The autobiography of Menelaos I. Grammatikopoulos (1916-1995) is the testimony of the life of a Greek Pontian immigrant whose family fled from Trabzon to Georgia (1918-1949) and was later displaced to Kazakhstan (1949-1967). A man who studied, started a family, struggled, created, and lived in the Soviet Union with the dream of coming to Greece.

Grammatikopoulos provides us with documents regarding the history of the seven-arched Santa of Pontus and references about the education of the Greek population in Pontus and Georgia. At the same time, he offers his testimony about the life of the Greek Pontian element in the Soviet Union. This element exhibits endurance, dynamism, and cohesion, regardless of the degree of its integration into the local society.

Through the narrative of his daily life, he conveys vibrant firsthand images of the conditions and lifestyles of the local population both in the cities of Georgia and in the steppes of Kazakhstan during the period of the Soviet Union. Images that the reader can hardly find in official documents and reports.

The autobiography of Grammatikopoulos, presented in his own style and personal writing, constitutes yet another tile in the mosaic of Minor Asian Hellenism and in the broader picture of the Hellenism of the diaspora.