Témoignages écrits à propos des populations grecques d’Asie Mineure et de Constantinople : une lecture double

On the beginning of the 21st century, Greek society continues to show high interest about Greek populations installed in Minor Asia until 1922 and in Constantinople until 1964. Testimonies of this interest are commemorative editions, TV programs, and articles in the mass media, commemorative feasts, as well as scientific studies. These are forms of collective memory’s survival and alimentation, which reflect dominant representations about social and cultural history of these populations.Using as an example some recently published written testimonies, this text aims at showing their multiple significance. Testimonies lay not only on the borders between literature and history, but also between official and unofficial history, between history of big events and history of daily life. Moreover, they are founded on experience, personal or transmitted to the author through narrations of other persons. Thus, they are suitable to be used as helpful sources concerning various aspects of these Greek populations’ life. At the same time, as forms of collective memory, they include all the complex social processes having influenced this memory’s formulation, reproduction, and projection. This is the reason why their use as sources cannot be disconnected from the comprehension of those processes.Our way of reading them attempts to approach these testimonies from two points of view. On the beginning we are reading them as a form of collective memory and focusing on some matters, like the relation between individual and collective memory the relationship between written and oral memory and the social functions accomplished by their writing and their publication. Then we are reading them as potential sources of information concerning those Greek populations and focusing, indicatively, on some themes of this memory. This double way of reading leads to the formulation of questions concerning the future use of these testimonies by researchers