/123163_08.pdf
https://www.wdl.org/en/item/365/#q=Prokudin-Gorskii+Chakva&qla=en
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/06/19/greek-debt-crisis/28973733/
January 23, 2018 @ 12:00 am
This was a really interesting post! Greco-Russian relations are not something that we tend to think about historically, but I really liked how you explained it and even mentioned the remains of that relationship today. This post showed how diverse and more complex Russia is than we tend to think– with both the relationship with Greece and the importance of tea. I think you’ll find this theme continues through most of Russian history.
January 23, 2018 @ 1:19 am
I totally agree, I never really put any thought into the relationship between Greece and Russia, and I certiantly never knew that so many Byzantines moved to Russia. I also like how you mentioned how there was so many women working in agriculture. I can only assume that during the years 1915-1917 that the shortage of men on farms is due to the first world war, and the vast number of fighting men required, just like you mentioned post-ww2 only ess extreme. I can tell you that based off my own picture, that women would do even harder agricultural worker like bale hay by hand. Overall though I really enjoyed this post, thanks for sharing.
January 23, 2018 @ 2:11 am
I enjoyed hearing you talk about this image in class, and really like the point you make about how feminized the tea labor force was. It reminds us that agricultural work was equal opportunity (men and women labored in the fields), especially before mechanization.
January 23, 2018 @ 2:25 am
Also, check out Ethan’s post on this image: https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/eclaybrook/2018/01/22/56/