Exiled from Russia Centuries Ago, a Religious Group is on the Edge of Vanishing in Georgia

By Kostya Manenkov, Associated Press

GORELOVKA, Georgia, October 12, 2024 — A 10-year-old boy proudly stands beside his father and listens to the monotone chanting of elderly women clad in embroidered headscarves and long colorful skirts. It is Ilya’s first time attending a night prayer meeting in Gorelovka, a tiny village in the South Caucasus nation of Georgia, and he is determined to follow the centuries-old hymns that have been passed down through the generations.

Women in traditional Doukhobor dresses pray at the former Orphanage house where Doukohbors have worshipped for years, on Easter in the remote mountain village of Gorelovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

There is no priest and no iconography. It’s just men and women praying together, as the Doukhobors have done since the pacifist Christian sect emerged in Russia in the 18th century.

Thousands of their ancestors were expelled to the fringes of the Russian Empire almost two centuries ago for rejecting the Orthodox church and refusing to serve in Czar Nicholas I’s army — much like the thousands of men who fled Russia two years ago to avoid being drafted to join Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Today, only about 100 Doukhobors remain in the tight-knit Russian-speaking farming community in two remote mountainous villages.

“Our people are dying,” 47-year-old Svetlana Svetlishcheva, Ilya’s mother, tells The Associated Press, as she walks with her family to an ancient cemetery.

Nina Strukova, Daria Strukova, Ilya Strukov and their mother Svetlana Svetlishcheva walk to a cemetery outside the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Prayer Never Stops

Some 5,000 Doukhobors who were banished in the middle of the 19th century established 10 villages close to the border with the hostile Ottoman Empire, where they continued to preach nonviolence and worshiped without priests or church rituals.

The community prospered, growing to around 20,000 members. When some refused to pledge allegiance to the new czar, Nicholas II, and protested by burning weapons, the authorities unleashed a violent crackdown and sent about 4,000 of them to live elsewhere in the vast Russian Empire.

Yuri Strukov, left, his son Ilya, daughters Nina and Daria, and his wife Svetlana Svetlishcheva, right, pray before a meal in their house in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Nonviolence is the foundation of Doukhobor culture, says Yulia Mokshina, a professor at the Mordovia State University in Russia, who studies the group.

“The Doukhobors proved that without using force, you can stand up for the truth,” Mokshina says. “They fought without arms but with their truth and internal power.”

Their plight caught the attention of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, also a pacifist, who donated the profits from his final novel, “Resurrection,” to help around 7,500 Doukhobors emigrate to Canada to escape persecution.

And all the while, the prayers never stopped, not even when the Soviet authorities relentlessly cracked down on religious activities.

“There hasn’t been a single Sunday without prayer,” Yuri Strukov, 46, says with pride, in the village of Orlovka, where he has lived for 30 years.

Yuri Strukov, 46, milks a cow at his farm in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

A Shrinking Community

Like others in the rural community, Strukov owns cattle and produces cottage cheese, sour cream and a brined cheese called suluguni, which he sells in a nearby town. His way of life is challenging — he braves freezing temperatures during winter and droughts in the summer, and the remote village is a three-hour drive from the nearest big city — which does not appeal to many Doukhobors any longer.

“The community has changed because it became small,” Strukov says. “The fact that there are few of us leaves a heavy residue in the soul.”

Yuri Strukov, 46, milks a cow at his farm in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

In Soviet times, the Doukhobors maintained among the best collective farms in the region. But the nationalist sentiment that bubbled up in Georgia as the collapse of the Soviet Union loomed prompted many to return to Russia in the late 1980s.

“We didn’t relocate, we came back,” says 39-year-old Dmitry Zubkov, who was among the first convoy of 1,000 Doukhobors who left Gorelovka for what is now western Russia in 1989. Zubkov and his family settled in the village of Arkhangelskoye in Russia’s Tula region.

Strukov also thinks about moving.

Yuri Strukov’s house in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

After several waves of Doukhobors departed, ethnic Georgians and Armenians — Orlovka is close to the Armenian border — moved in, and he says relations between them and the ever-shrinking community of Doukhobors are tense. His four family members are the last Doukhobors living in Orlovka.

But the prayer house and his ancestors’ graves keep him from leaving.

“The whole land is soaked with the prayers, sweat and blood of our ancestors,” he says. “We always try to find the solution in different situations so we can stay here and preserve our culture, our traditions and our rites.”

Yuri Strukov, 46, his son Ilya, 10, and his daughter Daria, 21, pray at the Doukhobor cemetery outside of the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Keeping the Traditions Alive

Doukhobor rites have traditionally passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth, and Strukov’s 21-year-old daughter Daria Strukova feels the urgency to learn as much as she can from senior community members.

“I’m always worried that such a deep and interesting culture will just get lost if we don’t take it over in time,” Strukova says.

Daria Strukova takes Easter cakes off a stove in her family home in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

She says she considered converting to the Georgian Orthodox Church as a student in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, where that faith wields great influence. But her doubts were dispelled as she listened to a Doukhobor choir during a prayer meeting.

“I realized that this is what I missed, this is what I couldn’t find anywhere,” she says. “I know now that the Doukhobor faith will always be with me till the end of my life.”

Daria Strukova, right, helps her sister Nina Strukova, left, put on a traditional Doukhobor dress in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Sunday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Zubkov says Strukova’s wavering faith is not unusual among Doukhobors in Russia. Once they assimilate into Russian society, experience big cities, speak the same language and share traditions with the locals, of course they will be tempted by the predominant religion.

“People didn’t want to stand out,” he says. “Unfortunately, we have been assimilating very fast.”

Around 750 Doukhobors settled in Arkhangelskoye more than 30 years ago. Now, only a few elderly women attend Sunday prayers, and only a couple of Doukhobors sing traditional anthems at funerals.

Zubkov predicts that within a decade the culture will disappear from Arkhangelskoye altogether.

Yuri Strukov, second left, his son Ilya, left, and his daughters Daria and Nina in traditional Doukhobor dresses embrace each other after Easter prayer at the former Orphanage house where Doukhobors have worshipped for years, in the remote mountain village of Gorelovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Enduring Faith

The Doukhobors whose families started anew in Canada more than a century ago don’t feel a strong connection to the villages that are sacred for the Strukov family. They say what is important is their faith and the pacifist principles that underscore it.

“We do not hold any specific place and historical places … in some kind of spiritual significance,” said John J. Verigin Jr., who leads the largest Doukhobor organization in Canada. “What we try to sustain in our organization is our dedication to those fundamental principles of our life concept.”

But Ilya, in Gorelovka, is comforted by the knowledge that his community, culture and faith are rooted in a place established by his ancestors.

“I see myself a tall grown-up going to the prayers every day in Doukhobor clothes,” Ilya said. “I will love coming here, I love it now too.”

Ilya Strukov, 10, kisses a tombstone on a grave of his Doukhobor ancestors at a cemetery outside of the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Sunday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)
A cat looks out of a window of a cowshed at Yuri Strukov’s farm in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)
Svetlana Svetlishcheva, left, and her daughter Nina Strukova, right, talk as they cook dinner in their house in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Sunday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)
Svetlana Svetlishcheva feeds the cattle alongside her husband Yuri Strukov at their farm in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)
Daria Strukova Lays out traditional Doukhobor dresses in her family home in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Sunday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)
Yuri Strukov, second left, and his son Ilya, left, pray at the former Orphanage house where Doukhobors have worshipped for years, on Easter in the remote mountain village of Gorelovka, Georgia, Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)
Ilya Strukov, 10, looks on in the kitchen as his family cooks dinner in their house in the remote mountain village of Orlovka, Georgia, Sunday, May 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kostya Manenkov)

Voskreseniye Village, SK

By Jonathan J. Kalmakoff

The following article provides a brief history of Voskreseniye, one of 55 communal villages established by the Doukhobors upon their arrival in the Northwest Territories (Saskatchewan) in 1899.

In May 1899, 120 Doukhobor immigrant settlers established a village on a bend of the Assiniboine River, 4 miles south of present-day Kamsack, SK. Sick, weary and destitute after a failed settlement on the Island of Cyprus, all they were able to construct for shelters were 16 sod dugouts.[1]

They named their village Voskreseniye (Воскресение) or Voskresenovka (Воскресеновка), meaning ‘Resurrection’ in Russian – a reference to the Doukhobor belief that Christ is resurrected spiritually in the hearts of his righteous followers.[2]

Initially the villagers possessed little material wealth, having only 50 sacks of flour, 30 bushels of potatoes, 2 horses, 2 oxen, 1 cow and 1 wagon to share between them during their first year.

Postcard (colourized) of Voskreseniye village, postmarked 1908. The village consisted of two rows of ten houses facing each other across a wide central street. The brick meeting house, with a higher-pitched roof than the other structures, is seen midway along the north (right) row of homes. Photo courtesy Prairie Towns.

However, despite severe hardship and deprivation, the settlers persevered, and through the adoption of a communal way of life, pooling all land, livestock, grain and outside earnings, attained agricultural self-sufficiency within a few short years.

In 1902, the village was relocated one mile to the Northwest Quarter of Section 12, Township 29, Range 32, West of the First Meridian, on a level flat beside Dead Horse (Kamsack) Creek, where they constructed twenty 14 by 25-foot mud-plastered log homes with thatched roofs.[3]

By 1905, Voskreseniye had a population of 175 Doukhobors, and the village layout had expanded to include three large 14 by 30-foot communal stables, as well as granaries, a blacksmith shop, bakery, carpenter’s shop and a 22 by 56-foot brick meeting house used to conduct moleniye (prayer meetings) and sobraniya (social gatherings).[4]

By this time, the villagers had acquired 16 horses, 53 cattle and 36 sheep.[5] Using 6 horse-drawn ploughs, they were cultivating 472 acres out of the 58 quarter-sections of land reserved for the village into grain and forage crops.[6] Their cultivated acreage continued to increase in the years that followed, even as their total reserved acreage was significantly reduced by the federal Department of Interior in 1907.

Department of Interior map of Voskreseniye village, August 1, 1907. Colour legend: homesteads reserved for Voskreseniye village coloured orange; homesteads taken by Independent Doukhobors coloured blue; Doukhobor reserved homesteads opened up to general public in 1907 coloured grey; homesteads still untaken coloured yellow.

The surnames of the Voskreseniye Doukhobors were: Cheveldayoff, Dubasoff, Hancheroff, Kazakoff, Kinakin, Konkin, Makasayoff, Medvedoff, Nechvolodoff, Novokshonoff, Parakin, Popoff, Rezansoff, Shekinoff, Stuchnoff, Tikonoff, Varabioff and Wishloff.

The villagers were renowned singers, and according to oral tradition, their acapella singing of Doukhobor hymns was often heard for miles up and down the Assiniboine valley.[7]

Postcard (colourized) of Doukhobor family in front of their log dwelling in the village of Voskreseniye, postmarked 1908. Courtesy Prairie Towns.

The Voskreseniye Doukhobors remained staunch supporters of their leader Peter Vasil’evich Verigin and the communal way of life he espoused. Indeed, despite being a village of moderate wealth, Voskreseniye annually remitted earnings to the central treasury of the Doukhobor Society in excess of those sent by much richer villages.  For example, in 1905, the village sent $3,082.85 in earnings to Verigin when the average remittance of 44 villages was $2,568.21.[8]

Between 1908 and 1913, 120 persons relocated from the village to communal settlements in British Columbia (primarily Ootischenia and Glade), leaving a remaining population of 52 persons by the fall of 1913.[9] This rump population remained consistent over the next five years.[10]

Voskreseniye Village Population and Homestead Reserve, 1899-1917

Year Communalists Independents Wanderers Total Village Reserve (Acres)
1899 119 119
1905 174 174 3840
1907 160 160 2400
1909 127 2 1 130 2400
1910 106 2 108 2080
1911 103 9 112 2080
1912 103 9 112 2080
1913 52 52 1280
1915 52 52 1120
1917 52 52 1118

In 1918, the village and its 1,118-acre homestead reserve was disbanded by the federal Department of Interior and the remaining population either relocated to communal settlements elsewhere, or else settled on adjacent homesteads as Independent Doukhobors.[11] The village structures were dismantled and the logs and lumber were salvaged as building material used on individual homesteads.

By 1920, only the brick meeting house of the village remained, which was used by the Kamsack branch of the Society of Independent Doukhobors for prayer meetings and gatherings over the next three decades.[12] The meeting house continued to stand beside Highway 8, a silent marker to the once-thriving village, until its eventual collapse in a 2019 storm.

Voskreseniye brick meeting house, as it appeared in September 2008. Note the brick veneer was largely removed by this time. Photo copyright Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

In October 2021, the Kamsack Doukhobor Society received funding through the C.C.U.B. Trust Fund to erect a cairn and steel sign at the village site.[13] Completed in 2023, the 7-foot-high iron sign will have a mounted 24 by 32-inch plaque commemorating the Doukhobors of Voskreseniye village.[14] It will be installed at the village site in the spring of 2024.

Proof of the Voskreseniye village commemorative plaque commissioned in 2023. Plaque text provided by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. Plaque design by Tannis and Patti Negrave. It will be installed in spring 2024. Courtesy Tannis Negrave.
Proof of seven-foot-high iron sign, commissioned in 2023, to be installed at the Voskreseniye village site in spring 2024. Courtesy Tannis Negrave.

End Notes

[1] Doukhobor village statistics, compiled by William B. Harvey, Quaker, in November 1899. Library and Archives Canada, Immigration Branch Records, Record Group 76, Vol. 184, File 65101, Part 6.

[2] Doukhobors believe that Christ suffered and died on the cross, and that on the third day after his crucifixion, he was resurrected. However, unlike other Christian groups, Doukhobors reject the idea that his resurrection was literal and physical, believing instead that Christ’s resurrection was wholly spiritual: that rose again spiritually in the hearts of righteous people and continues to be resurrected to this day in those who follow his teachings: V. Bonch-Bruevich, Zhivotnaya Kniga Dukhobortsev (Winnipeg: Regehr’s Printing, 1954): Psalms 8 (Q/A 11), 14 (Q/A 6), 80, 112, 132, 189, 217, 312, 339, 349, 352, 361, 362, 367, 383 and 410.

[3] Library and Archives Canada, Voskreseniye Village File, Record Group 15, Vol. 1167, File 5412469; C.J. Tracie, “Toil and Peaceful Life, Doukhobor Village Settlement in Saskatchewan, 1899-1918 (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, University of Regina, 1996) at 117.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] John Moriarty, interview with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, September 24, 2005.

[8] “Report of the General Meeting of the Doukhobor Community held in Nadezhda Village, February 15, 1906” in Manitoba Morning Free Press, April 25, 1906.

[9] Library and Archives Canada, Doukhobor Village Reserves Register, Record Group 15, Vol. 0, File 1113.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Voskreseniye Village File, supra, note 3; Tracie, supra, note 3 at 205.

[13] The Doukhobors of Canada CCUB Trust Fund Annual Report, 2021-2022 (Veregin: CCUB Trust Fund Board, 2022) at 11.

[14] Tannis Negrave, correspondence with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, December 6, 2023.

Doukhobors Make Garden in Forest at Brilliant, 1912

By James Lightbody

In May 1912, Nelson Daily News reporter James Lightbody visited the community of Brillant (then centred in Dolina Utesheniya) at the junction of the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers. There, he found 1,300 Russian-speaking Doukhobors living in a ‘Socialist Utopia’ who, after four short years, had transformed 2,900 acres of forest into a veritable garden paradise with 600 acres planted into trees. Lightbody wrote an article about his experience and observations, including the Doukhobors’ history in Russia, their settlement at Brilliant, their learning of English, communal system and management, their land-clearing, industrial development and financial system. It was first published in The Nelson Daily News on June 1, 1912. It was subsequently republished in The Daily Province on June 8, 1912 and the Victoria Daily Times on June 25, 1912. Editorial comments [in square brackets] and After Word by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.


An hour’s ride from Nelson, British Columbia, there exists a foreign country, 2,900 acres in extent, where nearly 1,300 people live without a knowledge of English, without money in circulation and without an elective government, and yet contented and prosperous. It is the Doukhobor community at Brilliant, at the junction of the Kootenay and Columbia rivers, where fruit farming upon a strip of land encircled by steep mountains is conducted on a scale not attempted in any other part of British Columbia. These exiles from their unhappy land in Russia are part of a band of 7,500 in Canada and beyond a few hundred in British Columbia and their kindred living in far away Canora in the prairie provinces of Saskatchewan, these people live out of touch with all races and creeds in Canada.

Russian Tyranny

Twelve years ago they began to come to Canada to escape the tyranny to which they were subject under the bureaucratic government of the Czar’s dominions, and under the liberty allowed them under British rule, they have proved themselves to be so industrious that they have carried out agricultural operations on a scale almost impossible to the English speaking citizen of the country. They have cleared hundreds of acres of their land of the dense timber that covered it four years ago and have planted it with fruit trees and bushes. They have received not a cent in return for their fruit but are still living upon what their countrymen in Canora [district, Saskatchewan] can send them and from what they have raised from selling timber and potatoes and other minor products of their land.

Nor are they concerned mainly about getting an immediate recompense for their labor. Rather they are building up for the future with a foresight which will surely be repaid. There is mapped out and in part operation an irrigation system covering the whole of their territory, and already a domestic water system fed by springs in the mountains connects every one of the thirty or more dwellings upon the plateau.

That is only one part of the story of industry and thrift that a visitor to Brilliant sees. Their quant customs; their odd form of government with its freedom from complications, yet efficient in its simplicity, their adaptability to new conditions and new surroundings; all these things tell a story seldom met with in the rush of the present-day life.

Settlement at Brilliant

To the person who alights from the train at the new station at Brilliant just being built by the Canadian Pacific railway, there opens a panorama which is puzzling to one who has no hint of what the settlement is. After journeying through a gully hemmed in by steep mountains, a wide level stretch of land takes their place and here and there upon it are dotted houses, peculiarly set in pairs of with acres and acres of trim gardens round them. In places a rugged stump-dotted patch, not yet cleared, shows what the neat, trim gardens were in their rough state. Close at hand there is a busy scene along the water’s edge, as if some gigantic industry was being established there. And so there is. As one descends the bank one encounters a gang of men loading heavy masses of machinery upon a ferry strung across the swirling Kootenay.

Ferry landing, sawmill and pumphouse at the north end of Dolina Utesheniya (Ootischenia), 1912 which Lightbody first saw upon arriving. Photo: BC Archives, Doukhobor Commision Photographs, No. GR-0793.5 (colorized).

You journey across with the gang, few of them can speak a word of English, and on closer view find a water pump being placed in position, and boilers being set together with noisy activity. You ask what it all means and are informed that it is the pumping plant for irrigating the fruit fields that you are yet to see. Pressing on, guided by one of the obliging settlers, you pass sawmill, stables, several  houses, and rise to the top of a bank to come upon an immense tableland whose houses you have seen from the station upon the railway track. For some distance you walk along until you come upon a wide expanse of cultivated land both under crop and ready for planting. On each side of the road there are large houses; always in pairs, always of the same plan, bare of exterior but eminently practical.

In your walk, if school be not in session, you will be passed by picturesque children, the girls in bright colors and the boys – well, as growing mischief-loving boys always dress. But all have an inquiring, inquisitive look, for strangers are not seen every day. Yet disrespect is totally absent and they call to you “Hello,” their first word of English probably, and the boys raise their hats and the girls nod their heads.

Learning English

There is a schoolhouse there, just put in commission by the provincial government, with an English-speaking school ma-am in it, and the children, so they say, flock to the school with such eagerness that playing truant is an unheard of offence. In fact, they come round from school and clamor to be taught before their teacher rises in the morning, and she is an early riser.

A peep into the houses discloses the tidiness that characterizes everything. Paint has not been found absolutely necessary everywhere but cleanliness cannot be sacrificed at any cost. Around the house are gardens both for flowers and for vegetables, with walks neatly bordered with stones among them. Not a fence can be seen, for the land belongs to no one and to everyone.

Then you visit the post office [at Waterloo], where John Sherbinin, the purchasing agent and financial manager, holds forth, and you find to your astonishment everything for a well-appointed office already there. There are typewriters, one in English and the other to master the vagaries of the Russian alphabet; letter files and account books and also a certificate that this is one of his majesty’s post offices.

The former ‘Waterloo’ camp at Dolina Utesheniya (Ootischenia), 1912. The one-storey log building, second from left, served as the original post office and business office. When Lightbody visited the settlement, a new two-storey frame building, far left, was built for this purpose. Photo: BC Archives, Doukhobor Commision Photographs, No. GR-0793.5 (colorized).

How They Came

To see the state of improvement the settlement has reached it is hard to believe it has all been done in four years. Yet that is the time which has elapsed since the first band migrated from Canora, near Saskatoon. In the early winter of that year, Peter Verigin, acknowledged head of the whole Doukhobor sect, came to British Columbia and found what he thought would be an advantageous site for a colony. He bought the land, piece by piece, and a month or so later, in April, 1908, ninety men came down from the Saskatchewan community, and began the work of making the stubborn bush yield to the coming of the fruit rancher.

The hardships the Doukhobor sect have passed through since it was founded in the middle of the eighteenth century are no doubt responsible for the sterling qualities of the men and women at the present time.

Primarily the ill-treatment followed their severance from the Orthodox Russian church and the methods of conscription employed by the Russian government in the nineteenth century forced them to flee the country. At the age of 21, every young man becomes liable to be called upon to bring the standing army up to a certain mark. Each year army officers come round to the Doukhobors and took away their sons to fight, and they would, it is said, take the same man year after year, seemingly to do their worst towards the nonconformists.

Many resisted this and were put in prison and Peter Verigin, who rose as a champion of his race, was seized and sent to Siberia for 16 years. At other times as a reminder of the czar’s rule, Cossacks would be sent down to their villages with horse whips to beat the communists into subjection.

Resolved to stand the tyranny no longer, the Doukhobors decided to emigrate, and in 1898 many moved to the Island of Cyprus, which is under British protection, in the Mediterranean Sea, being assisted by Count Tolstoi. Not satisfied with this and hearing of the opportunities that Canada offered, they moved to Canada in 1899 and 1900 in large numbers, settling at once near Saskatoon. In all 7,500 persons of the Doukhobor sect have come to this country. Each man of 18 years of age or more took out 160 acres of land for farming purposes. Put together, the thousand odd quarter sections made an immense tract, and true to their customs they established a community such as may be seen at Brilliant.

But they made a fatal mistake, which they blame upon the Canadian government as not having brought to their notice. The regulations say that the settlers must cultivate at least 15 acres of his quarter section by the end of three years when a patent will be granted. Instead of doing this the Doukhobors cultivated one large piece in the centre, equal to 15 acres for every homestead in the settlement, thinking it was in compliance with the requirements. When they came to ask for title they did so for the whole piece and not individually, it appears, which the government would not grant. They now say the government would not grant them a patent because they had not cultivated a piece as required by the regulations.

The Belyi Dom (‘White House’) at Dolina Utesheniya (Ootischenia) in 1912. The building served as a schoolhouse when Lightbody visited the Brilliant colony and also functioned as a community meeting house. Photo: BC Archives, Doukhobor Commision Photographs, No. GR-0793.5 (colorized).

The area they retained after their homesteads had been forfeited was hardly sufficient to support the whole of their 7,500 people. The winters, too, were hard on them, used as they were to the comparative warmth of Southern Russia. Finally Peter Verigin set out to find a new country to which his people without a home might go. How his wanderings brought him to British Columbia has already been shown.

When the 90 men, like [Biblical] spies into Canaan, came to Brilliant, they found an unpromising piece of land on which to start their settlement. Before their arrival it had barely been scratched as a fruit raising district, but some of the timber had been cut and floated down the river [to Trail], leaving the stumps standing. Hundreds of acres on the other hand were in their virgin state, while still more had been burned off ready to be grubbed of their dense underbrush and second growth trees.

They set to work, however, and cleared a piece of land more than a hundred acres in extent ready for planting the following spring. In April, 1909, another party of 180 men were brought out to the new settlement from Saskatchewan and joined the pioneers in putting the land in crop. That year they planted many acres with fruit trees brought from nurseries in Canada and the United States. But to obviate purchasing from an outside source, which is against their policy, they have started a nursery of their own, where thousands of young bushes may be seen approaching the stage when they may be transplanted.

While gangs of men were treating the soil others were erecting houses, and in June of the same year the wives and families and aged men were brought out from Saskatchewan and joined the able bodies in working towards getting a crop. In 1910 another batch of 200 men came out, some going to neighbouring settlements, of which there are Pass Creek, Crescent Valley, Glade and Grand Forks. In the spring of the present year a party of 346 passed through on their way to Glade and Slocan Valley. At Brilliant there are now 1,285 people, while at Grand Forks there are an additional 500 living in like communistic manner.

Since their first coming to Kootenay, the Doukhobors have not received a cent from their fruit plantations. Their expenses are small, for where possible food is grown and articles of wear are made. There is a strong aversion to being dependent upon outsiders, hence the Brilliant community subsists upon flour made at the Doukhobor mill at Canora, Saskatchewan.

Ivan Vasil’evich Sherbinin, business manager and purchasing agent for the Brilliant Doukhobor colony from 1908 to 1919. Photo: BC Archives, Doukhobor Commision Photographs, No. GR-0793.5 (colorized).

Harmony and Contentment

The harmony and contentment which pervade Brilliant impress the visitor at first sight, and a glance into the economic system in vogue there reveals the reason for this. It is a Socialist Utopia, the realization of equality which is being advocated for the rest of the world to-day.

At Brilliant, unlike the modern city, there are no cares as to where the next day’s meals will come from. There is no stinting to provide sustenance when one’s strength has ebbed in declining years. There is no division between “mine” and thine”; no man richer than his fellow; no jealousies or envies as to the possessions of another.

Cares as to money are totally absent, for there is no money in circulation. Neither is there any need for money, for food and clothing are doled out as needed from the department in charge of these matters. All men are equal and have a voice in the government, and more than this, women are recognized as being competent to judge upon the affairs of their community.

Their houses are large, and for economy are made to accommodate from 30 to 36 people. At the rear of each pair, there is a long low building which puzzles the stranger. It contains the baths, made of wood and looking like punts. A boiler in the centre of the room heats the water for the numerous baths round about.

The food for all the months is handed out at the general store, to which the head of the household repairs on certain days. To the storekeeper he intimates the number he must feed, and gets doled out to him food in proportion. The bread is baked in each house, and vegetables are raised in gardens surrounding them, it being part of the women’s work to look after them.

How Community is Run

The executive of the community is in the hands of several heads of departments. There are two men who manage the fruit-growing and the general affairs of the colony. One man does the purchasing for them, another oversees the building of the houses and the carpenter work, another superintends the sawmills, another the waterworks, and so on. These men are responsible for the part of the work they look after.

They form the executive, but the government is in the hands of the people, effectively and simply, although with no machinery of government whatever. Once a week all persons both men and women who have reached years of mature understanding, crowd into the school house [to hold a sobranya or ‘meeting’] and discuss the affairs of the community. At these meetings, according to the popular sentiment, the managers of each department are given their instructions.

Should one of the managers ever be guilty of doing something wrongly he is required to make an explanation and allowed to clear himself if he is able. But if not, one of the electors, if you can call them such, may propose another man, and the case is disposed of on its merits. No definite time is specified at the appointment of an officer, but he holds office as long as he does his work well. This is the initiative, referendum and recall system without the cumbersome machinery in use at the present day.

There is no police force at Brilliant, and none is needed. Every man is so loyal to this community that misdemeanors are practically unknown. As no one possesses anything to the exclusion of others, there is no stealing. If anyone should do wrong, however, he is dealt with by the society.

Land Worked in One Piece

In tilling the land it is all done in one piece. There are no divisions of the whole 2,900 acres as far as that is concerned. Men are put to work on whatever task they are best suited for and may be changed to another more congenial to them if it means greater efficiency. Thus some are at work in the fields, others in the sawmills and others at carpenter work. Should any man display a lazy disposition he is put to work tidying up the garden round the house, and if he does not keep it spic and span he will suffer derision at the hands of his comrades. But such a penalty is seldom necessary because of the intense interest taken by everyone in the welfare of the colony.

Land clearing at Dolina Utesheniya (Ootischenia) in 1912 when Lightbody visited the colony. Photo: BC Archives, Doukhobor Commision Photographs, No. GR-0793.5 (colorized).

Two Big Sawmills

Two big sawmills are kept busy all the time at Brilliant, and have seen busier day in the early life of the settlement. There, the logs that were taken from the land in preparation for the fruit trees coming, were sawn up into hundreds of thousands of railway ties and shipped all over the country. In connection with the sawmills, where, also, all lumber needed for the buildings is turned out, there is a planing mill. Finished lumber is made there, and mouldings, indistinguishable from the product of a big factory, are manufactured. There is also a joiner’s shop, and all tables, chairs and furniture used in the houses are made by Doukhobor labor there. More than this, window frames have been turned out, but for economy’s sake they are not bought.

In the high parts of the territory the guide will point to two immense reservoirs, big concrete tanks containing water. These, he will explain, are the nucleus of the irrigation system they are planning for the whole of their land. By and by when they have their pumping plant on the Kootenay in working order, the fields will be covered by a network of pipes giving water to the thirsty soil.

At the present time all is activity with the fruit trees, but when winter comes and work on the land ceases, electric light and power wires will be installed everywhere. In connection with the new pumping plant a generating station will be built to supply energy to the whole colony. You may ask the Doukhobor, on perceiving the high tension power wires of an electric company passing over the land, why he does not buy his power from the company. He will tell you that he prefers to be independent and generate it himself.

Overlooking nothing, a school-house of generous proportions has been built in the centre of the territory and was just opened during the present year. The settlement does not attempt to give education to all the children at once, but that will come in time. At present about one hundred young hopefuls are being taught in English and Russian, and show an avidity to learn often absent in English-speaking children. They look upon schooling as a privilege they must not abuse.

The Financial End

The material assets of the Doukhobors at Brilliant would do justice to many communities of larger size. The land was bought by Peter Verigin four years ago for $150,000 under an agreement for sale covering a number of years. There is yet a small balance left to be paid. The timber they sold gave them many thousands of dollars, part of which was used to pay for their land and part to bring others of their band from Canada and Russia. There are now 50 buildings of all kinds valued for the purpose of obtaining a loan at a conservative sum of $50,000. The two reservoirs and equipment are estimated for the same purpose to be worth $30,000. The largest sawmill is assessed at $15,000, and the new pumping and electric light plant is reckoned to need an outlay of $25,000. These figures were made by a bank valuator and are authentic.

To provide transportation across the Kootenay river a bridge is in the course of construction high up on the bank to allow vessels to pass under it. It will be of the suspension type. At present a ferry driven by a horses and windlass gives communication from bank to bank. There is also a ferry between the settlement and Kinnard on the Columbia river.

There are now 600 acres planted with fruit and the acreage is constantly increasing. The settlement has spread upon the banks of the Kootenay and down the Columbia river. In the course of time the whole of the Doukhobor sect in Canada and many more from Russia will have migrated to British Columbia, for it is the intention of those already there to assist their brethren to come out. With the warmer climate and the freedom they enjoy they are sure to prosper and help to develop the natural wealth of the province.


After Word

Born 1891 in Edinburgh, Scotland, James Lightbody emigrated to Canada in 1904. He started his newspaperman’s career in Winnipeg with the Tribune and Telegram. In 1911, he was briefly employed as a reporter with the Nelson Daily News. It was during this time that Lightbody visited Brilliant and wrote his article about the Doukhobor colony. It was perhaps as a result of the article’s successful syndication in several Vancouver and Victoria newspapers that he moved to Vancouver in 1913 to work as a reporter for the News Advertiser and Daily Province. In 1916, Lightbody began a 33-year career as publicity manager for the B.C. Electric Railway Company (later B.C. Electric), also serving on the executives of numerous civic and service organizations prior to his retirement in 1949. He died at age 96 in 1986.

James Lightbody.

It should be noted that at the time Lightbody visited ‘Brilliant’, the place name applied exclusively to the Doukhobor settlement in the Valley of Consolation (Dolina Utesheniya) on the southeast side of the Kootenay-Columbia confluence. The lands known as ‘Brilliant’ today on the northeast side of the confluence were only purchased by the Doukhobor Society in July 1912 – a month after Lightbody’s visit.

It is possible to trace the route of Lightbody’s visit to Brilliant in May 1912. After disembarking at the C.P.R. Brilliant Station, then the only building on the northeast side of the confluence, he walked a quarter mile southeast along the Doukhobor-built Pass Creek Road. After crossing the Kootenay River on the Doukhobor cable reaction ferry, he arrived at that part of the Valley of Consolation known as Kamennoye, where a sawmill and several large communal houses had been built and where a large irrigation pumping plant was under construction. He then traversed the length of the Valley of Consolation on the Doukhobor-built road which today forms parts of Ootischenia and Waterloo Roads. He passed by the Community meeting house known as the Belyi Dom (‘White House’) which at the time in 1912, briefly served as a public school. He then continued on to the former Waterloo mining camp which, at the time, served as the business and administrative centre of the Brilliant colony.

Lightbody’s article provides a fascinating snapshot of the state of agricultural and industrial development of Brilliant at the time. As of May 1912, there were 1,300 Doukhobors living on 2,900-acres in the Valley of Consolation. About half the acreage had been cleared, with 600 acres planted in fruit trees. The Doukhobors had not yet received any returns from the plantation, as the orchards would take another 7-10 years to reach full bearing. The Doukhobors had constructed two large concrete irrigation reservoirs on the second bench and a pumping station on the edge of the Kootenay River; this orchard irrigation system would be finally completed in 1926. However, in the meantime, a water pipeline for domestic purpose, sourced from mountain creeks, was already serving the Doukhobor communal homes throughout the colony. Two sawmills (the Bol’shaya Pil’nya or ‘Large Sawmill’ at the edge of the second and third benches and the Malaya Pil’nya or ‘Small Sawmill’ in Kamennoye) were in operation, with a planer mill located at the former.

Lightbody explains the Doukhobors’ early history in Russia and initial settlement on the Prairies, and provides a fairly detailed account of their initial settlement at Brilliant, only four years after it occurred. He also describes the colony in glowing terms as a ‘Socialist Utopia’ where cash and divisions of property were absent, and where the communal ownership system enabled all persons to have their basic needs met, to be equal and to have a voice in the government and management of the colony. Lightbody clearly attributes the Doukhobors’ social structure as the basis upon which they were able to transform Brilliant from a forest to a garden oasis in only four short years.

In terms of financial arrangements, Lightbody notes that the Doukhobor Society purchased the 2,900 acres at the Valley of Consolation for $150,000.00 under an agreement for sale, whereby payments were made under installments over five years. Now in its fourth year, there was only “a small balance left to be paid.” He does not provide an updated value for the improved land; however, its value must have increased manifold. Lightbody does note that the chattel improvements to the colony equaled $95,000.00; almost two-thirds of the original purchase price of the land in 1912.

Lightbody’s article was highly-complimentary of the Doukhobors, precisely at a time when anti-Doukhobor sentiment was reaching a fevered pitch in the Kootenay and Boundary regions. This was primarily on account of the Doukhobors’ reluctance to send their children to public school, their refusal to register vital statistics, as well as perceptions about their large, unpaid labour force undercutting local wages and commodity prices. These various public grievances – real and perceived – culminated in the formation of the Royal Commission on Doukhobor Affairs in late August 1912, only three months after Lightbody’s visit. As such, his article stands out for its objectivity and insightful, fact-based analysis, in contrast to most highly-critical, opinion-based accounts of the Doukhobors that appeared in local newspapers at the time.

West Kootenay Boundary’s First Doukhobors

By Jonathan Kalmakoff and Greg Nesteroff

Between 1908 and 1912, about 8,000 Doukhobors migrated to British Columbia from Saskatchewan to maintain their communal lifestyle. But for several years prior, small groups of Doukhobors had been travelling to BC to seek employment — and coincidentally or not, to the very region where their brethren would one day move en masse.

During their early period of settlement on the Canadian Prairies, able-bodied Doukhobor men left their villages in Saskatchewan each spring to find work as farm labourers and railway navvies to earn much-needed money for the community, as most settlers were almost destitute.

Most journeyed by foot and obtained employment within a 100 to 150-mile radius of their villages. Less frequently, some small groups and individuals travelled even further afoot. For instance, 200 travelled to California to work on the Southern Pacific Railroad Coast line in 1900, and in 1901, a smaller group worked on the Ontario & Rainy River Railway line between Baudette, Minnesota and Fort Frances, Ontario. That same year, dozens made their way across the border to Pembina, North Dakota to assist with the fall harvest.

Doukhobor workers on construction of the railroad from Yorkton to Canora, Saskatchewan, ca. 1910. Image C-06515 courtesy of the Royal BC Museum and Archives.

The first sign of a Doukhobor presence in BC was in the Midway Advance of May 7, 1900: “Mr. A.J. Flett has returned safely from Grand Forks where he has been gathering information about a party of Doukhobors that are said to have arrived in that district.”

There was considerable industrial activity in and around Grand Forks in 1900 and the Doukhobors may have been hired as labourers at the newly-operational Granby Consolidated Mining, Smelting and Power Co. smelter, the 10-stamp mill construction for the Yankee Girl and Yankee Boy mines on Hardy Mountain, at the Franklin Camp mine, the Charles Simpson or Ed Spraggett sawmills on the North Fork of the Kettle River, or building the CPR Eholt-to-Phoenix extension.

But no other references to this group can be found (the Grand Forks newspapers for this period are missing), so it’s hard to know whether they were seasonal labourers or just passing through. Flett’s role, if anything more than just curious onlooker, is unclear; his name otherwise only showed up in local newspapers in relation to mining claims. Was he sizing up the Doukhobors as potential workers for those claims?

We know slightly more about the next group of Doukhobors in BC. In October 1901, 16 Doukhobor men in Calgary had a chance encounter with former Rossland police chief John Ingram, who had been recruited to find replacement workers for the Le Roi mine during a miners’ strike.

These men were likely the same Doukhobors employed as track maintenance on the CPR Calgary division who took part in a nationwide strike from June to late August 1901 and who would not have knowingly taken jobs as replacement workers out of solidarity with the striking miners.

According to the Nelson Tribune, “Ingram positively assured them that the labour troubles [in Rossland] were all settled; that 300 union men had returned to work and that 150 union men had applied to the Le Roi company for work but the company did not want them.” However, he apparently misrepresented the situation.

The 16 Doukhobors were among 67 men who left Calgary with Ingram. When they arrived at West Robson to switch trains for Rossland, they discovered the true state of affairs and 10 of them refused to continue. Another 23 men reached the boarding house of the War Eagle mine in Rossland — including the Doukhobors, who spoke little or no English. The cooks and waiters there refused to serve them and they were finally sent off to a cabin to do their own cooking. A union miner visited the party and left some literature explaining the dispute.

Few if any Doukhobor recruits would have had mining experience; the Evening World suggested it would take about two years for them to learn to be muckers, which seems to have been a thinly-veiled insult, as mucking involved shoveling broken rock into tram cars.

The rival Rossland Miner didn’t identify the men as Doukhobors, but it would not have been in their interest to do so as a pro-management paper.

Instead the Miner described them as “as fine a looking party of Canadians as ever came into the Golden City … The men who came into the city last night were a lot of sturdy Canadians who value free speech and action above the fetich of agitation. They will be first-class mine workers in a comparatively short period.”

However, there were no further mentions of the Doukhobor workers after that. They probably departed once they understood the dispute they were in the middle of.

A third early foray into BC by Doukhobors was reported in The Chronicles of Camille, a memoir by longtime Trail merchant Camille Lauriente, published in 1953.

Lauriente recalled working as a CPR section foreman at Murphy Creek, just north of Trail, in July or August 1902. A roadmaster assigned four Doukhobors to work with him, none of whom had any railway experience. (Therefore they probably weren’t the same men who arrived in Rossland from Calgary the previous year.)

One man was fired after Lauriente accused him of laziness; he then went to work at the Trail smelter. The other three were also fired once Lauriente found more experienced track men.

Another early mention of Doukhobors in BC was in the Grand Forks Sun of April 12, 1904: “Messrs. Harry Itter, Geo. H. Hull, Lee and Lawson went down to Cascade last Sunday to take snap shots of the Doukhobor colony at that place.” (None of those photos are known to survive.)

The report is so brief and casual that it seems to assume readers were familiar with the subject. Yet no other mention of Doukhobors in the area appeared in the Grand Forks Sun or Grand Forks Gazette that month.

The word “colony” is probably a misnomer, as it was very doubtful to have been a permanent settlement and more likely an encampment of seasonal labourers. But if this report is accurate, what were they doing at Cascade? Working at one of the mines or sawmills in the area? At the Cascade Water Power & Light dam on the Kettle River? Or for the CPR as railway labourers? And were these the same Doukhobors that A.J. Flett went to see at Grand Forks three years earlier?

Furthermore, was it just coincidence that in each case the men came to the region that would later be home to thousands of Doukhobors? Or did these early sojourns plant some small seed for that subsequent migration? Did any Doukhobors who came to BC prior to 1908 later return permanently?

We’ll probably never know the answers with any certainty. Unfortunately, we don’t know the names of any of the individuals either; no Doukhobors have been discovered in BC on the 1901 census.


With thanks to Ron Verzuh, who found the story of Doukhobors hired to work in the Rossland mines.

This story first appeared in:

Doukhobor Collection of James Mavor Available Online

For Immediate Release – June 15, 2008

The Doukhobor Collection of James Mavor, a vast compilation of over 785 documents from the early twentieth century relating to the arrival and settlement of the Doukhobors in Canada, has been added online to the Multicultural Canada website.

James Mavor

James Mavor (1854-1925). LAC PA-126982.

James Mavor (1854-1925) was a preeminent Canadian political economist, University of Toronto professor, writer, social activist and art collector. In 1898, at the request of Petr Kropotkin, Mavor was instrumental in facilitating the Doukhobor migration from Russia to Canada. He continued throughout his life to be a staunch supporter of the Doukhobors following their settlement in Canada.

His collected works consist largely of correspondence, from the initial inquiry by Petr Kropotkin to Mavor in July 1898 to the arrival of the Doukhobors in 1899, and the first years of their settlement in Saskatchewan. Important correspondents include government officials such as Clifford Sifton and James A. Smart of the federal Department of the Interior and W.F. McCreary, Commissioner of Immigration in Winnipeg, and Doukhobor spokesmen and leaders such as Leo Tolstoy, Aylmer Maude, Vladimir Chertkov, D. Khilkov, and Petr Verigin. Subsequent correspondence is mainly concerned with the period 1906-1907 and 1919 when Doukhobor communities were under threat of expropriation of their lands. The collection also contains printed material, including pamphlets and other articles gathered by Mavor on the Doukhobors; Mavor’s own notes and reports, including a daybook kept during his trip to Western Canada in 1899; and photographs of Doukhobor settlements in Canada. Some of the material is in Russian.

Telegraph from Peter Verigin to James Mavor, 1912.

Record from the Doukhobor Collection of James Mavor.

Originally housed for decades in the University of Toronto Library, the Doukhobor Collection of James Mavor was digitized and made available online in May of 2008 through the Multicultural Canada website. It is accessible through search and browse pages that link to an online database. Every record in the database contains the title, name of author, date, subject, summary description, and a link to the associated set of document images. The digitized images reflect the original physical condition of the records. Some of the records are aged and discoloured or have extremely faded ink. Others may have tears, folds, or other markings.

The collection host, Multicultural Canada, is a coalition of Canadian libraries, universities, educational and cultural institutions dedicated to collecting and preserving the historic records of Canada’s diverse cultural groups and providing free and greater access to them online.  The Multicultural Canada website includes digitized collections, learning modules and the Encyclopedia of Canada’s Peoples. 

The online digitized Doukhobor Collection of James Mavor is a tremendous new research source for historians, writers, students, genealogists and anyone interested in the early Canadian history of the Doukhobors.

To access and search the Doukhobor Collection of James Mavor, visit the Multicultural Canada website at: http://multiculturalcanada.ca/node/1523.

Doukhobors Featured at Canadian Council of Archives National Conference

For Immediate Release – May 26, 2008

The Doukhobors were among the topics featured at the Canadian Council of Archives National Conference held in Regina, Saskatchewan May 24 to 25, 2008. The conference programme included a presentation by Doukhobor writer, historian and web-designer Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

The two-day conference was an important meeting place for users of archives, including genealogists, researchers, teachers, librarians, historians, students, curators, volunteers, and anyone with interest in Canada’s documentary heritage. It was intended to enhance archival users’ know-how and expertise and strengthen their relationship with the archival community. Entitled “Archives and You!” it is Canada’s only national conference for users of archives.

The conference included first-rate plenary sessions, as well as “Ask the Experts” roundtable discussions to permit the exchange of ideas on topics such as the management of small private archives, the management of digital records, the preservation of photographs, and the management of personal archives. There were also nine concurrent workshops covering specialized topics such as privacy and access, basic records management, ethnic genealogy and the creation of ethnic archives, linking youth to archival work and local history, and the preservation of home records. Additional activities included exhibits and tours of local archives in the Regina area.

One of the concurrent workshops held on May 24th featured the presentation, “Researching Your Russian Doukhobor Roots” by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. His workshop provided an overview of Doukhobor history and highlighted the special challenges and advantages faced by Doukhobor genealogists. Topics included migration and settlement in Russia and Canada; names and naming patterns; the importance of oral tradition; as well as select archival resources, including ship passenger lists, census records, membership lists, vital statistic records, homestead documents and cemetery information. His presentation also outlined recent archival discoveries in Canada, Russia and the Former Soviet Republics of importance to Doukhobor family historians. The Doukhobor workshop was well attended, with participants travelling from as far away as Nelson, British Columbia and Ottawa, Ontario to attend it.

Jonathan J. Kalmakoff presenting at Canadian Council of Archives National Conference, 2008.

Participation in this national event was an exceptional opportunity to share the Doukhobor story with members of the Canadian archival community.” said Kalmakoff. “It was exciting to promote a broader understanding of the Doukhobors’ place in Canada’s documentary heritage.”

The conference host, the Canadian Council of Archives, is a coordinating body whose mission is to nurture and sustain the nationwide efforts of over 800 archival organizations – member institutions all operating independently but sharing a common passion for Canada’s rich and wonderfully varied history. Millions of documents, heritage photographs, maps and audio-visual material are held in these institutions, nationally, regionally and locally. The Council’s goal is to work with its many stakeholders and partners to ensure preservation of and access to all these materials for teaching, learning, promotional and general interest purposes.

For additional information or inquiries about the Canadian Council of Archives or the Archives & You! national Conference, please visit the CCA web site at: http://www.cdncouncilarchives.ca/.

The Doukhobors in Malyi Snezhetok

by Evgeny Pisarev

Today in the Pervomaysky district of Tambov, Russia, one hundred and four Doukhobor immigrants from Georgia have obtained permanent residence. Half of them – under the Russian Federation’s state program for the resettlement of Russian compatriots. The following article, reproduced from the Russian newspaper “Chernozem’e” (No. 4568, January 22, 2008) and translated into English by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, examines the arrival of the Spirit Wrestlers from the perspective of the local Tambov population.

Descent from the Mountains

The first 56 immigrants, representatives of the Doukhobor religious community who left their historic native land – Russia – more than one and a half centuries ago, arrived in Tambov during the summer of last year. Initially they arrived, it may be said, on reconnaissance: to observe and get acquainted with the conditions of life, for eventual permanent settlement there with their families and belongings. The authorities advised the local press not to publicize the fact of their arrival, especially as the printed word might influence public opinion. Russian relations with Georgia were not at their best that summer, and the Georgian Doukhobors had not yet entered the state program for assistance of compatriots living abroad.

A Doukhobor woman ponders her family’s future in Russia. Photograph by Agnes Montanari.

The Doukhobors arrived from the mountain highlands village of Gorelovka. Territorially the village is Georgian, but the name it carries is distinctly Tambovsky. And the surnames of the immigrants appear quite familiar: Tikhonov, Tolmachev, Popov, Tomilin, Baturin, Savenkov, Sukhorukov. Along with the other “scouts”, the leader of the community, Tatyana Chuchmaeva, has also arrived in Tambov. She is not venerated by her coreligionists in the manner of the Doukhobors two hundred years ago, but her influence is significant. Moreover, in Georgia Tatyana Stepanovna was an assistant to the chief administrator of the district, therefore she quickly found a common language with the local authorities: the officials – everywhere the officials.

However, local residents, being uninformed, welcomed the visitors from Georgia mistrustfully. There were district hearings about sectarians, rumours of the “mykhomortsy” (a type of mushroom native to Russia) spread, and the inhabitants of one of the shabby houses in neighbouring Staroklenskoye village hung out a red flag from his roof to scare away any newcomers.

Tambov regional authorities offered the immigrants seven villages in which to form a compact settlement. Having inspected the host villages, they decided on the village of Maly Snezhetok in the Pervomaysky district. And today they are convinced they haven’t misjudged things. Here they have a suburb, in actuality a settlement, which they matter-of-factly named Novoye (“new’).

Operation “Migration”

Through the resettlement program, Russia has demonstrated its good will and readiness to accept its compatriots, provide them with a livelihood, and help whenever possible with housing, while at the same time, to utilize the migrant workforce to help correct the current demographic situation in the country. In this regard, the Tambov authorities announced in 2007 that they would accept one and a half thousand immigrants from neighbouring countries, and that they had housing and accommodations ready for them. They even visited Kazakhstan, where they met with Russian compatriots to promote the virtues of life in Tambov, although they did not conceal the problems which they would likely encounter in a new place.

Six agricultural districts were designated for the immigrants, located in the districts of Michurinsk, Nikiforovka, Pervomaysky, Petrovka, Sosnovka and Staroyur’evo. The question of expanding the territories for resettlement was seriously discussed – regional authorities intended to add to the list the districts of Inzhavino and Bondari, as well as the city of Uvarovo, where a business/financial zone has been created on the site of a former chemical plant. Under the planned program, by 2012 the province of Tambov should receive twelve and a half thousand migrants. The vast bulk is expected from Kazakhstan, Turkmeni, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Moldova and Kirghizia. In Kazkhstan alone, there are over 14 million residents of which five million are ethnic Russians.

However, the number of Russian compatriots wishing to leave their familiar places in search of greener pastures has turned out to be much less than expected. As of today, the resettlement process has occurred only in the Pervomaysky district. And even incorrigible optimists admit that it will be hardly possible to entice several thousand compatriots to Tambov province in the short term. It is much easier to persuade them to relocate to the provincial capital, or at worst, one of the large district centers, rather than to a rural Tambov village where there is insufficient employment for the local inhabitants.

The return to their ancestral home in Tambov offers new hope to many. Photograph by Agnes Montanari.

In any case, as of today, 109 people have relocated to the province, having privileges under the state program, along with their family members.

The Road Home

The immigrants are quietly maintained at their new place. Forty-five people live in the dormitory of an agricultural enterprise, while the others are lodged in twenty-six of the new prefabricated houses built on an expedited basis by the local construction firm.

The immigrants were met, as is customary, with bread and salt, and the bookkeeper of the agricultural enterprise, Svetlana Lepikhova, by tradition, first let a cat into the house of the Chuchmaev family. It sniffed at the corners and indicated, by its pleasant purring, that it was okay to come in. The migrants have received housing at the rate of eighteen square meters per person. Each family has received 40 sotok (4 hectares) of land for farming, and the local school has been replenished with twelve pupils. At Christmas, the immigrants received all their containers of possessions from Georgia. The costs of transporting the personal property of the participants of the program were assumed by the state.

The shadow of mistrust with which the migrants from Georgia met with local residents soon disappeared. As it was found out, their fellow countrymen have arrived. Simply, they have not been home for a long time…

The shadow of easy mistrust with which local residents have met immigrants from Georgia, has soon disappeared. As it was found out, fellow countrymen have arrived. Simply they for a long time not were at home …

Official Commentary

Kirill Kolonchin, Vice-Governor of Tambov province:

The state program of assistance for resettlement is intended, first of all, for those who wish to relocate, but have no resources for this purpose. Taking a provincial approach, we assessed their needs from the perspective of the local economy. The province has received a total of approximately five hundred applications, but they were not all followed up with. The only ones who were consistent were the Doukhobors. In Georgia they lived in the mountains where, eight months of the year, they were engaged primarily in agriculture; therefore, I think, they will find employment in our chernozem (black earth, agriculturally productive) districts. In order to accept them, we had to negotiate debt security documents, incorporate them into the resettlement program, and before the New Year, install the immigrants in new houses. The houses are financed through a municipal development fund, and we have yet to develop repayment procedures for the buyout of the houses. The immigrants do not yet have citizenship, but upon receipt of such they will have all the rights of Russian citizens; in particular they will be able to obtain loans for the development of farms.

Several hundred Georgian Doukhobors still await resettlement to Tambov. Photograph by Agnes Montanari.

Background

The spiritual Christian religious movement, whose adherents later became known as Doukhobors or Dukhobortsy emerged in Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century. The Doukhobors denied Orthodox rites and did not recognize priests and the clergy, or the traditional authorities in their communities. For disobeying the authorities and for refusing to serve in the military, they were persecuted by the Tsarist government and the Church. At the end of the nineteenth century, many Doukhobors immigrated to Canada. A large number of them were settled in Georgia. There, the Russian natives maintained a traditional way of life, the Russian language, culture and have endured all conceivable revolutions, wars, militant atheism and changes of political regime. In the early Nineties of the last century, they began returning to Russia, their historic homeland. There, they settled in Tula, Bryansk, Belgorod and Orel provinces, and as of last year have begun settling in Tambov province.

 

For additional background on the Doukhobors in Malyi Snezhetok, see the articles Georgian Doukhobors Relocate to Tambov, Russia and More Georgian Doukhobors Move to Tambov by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff as well as Tambov Doukhobors on Russian News by Drugie Novosti (translated by Koozma J. Tarasoff). 

Georgian Doukhobors Relocate to Tambov, Russia

For Immediate Release – July 31, 2007

Fifty-seven Doukhobors have recently resettled from the Bogdanovka region of the Republic of Georgia to the province of Tambov in central Russia. Their families, numbering up to seven hundred and sixty Doukhobors, are expected to join them from Georgia in September. This was reported by the Russian news agency Regnum today.

The Doukhobors have settled in the village of Malyi Snezhetok in the Pervomaysky district, ninety kilometres north-west of Tambov city, the administrative capital of the province. There, they are temporarily housed in a school dormitory, with a small local staff providing the migrants administrative support, including food, lodging and basic necessities, while a new suburb is being built with permanent accommodations for them.

The suburb will be named Novoe (“new”), marking the beginning of the Doukhobors’ new life in Russia. It will consist of two hundred panelboard houses on forty square meter lots for the Doukhobor families. A shop, medical clinic and a retirement home for the Doukhobor elderly will also be built. Construction of the buildings, roads, waterworks and electrical works is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year.

The Doukhobors resettling to Tambov will be offered employment in the local market garden and nursery, “Snezhetok Ltd.” They will also have the opportunity to establish peasant collective farms and individual farmsteads, the Russian news agency noted.

General map of Doukhobor resettlement from the Caucasus to Tambov, Russia in 2007.

The relocation of the Georgian Doukhobors is part of the Russian Federation’s ambitious six-year program to facilitate the voluntary repatriation of millions of Russians residing in former Soviet republics. The resettlement program, decreed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 22, 2006, is intended to help revive the Russian economy and compensate for the country’s staggering demographic crisis – high mortality rates and low birth rates are believed to be draining the Russian population of some 700,000 people a year.

The Doukhobors, who are among the first to participate in the resettlement program, have received strong support from Russia’s top political leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, Premier Mikhail Fradkov, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, Director of the Federal Migration Service Konstantin Romadanovsky and Tambov Governor Oleg Betin. They were deliberately chosen to resettle to Tambov on account of their expertise in agricultural production.

For the village of Malyi Snezhetok, the arrival of the Doukhobors is warmly welcomed. In addition to doubling the population, the Doukhobors will provide a tremendous boost to the local economy, offset an acute labour shortage in the agricultural industry, and help facilitate the improvement and expansion of local infrastructure. The village school, previously slated for closure, will now remain open with the impending arrival of over sixty Doukhobor children.

Having considered several different options for relocation, the Doukhobors chose Tambov on account of its large agricultural sector, temperate climate, steppe geography, and its favourable linguistic, cultural and religious environment. In this regard, the interests of the Doukhobors, the Russian Federation, and Tambov local and provincial administrations coincided.

Under the resettlement program, the Doukhobors are assisted with their travel arrangements and primary accommodation, including the registration of their legal and social status, as well as with jobs, municipal and pension services, preschool, school and professional education, Regnum said. In addition, local and provincial authorities provide administrative support for the Doukhobors, including food, temporary lodging and basic necessities.

An important factor is the cost of housing. While the Russian Joint Stock Company “Tamak” has contracted to construct the Doukhobors’ homes in Malyi Snezhetok, it is not for free. The cost to complete each panelboard house is estimated at a minimum of six thousand roubles per square meter of living space. The Doukhobor migrants do not currently possess the required funds; therefore Russian authorities are developing various repayment schemes for them, including financial grants and compensation and credit facilities.

Notwithstanding this assistance, the resettlement is not without problems. The Doukhobors have encountered numerous legal obstacles in connection with the receipt of visas, the certification of participants in the resettlement program, and with citizenship. In response to this, the representative of the Doukhobor community Ivan Astafurov has voiced his concern over the slow pace at which the Doukhobors are being allowed to relocate with their families to Tambov.

Tambov Governor Oleg Betin recently visited Malyi Snezhetok and toured the suburb construction site. He met with local officials responsible for coordinating the resettlement as well as with the Doukhobors. He assured them that “their resettlement will be aided and supported at the highest levels in the Russian Federation” and pledged to work with local, provincial and federal officials to expedite their relocation.

Tambov is the ancestral home of many of the Doukhobors, whose forebears resettled from there to Tavria in the early 1800’s, and later to the Caucasus in the 1840’s. The province is located in central Russia, along the confluence of the Tsna and Studenets rivers, and borders on Penza, Saratov, Ryazan, Lipetsk and Voronezh provinces. Tambov’s economy is primarily industrial, with major sectors including mechanical engineering, metalworking and the chemical industry. Agriculture is a smaller but still important economic sector; its production focuses on grains, potatoes and sugar beets.

Since 1989, more than 3,000 Doukhobors have relocated from the Caucasus to the provinces of Krasnodar, Stavropol, Tula, Orel, Bryansk and elsewhere in Russia, driven by regional instability, ethnic tensions, land reform, economic hardship, as well as a longing to return to the Motherland. Once the latest resettlement to Tambov is completed, it is estimated that less than one hundred Doukhobors will remain in the Bogdanovka region of Georgia.

For updated information on the Doukhobor resettlement, see the articles More Georgian Doukhobors Move to Tambov by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, The Doukhobors in Malyi Snezhetok by Evgeny Pisarev (translated by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff) and also Tambov Doukhobors on Russian News by Drugie Novosti (translated by Koozma J. Tarasoff).

A Fading Minority: The Doukhobors’ Continued Struggle For Survival

by Hedvig Lohm & Ilya Chkhutishvili

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of Georgia’s Doukhobors resettled to Russia, driven by regional instability, ethnic tensions and economic hardship.  Those who remained became minorities in their own villages. Now, land reforms are forcing those who are left to apply for Russian citizenship.  Should the Doukhobors leave, it is feared that new ethnic disputes may erupt between their Armenian and Georgian neighbours.by Hedvig Lohm and Ilya Chkhutishvili originally appeared in the e-magazine “Georgia Today” (31.08.2007) www.georgiatoday.ge/.

The Dukhobors are an ethnic Russian religious community who today reside in Russia, the Caucasus and Canada. While the word ‘Dukhobor’ means ‘Spirit Wrestler’ in Russian, today the Dukhobors living in Georgia are facing a more earthly struggle. Since the Dukhobors’ legal documents for the lease of land have been disputed by the Ninotsminda rayon’s municipal administration, this community may lose all legal rights to its land – the Dukhobors’ only source of income. If the issue of land ownership is not resolved, most Dukhobors are likely to give up the struggle to continue living in Gorelovka, Georgia, and leave for Russia. Such a development would contribute not only to the loss of a colorful and unique population group, but is also a cause for concern among local Armenians who worry that if the Dukhobors leave, the Georgian government will settle ecological migrants from Adjara and Svaneti in Gorelovka, a move which could become a source of new disputes between the Georgian newcomers and the local Armenian community.

The Dukhobors represent one of the oldest ethnic minorities in Georgia. In late 18th century Tsarist Russia, sects of religious dissenters such as the Dukhobors, Molokans, Staroveri (“Old Believers”) and Subbotniks were treated as pariahs. The Russian rulers were concerned that they would spread their heresies and seduce ‘true’ Orthodox believers. Consequently, in 1839 an ultimatum was given to the sectarians: convert to Orthodoxy, or leave for the newly conquered Caucasus region. Most of them decided to go into exile. In 1839-1845 the Dukhobors settled in the two Georgian regions of Javakheti and Dmanisi, Kedabek in today’s Azerbaijan, and Kars in today’s Turkey. Of these early exiles, the Dukhobors in Ninotsminda rayon are the only ones that remain.

Group of Doukhobor women in Gorelovka village, Georgia.  GeorgiaToday.

The Dukhobors lived through very hard times during the 19th century, weathering both conflicts with Tsarist Russian authorities and disputes within the community. At the end of the 19th century there were a total of 10,000 Dukhobors in the Javakheti region spread through eight villages. During the Soviet collectivization process in the 1930s, the Dukhobor’s communal system of redistributing agricultural lands was destroyed. However, the Dukhobors were used to working on collective lands and most of them were able to easily adapt to the new Communist system. Consequently, their kolkhozes turned into some of the most efficient and profitable in the entire Soviet Union. Ethnically, their villages remained predominantly Dukhobor, though in some villages a few Armenian families resided as well.

The end of the Soviet era, however, saw many Dukhobors leaving Georgia and by the late 1980s a wave of resettlement to the Russian Federation was already in full swing. There were several reasons why the Dukhobors left for Russia. During the last part of the Perestroika years and the collapse of the Soviet Union Georgia was in turmoil. In addition, Georgian ethno-nationalist politics were on the rise while at the same time “Javakh” the Armenian, then paramilitary, organization took de facto control over the Javakheti region.

One of the main initiators of this resettlement process was Maria Uglova, who was a chairperson of the Spasovka kolkhoz. The Dukhobors who left with Uglova resettled in Russia’s Tulskiy oblast. The migrant Dukhobors moved primarily to Tulskiy and Rostovskiy oblasts, as well as to Stavropol krai. From 1979 to 1989 the number of Dukhobors in Ninotsminda decreased from 3,830 to 3,165. By the mid-1990s about 1,400 Dukhobors remained in Georgia, about 50 of them in Dmanisi.

Already by the early 1990s the Dukhobors had become minorities in seven of their eight original villages. In 1997 there was another wave of migration from Javakheti. Lyuba Goncharova, the new chairperson of the Gorelovka kolkhoz, arranged a resettlement of around 300 people to Bryanskiy oblast. By the end of the decade, the Russians were now a minority in seven of the eight Dukhobor villages. Gradually the ratio of Dukhobors in Gorelovka also changed from an absolute majority to a situation where the Armenian population is now larger. Today there are about 504 Dukhobors, 551 Armenians and 31 Georgians in Gorelovka.

The agricultural cooperative “Dukhoborets” which was established after the fall of communism in Gorelovka village on the remains of an old kolkhoz, provides the Gorelovka Dukhobors with a sense of collective security. The cooperative is weak and not very profitable, but still provides a small income to most of the remaining Dukhobor families in Gorelovka. It also functions as a social security institution for the entire community of Dukhobors. As one of the leading Dukhobors explains, the credo of the cooperative is “to help the Dukhobor community”.

In 1997 the cooperative was one of the biggest agricultural unions in the region. At present the cooperative has one major challenge: the “Dukhoborets” land lease contract is being disputed by the local authorities. In 2002, then gamgebeli Rafik Arzumanyan signed a lease contract with the Dukhoborets cooperative in Gorelovka. According to the contract the cooperative leases 4,290 ha of the original 7,700 ha that made up the Soviet kolkhoz. However, this contract is now disputed by the current gamgebeli, who claims that the Dukhoborets contract falls short of both the initial lease decision made by the gamgeoba (Georgian for “village council”) and a proper map delineating exactly which lands are being leased. The contract also lacks the proper signature of the Public Registrar and a registration number from the Public Registry. Dukhoborets representatives claim, however, that none of these mistakes can be blamed on the cooperative – rather, they fall under the concept of ‘administrative trust’, meaning that the responsibility for creating a legal lease document lies with the authorities and not with a private person or entity.

Sirotsky Dom building in Gorelovka village, Georgia.  GeorgiaToday.

If the cooperative closes or the land lease contract is not acknowledged by the local gamgeoba, most Dukhobors in Gorelovka are likely to give up the fight to continue living in Gorelovka and leave for Russia. Already many of them are applying for Russian citizenship. If the cooperative continues to function, however, it could be a better choice for the Dukhobors to stay, since they are provided with income and still have a collective point of security.

The European Center for Minority Issues (ECMI) is assisting the Dukhobor community in their relations with the local government and helping them to maintain their cultural heritage and present living place. As the total number of Dukhobors in Georgia has decreased to 700, another wave of emigration will lead to the loss of this minority from Georgia. To help resolve the legal problems of the Dukhobor community, ECMI in cooperation with other organizations is trying to convince local and state authorities of the importance of the Dukhobors issue. For now, with no specific actions taken either at the state or local level, the fate of the Dukhobors in Georgia remains an unknown.

Notes

For a thorough and comprehensive examination of the issue of land ownership and inter-ethnic relations among the Doukhobors, Armenians and Georgians of Ninotsminda rayon (district), in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region of Georgia, see Hedvig Lohm’s study, Doukhobors in Georgia.

Since the writing of this article, the remaining Doukhobors in Georgia have chosen to resettle to Russia as part of President Putin’s highly-publicized repatriation scheme. Arrangements are being made for their resettlement to the village of Maly Snezhetok in Tambov province, Russia. For more about the resettlement, see the articles Georgian Doukhobors Relocate to Tambov, Russia and More Georgian Doukhobors Move to Tambov by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff and also The Doukhobors in Malyi Snezhetok by Evgeny Pisarev.

Last Days of the Georgian Doukhobors?

by Mark Grigorian

Squeezed out by their Armenian and Georgian neighbors in southern Georgia, the remaining members of the Doukhobor religious sect are planning on returning to the land of their forefathers. The following article by Mark Grigorian, foreign correspondent in Gorelovka, Georgia, originally appeared in the Caucasus Reporting Service produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, www.iwpr.net. Reproduced by permission.

A large loaf of white bread, which our hostess had just pulled out of the old Russian stove, was lying on the table surrounded by cheese, tomatoes and sour cream. Suddenly a bottle of ‘samogon’, strong Russian homemade alcoholic brew, appeared from nowhere as if by magic.

"Oh no, don’t pour me any," 75-year-old Aunt Niura protested in embarrassment but took the glass and immediately pronounced a toast. `To your health! If your health is strong, then everything else will follow. But if not…’  She was interrupted by her neighbour Nastya, `I just wish that God keeps at least a handful of people here. Because if everyone leaves, what will become of all of this?’ `Let’s drink to our dear little corner, to our mountains…’

That little corner is the village of Gorelovka in the mountains of southern Georgia, home to some of the last members of the Dukhobor sect to remain in the country. Sadly, they may not last long. Almost all have close relatives in Russia and almost all are planning to emigrate. Only fifteen years ago Dukhobors inhabited eight villages, but today the community, which once boasted some 7,000 people, shrank to less than 700.

Dukhobors (the Russian word means `spirit wrestlers’) are ethnic Russians, representatives of a rare Christian Orthodox sect expelled to the Caucasus in the mid-nineteenth century. They do not recognise the church or priests, but believe that each man’s soul is a temple. Dukhobors do not worship the cross or icons and they reject the church sacraments. They believe that Jesus Christ transmigrated into God’s chosen people – the Dukhobors. The life of every Dukhobor should serve as an example for others because love and joy, peacefulness and patience, faith, humility and abstinence, reign in each believer.

In the late 19th century, having become acquainted with the ideas of the great writer and pacifist Leo Tolstoy, the Dukhobors refused to serve in the Russian Tsar’s army. And in 1895 they famously collected together all their weaponry and set fire to it. `The Dukhobors put all the weapons into one big pile and lit it up,’ said Tatyana Chuchmayeva, leader of the Dukhobor community in Georgia. `When the government called in the Cossacks, they stood around the fire holding each other’s hands and sang psalms and peaceful songs. All the time the Cossacks were flogging them with whips.’

Many of those who burned the weapons were punished and around 500 families were exiled to Siberia. However, Tolstoy managed, with the help of English Quakers, to organise the resettlement of Dukhobors to Canada where they were spared military service. Many others stayed in Georgia and survived all the tribulations of the 20th century.

However, life under independent Georgia has proved the biggest test. Two censuses conducted in 1989 and 2002 show that of 340,000 Russians that lived in Georgia in 1989 less than ten per cent – about 32,500 people – remained there thirteen years later. Other ethnic minorities also left.

Fyodor Goncharov, chairman of the Gorelovka village council, said that the first wave of emigration occurred in 1989-1991 when the extreme nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia was leader of Georgia. About half of the Dukhobor population left the region.

In the late 1980s, the Merab Kostava Foundation was set up in Tbilisi with the stated aim of making Georgians the dominant ethnic group. They focussed strong attention on the southern province of Samtskhe-Javakheti, where over 90 per cent were ethnic-Armenians and the rest, with few exceptions, were Russian Dukhobors.

The Merab Kostava Foundation bought about 200 of the Dukhobors’ houses and gave these to Georgians. Clothes and funds were provided to the new arrivals.

However, the experiment failed. `They could not endure our living conditions and ran away from here after one year,’ said Konstantin Vardanian, a journalist from the local town of Ninotsminda. `During the first winter they heated their houses with coal and firewood that the foundation had left for them. Then, after they ran out of coal, they lived in one room of the house and pulled up floors in the other rooms and burnt them in stoves. When spring came they all left.’

Local Armenians were alarmed by the Merab Kostava project and one result was that the Armenian Javakh Committee, founded to fight for Armenian rights in Javakheti, also began to buy houses from Dukhobors – just to keep them out of Georgian hands. `It was some sort of competition, really,’ Vardanian said, with Armenians and Georgians vying for the same houses in Dukhobor villages.

At first, Armenians enjoyed being neighbours to the Dukhobors. `Akhalkalaki people always preferred to buy butter, cheese, curd cheese and other dairy products from Dukhobors,’ remembers Karine Khodikian, a well-known Armenian writer originally from the local town of Akhalkalaki. `It was a sign of respect for them, their cleanliness and tidiness.’ But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenians got envious of the Dukhobors and their apparently orderly, calm lives. `Armenians saw that the Dukhobor community in Gorelovka was self-sustaining, they said that Canadians Dukhobors helped it,’ Vardanian said.

Armenians from mountain villages, where living conditions were much worse than in Gorelovka, began to move into the houses purchased by the Javakhk Committee and to buy land. They were joined by immigrants from Armenia who used to live in the city of Gumri and its neighbouring villages – a region almost entirely demolished by the 1988 earthquake. Relations between the Dukhobors and these newcomers was far worse than with their old neighbours.

Enterprising Armenians opened small shops and started producing sour cream, butter and cheese, traditional Dukhobor products. They purchase milk from the Dukhobors, but the latter are very unhappy with the buying prices. `Armenians buy milk in our village,’ said Goncharov. `Then they make cheese out of it, take it to Tbilisi and sell it. They pay us only 30
tetri for a litre (about 15 cents), while we have to pay 70 or 80 tetri just for one litre of fuel.’

Dukhobor villager Sveta Gonachrova said that her neighbours were frightened by the incoming Armenians, `You step outside and get punched in the face.’

Vardanian believes that antipathy between the Dukhobors and Armenians is not the only reason Dukhobors are leaving, but `it contributed’. This new wave of emigration has found help from the Russian authorities.

In December 1998, Russia’s then-prime minister Yevgeny Primakov signed a decree on assistance to the Georgian Dukhobors and the Russian parliament, the State Duma passed a special resolution on the group. The International Organisation for Migration helped with the resettlement, while Georgia’s emergencies ministry provided buses.

In January 1999, community leader Lyuba Goncharova led a large number of her community on a journey whose final point of destination was the Bryansk region of Russia. Many of those left behind are now seeking help from the Russian embassy in Tbilisi to go and join them.

The remaining Dukhobors say they are worried by Georgia’s new president, Mikheil Saakashvili, whom they see as a Georgian nationalist. There are also rumours in the community – denied by Georgian officials – that all non-Georgian schools will be closed. `Saakashvili’s rise to power scares everyone,’ said Chuchmayeva. `Everyone is panic-stricken. People see what is happening in (South) Ossetia and feel scared,’ she added in a reference to Saakashvili’s attempts to restore central authority to that breakaway region.

‘Now they are talking about making all schools switch to the Georgian language… And that scares people. They are terrified that main subjects in schools will be taught in Georgian from 2006 and our children will not be able to study.’

Georgia’s minister for refugees and migration, Eter Astemirova, told IWPR that `the main reason they are leaving, as far as I know, is due to problems with the local Armenian population. There is no basis to their worries about the Georgian language or schools’. Astemirova said the Georgian state was entirely neutral in the affair. Dukhobors are not helped `to leave or to stay’, she said. `If there is a problem, we will try to address it. … So far, I don’t know, because we have no information about Dukhobors.’

The cultural attache of the Russian embassy in Tbilisi, Vasily Korchmar, said another reason for the Dukhobors’ desire to leave is the difficult economic situation in Georgia and its tense relationship with Russia.

Gonachrova agreed that tradition counted for nothing as this community made up its mind. For young people in particular life is better in Russia than in Gorelovka, `We are sorry to leave, but what can one do? There are [proper] conditions for young people in Russia. Discos and all sorts of amusement. We have nothing.’