Molokan History
In the seventeenth century, the national
revival following the Time of Troubles was
strongly religious in nature, but it was undermined by increasing
contacts with a more
secular West. Orthodoxy and Westernization were on a collision course.
The decisive moment
of the seventeenth century was the Old Believers’ schism in 1667. It
involved a
bitter controversy over the proper form of worship. Its key antagonists
were Patriarch
Nikon, a monk, and Archpriest Avvakum, a charismatic preacher. Their
uncompromising
positions deeply divided Russian society. In the context of a
considerably weakened Church
grew a powerful, secular state. By the end of the seventeenth
century, clocks and
calendars had replaced icons in some government offices. To the devout,
these changes
signaled the coming of the apocalypse. Out of this chaos emerged
sectarians—those who
refused to be Orthodox which was a felony, punishable with torture and
imprisonment. — See many new postings at Molokane.org
All
Molokan
Holidays
The chart shows all the holidays
celebrated by all sub-groups of Molokans in Russia and America, that I
know about. There are two categories of holidays — Christ's
and God's. Every holiday is important, but
the Contants
and Maksimisti each "reject half of our holidays" accoring to the
Spiritual (Dukhovnie) Molokans
who celebrate all 10 holidays.
Heritics
and Colonizers:
Religious
dissent and Russian colonization of Transcausasia, 1830-1890 (Azerbaijan,
Armenia,
Georgia)
1999 January—by Breyfogle, Nicholas Brenton, University
of Pennsylvania,
PHD Thesis, 387 pages, 1998. "This dissertation examines the settlement
of Russian
religious dissenters (Dukhobors, Molokans, and Subbotniks) in
Transcaucasia from
1830 to 1890. During this period, tsarist officials promoted the
relocation of sectarians
(sektanty) to Transcaucasia—to the exclusion of other Slavs—in
an effort to
isolate their 'heretical infection' from Orthodox Russians." See new
links to the
first 24 pages, and purchasing information.
51
Letters between Tolstoy and Molokans—Russian edition
$15 - English/Russian
$25 soon
1999—August-September—51 hand-written letters between Count Leo
Tolstoy and
Molokan elder Fedor
Aleksseevich Zheltov (photo,
51K) of Bogorodskoe (just south of Nizhnii Novgorod) were recently
discovered by scholars
helping the Doukhobors research information for this year's
celebrations of the 100th
anniversary of their migration from Russia. 37 of these letters are
from Zheltov to
Tolstoy, and 14 from Tolstoy to Zheltov. See sample handwritten letter
sent 19 August 1895
from Tolstoy to Zheltov (298K, very large), and the envelope
and transcription in Russian (368K, very large). Transcribing and
typing the Russian
handwritten script has taken months. The Russian version will be
published in August. 300
copies are being donated, 2 for each Russian Molokan church. The
project is a cooperative
effort between the State L.N.Tolstoy Museum, Moscow, and the
Slavic Research Group
at the University of Ottawa. Canadian scholar John Woodsworth did the
transcription and
translation. The
Highgate
Road Social Science Research Station ( HRSSRS) is publishing the
English translation
version which will include all the Russian transcription and more
information about the
history of the Molokans at that time. 500 English translations are
planned to be published
based on advanced prepaid orders. Order the Russian with English
translation ($25) or
Russian only edition ($15) from: The Station, 32 Highgate Road,
Berkeley CA 94707. Phones:
510-525-3248, or 800-378-9129. Fax: 510-525-3313. E-mail: edunn@well.com.
Order the Russian-only version from: Professor Andrew Donskov,
Co-ordinator, Slavic
Research Group, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario Canada KIN 6N5;
e-mail: SLAVICRE@uottawa.ca ,
Phone: (613) 562-5800.ext.
3749 or ext. 1007, Fax: (613) 562-5160 or 5138. (See the Russian
version front cover (153K, large) and back
cover (156K, large). Read the only review: Book
Review: A Molokan's Search
for Truth: The Correspondence of Leo
Tolstoy and Fedor Zheltov by Dr. Joyce Story, Canadian
Slavonic Papers,
Jun-Sep 2001.
The Russians' Secret:
What Christians
Today Would Survive Persecution?
1999 — by Peter Hoover and Serguei V. Peterov — 247 pages — A
comparison and contrast
of Russian sectarian history from the Raskol (mid-1600s) to the
beginning of WWII,
focusing on how they learned from each other in Russia, particularly in
the "Milky
Waters" region of "New Russia" in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and
their
persecutions. Covers Spiritual Christians (Molokans, Jumpers, Spirit
Wrestlers, Kissers,
People of God, Nameless, Deserted, Flagellates, Baptists, ..), German
transplants
(Mennonites, Stundists, Hutterites, Anabaptists, ..), Old Believers and
more. Molokans
will find many pages referencing the Description of
Beliefs and Teaching the
Molokans, Maksim G. Rudometkin in Spirit and
Life,
Kudinov in Spiritual Christian", S.E. Ilyin
in My
Transcaucasian Russia, Harry Shubin in History
of the Russan
Molokan Spiritual Christian Jumpers' Faith, Anne
Tolmasoff-Strubhar, Lev
Tolstoy, and Ivan Prohkanov. $10.27 from Benchmark Press, 1593 Pinola
Road, Shippensburg,
PA 17257 — phone: 717-530-8595 — fax: 717-532-4974 — email: benchmarkpress@juno.com —
no credit cards.
Hilltop Russians
in San Francisco:
A Record of the Portrero Hill Colony
1941 — 30 color pastel waterpaintings by Pauline Vinson with
introduction by William
Saroyan
I first saw this rare book 20 years ago after a meeting of the Potrero
Hill Historical
Society. The owner, a local historian, paid $100 for it then.
I've been looking for
a copy ever since. During the 2000 new year holidays, Pacific Books
auctioned a copy
on-line. I got it for a bargain—$44. Other copies in the past sold for
upto $350. I
scanned the entire book and color-enhanced the faded water paintings.
It shows Molokan
life in San Francisco just before the war—dedushki, babushki, banya, a
church wedding,
the front of both the Prygun and Postianniye buildings, and, most
significant to me, how
Molokans prayed then—huddled in a tight circle, not like soldiers
standing in rows as
American Molokans do today. Enjoy.
5
Photos, 6 Speeches and 9 Songs of San Francisco Molokans in the 1930s
1938-40 — Similiar to Hilltop Russians, The WPA
California Folk Music
Project was funded to provide work after the depression. It was a
joint effort of the
Work Projects Administration (WPA), the Library of Congress, and the
Music Division of the
University of California, Berkeley. Social scientists documented 16
ethnic groups in
California, including the Russian Molokans. The American Folklife
Center, Library of
Congress, created a database to provide this historical material on
the Internet.
"Russian Molokan
congregation from Potrero
Hill, San Francisco, performing unaccompanied sacred music and
preaching in the Russian
language. The Russian Molokans, also called Molokan Spiritual Jumpers,
Spiritual
Christians of the Sect of Jumper, or Milk Drinkers, were a Russian
peasant group that
dissented from the Russian Orthodox Church at least as far back as the
seventeenth
century. The Molokans came to California from the Transcaucausus in the
early part of the
twentieth century."
Change as Confirmation of Continuity As Experienced by Russian Molokans
Margarita Mazo, PhD, Ethnomusicologist, Music Department, Ohio State University, Canton, Ohio
In 1992, Dr. Mazo, the only Russian born and trained ethnomusicologist at an American university, visits a new Molokan village south of Moscow composed of refugees mainly from Armenia and Georgia. She describes a service with guests from the Molokan Center in Stavropol' and attempts by a young leader to preserve his religious culture after perestroika. Mazo later arranges for Russian and American Jumpers singers to meet in America, but the Jumpers refuse passing the invitation to the Constants.
Leo
Tolstoy:
An
Annotated Secondary
Bibliography of Writings from English-Language Sources, 1970-1997
1998 — Masters thesis — by Georgiev, Ludmil — University of
Alaska Anchorage — The purpose of the present annotated bibliography is
to provide a
listing of
English-language publications about Leo Tolstoy. It is directed at
those who are
interested in Tolstoy's life and work. The bibliography was compiled by
searching the
National Union Catalog, Library of Congress Catalogs, MLA International
Bibliography
(1970-present) and the Comprehensive Dissertation Index.
Boyle
Heights Project Open
2002 Sept 8 (Updated: Nov 9, 2007) — Photos of 65 named
Molokans are on display in
Los
Angeles at the Japanese American National Museum. I identified another
10 without names. See 45 Molokan-Jumper display items — photos, texts,
videos, and singing on CD. I first reported on this Project in 2000,
during planning, and a year late, it is now open for 6 months, until
the end of February. Do you recognize these COs and their sailor
buddies in front of the UMCA in 1943? There are over 1000 photos in the
exhibit, so I cross-indexed every
name alphabetically with location to help you find friends and
relatives.
Glendale:
Century of Diversity
1992 — An illustrated history by Dean Smith — published by the
City of Glendale,
Arizona
Celebrating the Glendale Centennial: 100 Years of Dreams, 1892-1992.
Chapter 2: The Convergence of Cultures — Pages 34-36 — [Among stories
of Glendales
diverse founding nationalities (Chinese, Basque, Japanese, Hispanic,
German, etc) and
religions (Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, etc.) is this page about the
Russian Molokans.]
Russian
Dictionary of Religions
Definition of Molokans, in Russian, use character set--Cyrillic
Windows-1251
Russian
History sites
A list of summaries and links to the best Russian history sites on the
internet.
Check these out: — A Chronology of Russian History — The Khazars (Jews)
— Modern Customs and Ancient Laws in Russia — Excerpts from The Code of
Law of 1649 (Ulozhenie)
Excerpts from The Code of Law of 1649 (Ulozhenie),
Chapter l - Blasphemers and Heretics — The Basic
Principles of 1862: The Judicial System, Glossary
The
Russian
Post-Emancipation Household: Two Villages in the Moscow Area
By Herdis Kolle
Master thesis in history, Department of History, University of Bergen,
Bergen 1995. Explains the context of Russian peasant life in the
mid-1800s, with useful terminology. Contents :
| 1. Introduction | 2. The Russian Village | 3. Historiography | 4. Sources | 5. Demography |
| 6. The Peasant Family | 7. Farmers and Craftsmen | 8. Conclusion | 9. Glossary | 10. Bibliography |
Russian
Baptists and the Military Question, 1920-1929
"While the confessional position
of the Baptist
union before World War I had stated: 'We consider ourselves obliged to
perform military
service when the government demands it of us,'(8) not far below the
surface of the
official position ran a strong current in favor of pacifism. This
propensity within the
Baptist movement reflected the influence of the Mennonites and Molokans
upon the
Baptists in the south of Russia. Since the Mennonites had given aid to
the Shtundist
movement in Ukraine and the original Baptists of the Caucasus came out
of Molokan
communities, there were natural conduits through which pacifist
sentiments could flow into
Baptist ranks. Baptist relations with both Mennonites and Molokans
remained close
throughout the history of the Baptist union."
"... on 30 August 1921 the Commissariat of
Justice ... told
courts that exemption could be granted only to members of sects that
had included refusal
of military service among their obligatory dogmas prior to the
revolution and whose
members had been convicted and punished for that refusal by the tsarist
government. Such
sects included Dukhobors, Mennonites, Molokans and some
Old Believers; but
Baptists were not among them."
The Last
Jumper in the Empire--Alksander Prokhanov
by Aleksander Dugin (in Russian). Text borrowed from
The New Book.
Molokans
in 1870s Russia
1905 — Russia, Chapter 17 — Among the Heretics — by Donald
Mackenzie Wallace — Over period of thirty-five years, Wallace
traveled Europe and
Russia. In the 1870s he
documented his long religous conversations with Molokans he met along
the Volga, near
Samara. I published this excellent historic chapter in my 1980 Molokan
Directory, and just
found the entire book on-line. He describes a false prophet Elija
(Belozvorof), the
Jumpers, Khlisti, and evaluates what he sees from his perspective.
Chapter 17 is 35K, the
entire book is about 1700K. Be patient if you don't have a fast
connection.
California
Gold:
Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties — Russian Molokans
National Library of Congress, American
Memory--Historical
Collections for
the National Digital Library, 27 items. Digital photos, songs, and
speeches recorded in
the 1930s. The Russian Molokan congregation at Potrero Hill, San
Francisco,
performing unaccompanied sacred music and preaching in the Russian
language. The Russian
Molokans, also called Molokan Spiritual Jumpers, Spiritual Christians
of the Sect of
Jumper, or Milk Drinkers, were a Russian peasant group that dissented
from the Russian
Orthodox Church at least as far back as the seventeenth century. The
Molokans came to
California from the Transcaucausus in the early part of the twentieth
century.
Molokan
HomePage — Short Description and History
By A.J. Conovaloff — Molokans, like the Doukhobors, are
sectarian
Bible-centered Christians who evolved from Spiritual Christian Russian
peasants who
refused to join the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1600s. A Russian who
was not Orthodox
was "sectarian". During the 1800s both sects became widespread in
Southern
Russia. For insisting on religious freedom, many were persecuted by the
Church and State,
and many expelled to the Transcaucasus. By 1900, Molokans numbered over
100,000 in Russia.
About 2,500 migrated to America just before the Russian Revolution.
Molokans
in America
by John K. Berokoff, Los Angeles California, 1969 —
Web-published in 1998
after correcting the original for spelling and grammar, enhancing
with
clarifications, and adding hyperlinked definitions and maps.
Kars
Area Molokans
Go to Thumbnail Album if your computer and modem work fast. — 1939
Photos from Al Serguiff's journey from Los
Angeles to find
relatives. — 1960's Pictures from Turkdogan's Ph.D.
Thesis Book — 1987 Photos by Anne (Tolmasoff) Strubar
and daughter Rose,
from Oregon.
A
History of Molokans in Boyle Heights
by Marco, Roosevelt High School,
Grade
12, May, 1998; from Boyle Heights: America In The Mirror, a
"project .. to
enable
students to
apply Social Studies skills, concepts, and themes to the study of local
history and
geography."
Also see: Historical Perspectives: Immigration and the Rise of a Distinctive Urban Region, 1900-1970, John H. M. Laslett, Ethnic Los Angeles, (New York: Russell Sage, 1996), pp. 39-75.
"The outstanding social fact of the early downtown era, however, which lasted from 1880 until the 1920s, was not social conflict and ethnic segregation but rather racial mixing and relative tolerance. Admittedly Chinatown, which had been founded in the late 1860s in the area around First and Main streets, was cut off from social and business interaction with the other parts of downtown. But along the edge of the Los Angeles River, behind the Plaza, many other ethnic groups lived side by side. Near the Plaza area, for example, was the city's largest Russian colony, consisting of several hundred émigré members of the Molokan religious faith. During the 1880s, nearby Boyle Heights became the center of a large, flourishing Jewish community, its focal point Brooklyn Avenue. Mixed in along the downtown streets were Italian groceries, African American blacksmith shops, Irish saloons, and German Turnvereine (gymnastics clubs). One commentator, noting several German breweries in the emerging Little Tokyo district, said that the area should have been called Little Berlin instead, because Germans "were the largest single nationality in the district."'
The
Daily Life of the Household in Medieval Novogorod
1998 — PhD Thesis — by Berger, Jean Kathryn — University
of
Minnisota — This thesis is the first attempt to create a clear picture
of the daily life
of ordinary people in the medieval city of Novgorod, Russia from the
tenth through the
fifteenth centuries.
A
Comparison of the Mennonite and Doukhbor Emigrations from Russia to
Canada, 1870-1920
1998 — Masters thesis — by Swatzky, Robert John —
Dalhousie University,
Canada — This thesis examines two emigrations from Russia to Canada by
members of the
Mennonite and Doukhobor religious sects in the late nineteenth century.
The first took
place between 1874 and 1880, when roughly 17,000 Mennonites left their
homes in southern
Ukraine to establish new settlements in the western frontiers of North
America. Included
in this number was a contingent of about 7,000 who formed
colonies in the southern
regions of Manitoba, Canada, instead of settling with the majority of
their fellow
emigrants in the U.S. Midwest. The Doukhobor emigration involved
approximately 7,400
sectarians from Transcaucasia who migrated to the Western
Canadian territories of
Assiniboia and Saskatchewan in the years 1898-99. This thesis
recognizes an underlying
cause for the two migrations which is rooted in the internal struggles
of the two sects.
[I ask why did the Molokans wait until 1904 to begin to leave? The
legend of the Klubnikin
prophesy was unknown by and did not influence the Mennonites or
Doukhobors.]
The
Wall of Faith
1998 — Masters thesis — by Birk, Thomas — California
State university,
Dominguez Hills — The purpose of this creative project is to show,
through the life of a
Pentecostal believer in the Soviet Union--Emilia Kolyvanova--the effect
that Communism had
upon the lives, religion, culture, and history of the people who
survived those difficult
years under its rule from 1917 to 1989.
The
Most Dangerous Sect: Baptists in Tsarist and Soviet Russia, 1905-1929
1998 — PhD thesis — by Coleman, Heather Jean — University
of Illinois at
Ubana-Champaign — This study explores a period of profound religious
searching,
possibility, and change in Russia through the prism of the Baptists,
the fastest growing
non-Orthodox religious movement among Russians in the early twentieth
century.
Homeland,
Diaspora and Nationalism:
The
Reimagination of
American-Armenian Identity Since Gorbachev
1998 — PhD thesis — by Gakavian, Armen — University
of Sydney, Australia — This thesis discusses the evolution of modern
Armenian territorial
nationalism,
beginning with the annexation of Eastern Armenia by Russia in 1828. It
focuses on the
impact of the homeland and of the diaspora-homeland relationship on
Armenian diasporan
identity. In particular, it analyses the response of the
American-Armenian community to
recent events in Armenia, and the impact of these events on that
community.
Marriage,
Gender, Family and the Old Believer Community, 1760-1850
1998 — Phd thesis — by Korovushkina, Irina — University
of Essex, UK — The present work is a study of the impact of the Schism
(1656-68) on
the social
development of Russia. It is concerned with religious community and
gender, marriage and
family among Old Believers.
Public
Identities in Catherinian Russia: The Free Economic Society, 1765-1775
1998 — PhD thesis — by Leckey, Colum — University of
Pittsburg — Founded
in 1765, the Free Economic Society was imperial Russia's most
prestigious agricultural
society and first free secular association. ... the principal obstacle
to establishing an
autonomous public in Russia was not the political dominance of the
autocracy and state
institutions, but rather the servile agrarian regime itself. ... the
Society became an
institutional ornament of Russia's Enlightenment, ineffective both as a
vehicle of
agricultural improvement and a mouthpiece of the educated public.
The
Russian Religion Law: Freedom of Religion or Freedom from Religion?
1998 — Masters thesis — by Regule, Christina Ann —
Regent University — This study analyzes the 1997 Russian Federation
Religion Law, On
Freedom of Conscience and
on Religious Associations, based on the 1993 Russian Federation
Constitution and
international agreements. In this law, not all 'religious associations'
in Russia have
their inalienable human rights preserved. Instead, 'religious groups'
in Russia do not
enjoy the same fundamental freedoms and privileges protected for
'religious
organizations.' See
the first 24 pages.
The
Aftermath of Trauma and Immigration:
Detections
of
Multigenerational Effects on Mennonites Who Emigrated from Russian to
Canada in the 1920s
1998 — Doctoral thesis in Psychology — by Reynolds, Lunda
Klassen — California School of Professional Psychology - Fresno
— This
study compared the
scores of Mennonites who emigrated from Russia to Canada during 1920 to
1929, and the
scores of second and third generations Mennonites with the norms on the
MMPI-2 and
Personal Experience Questionnaires. The purpose of the study was to
investigate the
psychological effects of trauma and immigration on the first
generation, and to determine
if transmission of these symptoms was occurring across generations.
Questionnaire data
revealed that both the second and third generations strongly value the
Mennonite identity
and Pacifism. The second generation reported both negative and positive
aspects resulting
from being raised according to Mennonite values. As a group, the third
generation strongly
endorsed the positive influence of their grandparents and their desire
to be more informed
about their experiences.
Ways
of
Russian Theology — Chapter 5: Struggle for Theology
by Georges
Florovsky — "By statute and design the Bible Society
was to
embrace all confessions, so that all "confessions" might be represented
in the
Society as equally possessed by the sanctity of God's Word. ... Very
often religious
toleration and the principle of equality of all confessions
became metamorphosed as
patronage for sectarians, especially for the Dukhobors and Molokans,
but
even for the Skoptsy." — "Shishkov [incorrectly]
suspected that
this separate publication [Pentateuch] had been conceived and executed
in order to push
the common people into the arms of the Molokane heresy or
simply into
Judaism." — "Makarii ... prayed with the "Spiritual Children"
(the Molokans), and found that the light of God's
illumination glowed in
their warm faith."
Chapter
4:
The St. Petersburg Revolution
"The second half of the century also marked an increasing dreaminess
and mysticism
among the people. All of the basic Russian sects- the Khlysty, Skoptsy,
Dukhobors,
and Molokans developed during those years. In the Alexandrine
age, these two
currents, the mysticism of the lower and the higher classes in many
ways converged,
thereby revealing their inner affinity. They shared precisely that
"anguish of the
spirit" which was by turns dreamy or ecstatic."
Also see the notes
to chapter 4 — numbers 138 Khlysty),139 (Skopsy), 140 (Dukhobors), 141
(Molokans)
(Link thanks to Bill Rushby who found this at: MYRIOBIBLOS: The eText Library of
the Church of Greece)
See also Molokan
NEWS
Molokans Around the World