A faith exiled from Russia years ago on the verge of disappearance in Georgia

Thousands of Doukhobors were expelled to present-day Georgia almost two centuries ago for rejecting the Orthodox Church; while many flocked back and assimilated into modern Russia, about 100 Doukhobors remain in the tight-knit farming community in two remote mountainous villages

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

There was no priest and no iconography. It was 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 remained 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, said, as she walked with her family to an ancient cemetery.

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 worshipped 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.

Nonviolence is the foundation of Doukhobor culture, said 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,” Ms. Mokshina said.

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 has not been a single Sunday without prayer,” Yuri Strukov, 46, said with pride, in the village of Orlovka, where he has lived for 30 years.

Like others in the rural community, Mr. Strukov owned cattle and produced cottage cheese, sour cream and a brined cheese called suluguni, which he sold in a nearby town.

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

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 did not relocate, we came back,” said 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. Mr. Zubkov and his family settled in the village of Arkhangelskoye in Russia’s Tula region.

After several waves of Doukhobors departed, ethnic Georgians and Armenians moved in, and relations between them and the ever-shrinking community of Doukhobors are tense, said Mr. Strukov. His four family members are the last Doukhobors living in Orlovka.

‘Blood, sweat, prayers’

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

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

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

“I realised that this is what I missed, this is what I could not find anywhere,” she said.

Mr. Zubkov said Ms. Strukova’s wavering faith is not unusual among Doukhobors in Russia. Once they assimilated into Russian societyof course they will be “tempted” by the predominant religion.

“People did not want to stand out,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have been assimilating very fast.”

The Doukhobors whose families started anew in Canada more than a century ago do not feel a strong connection to the villages that are sacred for the Strukov family. They said what was important was 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 organisation in Canada. “What we try to sustain in our organisation is our dedication to those fundamental principles of our life concept.”

But young Ilya, in Gorelovka, was comforted by the knowledge that his community, culture, and faith were rooted in a place established by his ancestors. “I see myself a tall grown-up going to the prayers every day in Doukhobor clothes,” he said.

Published - October 07, 2024 07:32 am IST