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Molokans and Old Believers in Two Worlds: Migration, Change, and Continuity

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Molokans and Old Believers in Two Worlds: Migration, Change, and Continuity RUSSIAN ROOTS, AMERICAN BRANCH E Molokans and Old Believers in Two Worlds: Migration, Change, and Continuity MARGARITA MAZO s I sit at the festive table with Russian­ the furniture and all the accessories mirror American Molokans who have gath­ those found in other American homes. After a ered for a house-blessing ritual of a while the singing, too, sounds somewhat dif­ young family in its new, very American ferent. ranch-style house in the very American city of This visit with the Molokans in California Los Angeles, I am overwhelmed by the feeling took place just a few months after I returned that I have seen this all before in a small, from the Stavropol area in Russia, where in southern Russian village near Stavropol, at the August 1989 I worked with a group of Russian foot of the Caucasus Mountains. It is still Molokans and Old Believers. My journey also astonishing to observe in the heart of the most took me to Woodburn, a town in Oregon, urban American setting a world that is essen­ where the Molokans' neighbors are Russian­ tially Russian and essentially Molokan. * The American Old Believers. As I drove on a small entire ritual and the feast that follows seem street, I noticed children playing lapta (a the same in both places: the hostess brings in favorite Russian children's game, a sort of a ten-inch-tall round loaf of bread with a salt baseball), girls dressed in sleeveless dresses shaker on top of it; men and women are over colorful blouses, and boys in equally col­ clothed in the same light pastel colors. The orful kosovorotky. They were speaking Russian men all have long beards and wear kosovorotky among themselves. One block further, I saw a (Russian village-style shirts without collars small church painted in beautiful colors with and with buttons on the left side); the women an Old Believers' cross on top. Many of the all cover their heads with shawls. The courses back yards were plowed and waiting to be of the meal and the order in which they are seeded. I did not have to enter a single house served are the same (tea, homemade noodles, to determine that Russians lived here. beef stew, fruit compote, with pieces of bread spread over the table, directly on the table­ RUSSIAN ROOTS: cloth); the long, parallel rows of tables and THE OLD BELIEVERS backless benches are familiar. Finally, I can During the 17th century, the Russian Empire hear the same power in their dignified and was undergoing enormous religious and social inspiring singing. Yet the language in Los changes, which culminated in the 1650s Angeles is mostly English, albeit interspersed reform of the Russian Orthodox Church by with Russian; the majority of young people Patriarch Nikon and later, by the turn of the only know a few Russian words. The women's 18th century, reforms of secular life by Peter dresses and the men's shirts are made from the Great. These reforms were designed to much finer fabrics than those in Russia, and unify and modernize the Russian Church and to westernize the entire Russian way of life. *I am grateful to Mr. Andrew Conovaloff for helping Patriarch Nikon's revisions of liturgical texts me to organize this trip and for introducing me to sev­ and manuscripts, his modification of the sym­ eral Molokan communities in California and Oregon. I also thank my research collaborator, Dr. Serafima bolic gesture made while crossing oneself (he Nikitina of the Russian Academy of Sciences, whom I insisted on using three fingers instead of two), invited to join the Molokan project in 1990. and other changes precipitated numerous fac- I ROOTS . AMERICAN BRANCHES taken fugitive priests from the Russian Orthodox Church as their spiritual lead­ ers), Chasovenniki (those who had lost priesthood under Czar Nicholas I), and others. In general, the Old Believers who accept priest­ hood are called popovtsy, and priest­ less Old Believers are the bespopovtsy. Some of the soglasiia consist of married people, while others practice celibacy. Photo by Alison P. Loskutoff During the 19th Molokans gather for tions and dissent movements. The largest century, and particularly after 1905, when the first international group of those who did not accept the Niko­ official persecution of Russian religious Molokan congress in nian reforms and who committed themselves minorities ended, many extremely successful Ukraine in 1992. to preserving all of the pre-Nikonian Orthodox entrepreneurs, politicians, businessmen, and They are preparing a practices called themselves Starovery merchants emerged from the ranks of Old feast for the entire (staryi =old, vera= faith), the Old Believers. Believers. community. The feast Excommunicated after 1666, the Old The first Old Believers came to North includes borscht and Believers were persecuted by religious and America around 1885 from Suwalki in Poland lapsha (noodles); the state authorities throughout most of Russian (then a western province of the Russian men are tending the history and lived in direct opposition to these Empire) and from villages around Minsk samovars. authorities until several years ago. Many fled (Byelorussia). All belonged to the Pomortsy to isolated places where they hoped to pre­ soglasie, the largest single group of priestless serve their faith and cultural heritage, at times Old Believers in Russia who practiced mar­ preferring to burn themselves and their riage. Although they lived among others, they churches rather than accept new religious always tried to preserve their own identity by practices. Some Old Believers settled in practicing some self-imposed seclusion. Many remote villages of northern Russia, along the of the new immigrants to the United States coast of the White Sea; others established worked in heavy industry in Pennsylvania, colonies along the Volga River in central New Jersey, and Michigan. A large number Russia; some fled to the south and settled worked on the ore docks of Erie and in the among the Cossacks; still others scattered in coal mines of southwest Pennsylvania, where Siberia. Several soglasiia (concords, alliances) they settled into close-knit communities. exist among the Old Believers: the Pomortsy The second largest settlement of Russian soglasie (priestless Old Believers originally Old Believers in the United States was formed from the north of Russia), the Belokrinitsa during the 1960s around Woodburn, Oregon. soglasie (those who had accepted priests from They had escaped Communist persecutions an Orthodox bishop in the Austro-Hungarian twice: first, by moving from Soviet Siberia to Empire), the Beglopopovtsy (from beglyi, 11 run­ China, and then in 1949, when the away," and pop, 11 priest," i.e., those who had Communist regime came to power in China, RUSSIAN ROOTS. AMERICAN BRANC by moving again to Brazil and Argentina. In In 1912-13 some the 1960s, with the help of the Tolstoy N e k r a s o v t s y Foundation in New York, they settled in returned to Russia Oregon. The youngest community of Old and were settled in Believers in the United States branched out the Krasnodar from the Oregon group about ten years ago steppes; in 1962, the and settled on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula. remainder of the After the Russian Orthodox Church community, consist­ Abroad revoked its excommunication of the ing of 215 families, Old Believers in the 1970s, a large part of the also went back to be Old Believer community in Erie accepted settled by the Soviet priesthood and communion with this church. government at the (The independent Russian Orthodox Church foot of the Caucasus Abroad was established in the United States Mountains, in the after the October Revolution of 1917.) Some Stavropol steppes. Some Nekrasovtsy families Fr. Jurewicz of the Old other groups living in the United States (most­ did not want to return to Russia and came to Believer community in ly in Oregon) have recently accepted priest­ various parts of the United States, including Erie, Pennsylvania, hood and intercommunion with a group of Woodburn, Oregon. paints an icon at his priestly Old Believers now based in Moscow, home. The icons are the Belokrinitsa soglasie. Still other Old RUSSIAN ROOTS: THE MOLOKANS used in the local Believers continue to reject priesthood. One of many peasant alliances that expressed church and in Russian Participants in the Festival program are the religious and social dissent in rural 18th-cen­ communities across popovtsy, i.e., priestly Old Believers. One tury Russia, Spiritual Christian Molokans date the country. group is from Erie; the second group repre­ from the 1760s. Like the Dukhobors (Spirit sents the Nekrasovtsy from the Stavropol area Fighters), a sect from which the Molokans in south Russia. branched out, they sought religious freedom The Nekrasovtsy are descendants of those from the Russian Orthodox Church and eco­ Old Believers who settled among the Don Cos­ nomic independence from state-imposed sacks in the steppes along the Don River in poverty through the establishment of a self­ south Russia. The Cossacks were independent, governing brotherhood of equal men. peasant military units who guarded the south­ The name Molokans comes from the ern borders of Russia. They welcomed many Russian moloko, 11 milk." Three interpretations who had fled from central Russia, whether of the origin of the name Molokane or runaway soldiers, bankrupt peasants, feudal Molokany, loosely translated as milk drinkers, serfs, or religious dissenters. At the beginning circulate widely among them. According to of the 18th century, Peter the Great attempted the first, the Scripture is spiritual milk, and to subjugate the Cossacks and abolish their since their teachings are based on a literal administrative autonomy, but the Cossacks reading of scripture, they consume spiritual resisted. After Kondrat Bulavin, the leader of milk.
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