Another explanation of Dukhobors' move

Congregation of Dukhobors returned from Georgia to russia for Permanent Residence

by Svetlana Stepanenko
Radiotserkov, 1 March 1999

After 150 of residence on the territory of Georgia, a Russian religious society of "Dukhobors", 400 descendants of resettlers, returned to their homeland. Adherents of this faith consider themnselves an ethnic group of protestant Christians. They do not recognize the forms of worship and attributes which, in their opinion, stand between God and the individual. The word "Dukhobor," according the the explanation of members of the society, signifies a struggle for spiritual perfection within one's self and for freedom of the spirit from the church, or a party of any other kind of organization.

The tsarist government began to expel Dukhobors in the seventeenth century for their inability to get along with people of the church and refusal to take an oath of loyalty. When they located on the remote reaches of the empire, they did not feel themselves a "repressed people." The faith of these people did not encourage lengthy idleness, drunkenness, dissipation, and celebration, and thus Dukhobors labored every day voluntarily, without drawing a distinction between individual and collective economy. Thanks to this the society lived prosperously for many decades.

In recent years the well-to-do Russian society began to attract impoverished residents of Georgian and Armenian villages.  They arrived with weapons and plundered the estates since almost every family had a small enterprise, a bakery or small factory for producing butter, cheese, sausage, soft drinks, as well as dozens of head of cattle and fowl, vehicles and agricultural machinery. The communal economy consisted of herds, textile factory, and a flour mill.

Failing to reach agreement with local residents and to find support from law enforcement agencies, as well as being left without light and water, the Dukhobors wrote a letter to Boris Yeltsin. Russia extended the hand of assistance and the Russian society moved to the village of Mirny, which is located in southwest Briansk (200 miles southwest of Moscow) province. Here it members had to start everything from nothing inasmuch as everything that they had acquired over long years was confiscated at Georgian customs. And the inadequate village, in which originally it was intended to resettle people from the radioactive zone following the Chernobyl accident, was only three-quarters built. The Dukhobors are convinced that with time they will get their life in order. The main thing is that their homeland has welcomed them cordially.

Translated by PDS)
Russian text at Radiotserkov  < http://www.febc.org/cis/news/new99031.htm >
Translaton posted 3 March 1999 < http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/9903b.html#06 >

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