The Friendly Society was a secret organization founded in 1814 in Odessa of Tsarist Russia by three bankrupt Greek immigrants who belonged to the last major wave of Greek emigration before 1821, which followed the surge of economic activity in the Balkans during the wars of the French Revolution.

Its members came from the provinces of the European part of the Ottoman Empire, and many were craftsmen and merchants. Although their vision for a liberated homeland was vague and undeveloped, they were governed by a modern conception of nationality that transcended the constraints of social class, locality, and family.

Separated from their homelands and isolated due to their low social and economic status compared to the prosperous communities of the Greek diaspora, they found an outlet in the establishment of a nation-state that would recognize them as its liberators. The ambiguity of the positions of the Society members, combined with the deliberate deception that they had secured Russian support, allowed the organization to recruit Greeks from every social group in the Greek world, notably with a significant presence of merchants and an absence of farmers.