Communal Experiments as Resolution

of Spiritual Christian Sectarian Identity Crisis (1)

By Willard B. Moore, University of California, Berkeley.

Posted: 11 December 2016, by Andrei Conovaloff. Last updated: 9 February 2017.

In red font, this paper is edited (especially for Spiritual Christian groups) in fair use.

Readers can see how much “oral history” varies, and differs from “recorded history.”

This document is best viewed on a desktop or laptop computer.

Edits and comments in red are for clarity.

Link to this page: goo.gl/RBRYXn  —  Published twice in:

1. The research for this paper is was supported by a grant PHS Grant No. 17216 from the Center for Urban Ethnography, 3812 Walnut Street, University of Philadelphia, which is funded by Grant No. 17216 from the Center for Studies of Metropolitan Problems of the National Institute of Mental Health, Public Health Service. I also gratefully acknowledge support from the Highgate Road Social Science Research Station, 32 Highgate Road, Berkeley, California 94707 (now closed, founders died).

Here sectarian means “Russian but non-Orthodox,” like Protestantism in the mid-1500s could be interpreted as “German but not Catholic.” The non-Orthodox people in Russia called themselves dukhovnye khristiane, (Spiritual Christians). Sektanti and sekt (sectarians, sect) are terms used by the Orthodox Church for heretics, and repeatedly used by scholars in context, but journalists and lay readers often confuse the Old Russian meaning with contemporary usage for deviants.

Contents   (Click on header section, then link)                           Page

1.  Abstract        2

2.  Historical Background        3

3.  Community Development in North America        5

4.  Two Molokan Experiments In Communal Settlement        14

6.  The California Commune in the USSR, 1923-1928        18

7.  Summary and Conclusions        24

8.  The Future        25

9.  Epilogue Added : Pokhod debate, Brazil lawsuit        28

10.  References        32

11.  More by Moore        35

1.  Abstract

The various faiths and tribes of Spiritual Christians and Old Ritualists (staroobryadsty) in Russian religious sect calling itself “Molokans“ derived from the Dukhobors in the 1700s eighteenth century and opposed the reformed Orthodox Church and shared with the parent sect many cultural traits including a strong desire for independent existence, preferably in an isolated, rural locale.

This paper focuses on 4 Spiritual Christian Molokan refugee settlements in

(1) Baja California (Pryguny, 1905+),

(2) Arizona (Makismisty, Pryguny, 1911+ ),

(3) Brazil (Dukh-i-zhizniki, 1974-1975) Oregon*, and one repatriation settlement in the

(4) Soviet Union (Molokane, 1923-1928) Ukraine in the 1920s were 

patterned after traditional row villages in terms of land tenure, organization of labor and social structure, but two of these (Arizona, Brazil) are referred to in oral tradition as communes, in intent if not in result.

*  Though Oregon is listed in this abstract, it is missing in the paper below, only mentioned at the bottom of page 92, at footnote 15; and appears to have been replaced by Brazil. Though scattered Pryguny, Molokane and Dukhobortsy, settled in Oregon since 1906, and a Prygun meeting hall near Peoria, Oregon, was used up to the 1960s, Moore may have been referring to a congregation of Pryguny who immigrated from Iran (Persian) in 1950, led by presviter Ivan Bahgdanov, who left the Los Angeles area due to prejudice from Dukh-i-zhizniki and established a meeting hall south of Gervais.

Since this publication submission in the early 1970s, several new congregations of Maksimist Dukh-i-zhizniki separated from their parent congregations in Southern California to establish in Central Oregon as an exodus (pokhod) alternative, other than going to Australia or Uruguay. A few who joined the Gervais congregation, established by "Persians" (Pryguny from Iran) zealously dominate to  assure it adheres to Dukh-i-zhiznik doctrine.

Not covered is a large pokhod (flight to refuge, trek, migration) of about 100 Dukh-i-zhiznik families from Arizona and California to Australia beginning in 1964, merely mentioned at the bottom of page 100. Most settled near Adelaide, South Australia, were some divided, and others across the country in West Australia. Many have assimilated, abandoning their heritage faiths.

Spiritual Christians Molokans themselves attribute the failure of the communes and other settlements to both the illegal or extralegal moves of the dominant non-Molokan society,* and to certain inadequacies within their Molokan social structure or personality makeup.** These factors tend to particularly undermine communal experiments.

  * They (outsiders, non-believers) destroyed us.

**  We destroyed ourselves. Though many diverse Maksimisty maintain belief in a future communal brotherhood upon the second coming of Jesus Christ with their prophetic leader Maksim G. Rudomyotkin on Mount Ararat in Turkey, they have not organized themselves into a long-lasting communal society. The most zealous congregations tend to divide over time.

During 1974, there began a small exodus of Dukh-i-zhizniki Molokans from the United States to rural eastern Brazil. Dukh-i-zhizniki Molokans term this move pokhod (поход), a flight to spiritual refuge (literally: campaign, crusade). It can also be analyzed as a regenerative force for in the participants sect but whether it will result in another commune is doubtful. The Brazil pokhod failed within a year, by 1975.

The Russian Spiritual Christians from Russia, most of whom were mistakenly called and continue to call themselves “Molokans”, have been studied relatively little when compared to the Amish, Dukhobors or the Mennonites.(2) In part, this is because the non-Dukhobor Spiritual Christians Molokans were not accompanied by scholars and press like the Doukhobors in Russia and during migration to Canada, no members became social science scholars who researched their history (like Anabaptists), the first arrived as immigrants came to the United States in 1904, well after the other groups earlier sectarian immigrationsed, arrived in smaller groups with no government sponsorship, and most settled individually, or in extended clans, in urban enclaves in Los Angeles (Boyle Heights, mostly Pryguny) and San Francisco (Potrero Hill, mostly Molokane) among other immigrants. Also they Molokans have kept a rather low profile in American society by not [page 86] forming communal settlements or conducting large public protests and, since the Second World War, mostly adapting and conforming in their everyday life to American dress style and employment patterns. In short for many, their symbols of ethno-religious identity are manifested mainly internally — within congregations churches, during social gatherings, and in the world view of each individual Molokan.(3)

2. The term “Molokan,” derived from the Russian moloko (milk, dairy), was at first pejoratively assigned by the Orthodox church because the dissidents refused to abstain from using dairy products during  certain religious fasts (Samarin). A more accurate label to describe their heresy is “non-fasters,” ne-postniki. History retained a label about what they were eating (dairy products) rather than a label about their offense (not fasting), that they should not have been eating during designated fasting days. All Spiritual Christian faith tribes do not obey Orthodox fasts, hence all are “non-fasters.”

The Turkish and Azeri term “malakan” is derived from the Molochna River area (south Ukraine) from where the first Spiritual Christians arrived in the Caucasus after Russia conquered the territories. This term was probably confused with the majority of actual Spiritual Christian Molokan settlers by faith. For linguistic simplicity all peasant settlers from Russia in much of the Caucasus were labeled “malakan.” For clarity, the spelling is important.

3. Elderly male and female non-Dukhobor Spiritual Christians Molokans may wear traditional costume in the home and in the neighborhood. Men still wear full beards although this is usually restricted to elders, but now mandatory for full acceptance among younger Dukh-i-zhizniki. At any formal religious church or social gathering, an Molokan “outfit” is required. No specific study of physical appearance this part of Molokan life has been made but it is mentioned in W. B. Moore. 1973: 27. Moore later addresses these neglected topics in his 1992 Ph.D. thesis. For a contrasting study, see Hostetler, 1970: 131-147, Chapter 6: The Symbolic Community, about Amish cultural symbols, dress, language, etc.  

During my three years of fieldwork among the Russian Molokan several communities of Spiritual Christians from Russia in California and Arizona, the subject of settling new communities came up quite often. Only twice did the term “commune” come into use, and the purpose here is to document their Molokan approach to communal settlement and the reasons for its limited use. (bold added)

2.  Historical Background

Molokan origins are found in the 1700s in eighteenth century Tambov province where these Spiritual Christians this sect was* formed as a splinter group from a tribe of Iconobors who later were named the Dukhoborsty. The cause of the split was a difference of opinion about the authority of Holy Scripture as a basis for behavior and spiritual expression. In contrast to the Dukhoborsty casual use of the Bible, Molokane Molokans, led by Semeon Uklein, held that Scripture was a higher authority than the working of the Holy Spirit and divine revelations among individual believers. Later, in 1833 in Novorossiya during a famine and revelations about the Apocalypse promoted by neighboring Anabaptists, various Spiritual Christians were attracted to those who expressed zealous religious prophecy and aerobic movements (jumping, skipping) said to be physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual Christians the Molokans themselves were divided over this same interpretation. Those who held fast to the original Molokan form were insulted as called themselves Postoyannye or “Steadfast” (original, unchanged, constant). The new charismatic heresies had no consistent self-assigned names, until labeled Pryguny after 1856 referred to themselves as Priguny or "Jumpers."(4) The Spiritual Christian faiths of Molokane and Pryguny further divided into many sub-groups characterized by leadership and geographic separation. 

* “Sect” (sekt) in Russia means non-Orthodox indigenous Christian.

4. One view of this controversy is given in Berokoff, 1969: pages 12-13.

Despite their diflerences and because they were given adjacent land, some varieties of Spiritual Christians Molokans and Dukhobors maintained close relations through the years, joining socially and politically, often as a common front, in their dealings with representatives of the tsar or the Russian Orthodox church. A high point in their cooperative efforts was in the petitioning of Tsar Nicholas ll in the late 1890s for either release from military conscription or permission to emigrate preceded by the neighboring Dukhoborsty burning guns in 1895 and their punishment. Emigration was eventually granted due to Lev Tolstoy petitioning the Tsar. after many reprisals In 1899 about one-third of the Dukhoborsty began to move to Canada, and in May 1904 the first party of Pryguny Molokans left for America (Berokolf, 1969: 23; Young, 1967: 12) followed by other faiths and tribes of Spiritual Christians.

Meanwhile, the most zealous third of Dukhoborsty had already completed most of their a migration and settled in Canada with the help of the English and American Society of Friends (Quakers). In 1900, non-Dukhobor Spiritual Christians in the Transcaucasus the Molokans of both Steadfast and Jumper communities had selected three delegates to survey the possibilities of settling in North America. The delegates visited the Dukhoborsty but finally chose the warmer region of southern California due to the persistence of P. A. Demens. because it closely resembled the land and conditions they had known in the [page 87] Transcaucasus.(5) The work of the delegates helped the new arrivals to avoid confusion and initial settlement in high density tenements which often marked the early years of other immigrant groups in eastern American cities, instead many lived in slum shacks, courts, and horse barns.

5. Though the Molokans‘ origin was in Tambov province, most Spiritual Christians they and other sectarians were removed in the 1840s to Novorossiya, and later to Siberia, the Far East and the Transcaucasus. This area is now Soviet Armenia. Many Molokans are former residents of Kars on the Turko-Russian border. Of the approximately 1% of all Spiritual Christians who migrated to North America from Russia, most came from the western Transcaucasus, due to following Dukhobortsy from war and economic factors, and a few from the Far East and Harbin, China.

3.  Community Development in North America

In North America non-Dukhobor Spiritual Christian Molokan settlements vacillated between attempts to establish concentrated urban neighborhoods and removal to rural villages.

Los Angeles in 1905 was a small but growing agricultural center and the Russians were able to locate housing in what is now called Bethlehem and Boyle Heights East Los Angeles, many living semi-communally by sharing in single family residences, often three or four families to a house (W.B. Moore, 1973: 21). In a few years, the most thrifty and hardworking of those not intending to return to Russia Molokans were buying their individual family homes in “The Flat(s)” area of the same neighborhood, putting up Russian steam baths in the backyards and becoming a stable and very visible part of the city‘s ethnic population. Over the years, several Russian-speaking Molokan-owned small businesses served the brotherhood, mostly divided by congregation. One cooperative grocery only lasted a short time due to the policy of extending apparently unlimited credit to the Russian customers. Today, two Dukh-i-zhiznik Molokan markets survive and carry goods especially desired by the community, including kosher meats.(6) The first co-op store was at 209 N. Vignes, 1907-1908.

6. The cooperative market was located near 3rd Avenue and Pecan Street in “Flats.” For information about the enterprise I am very grateful to Mrs. Alice Popoff of San Francisco. The two other markets, Klubnikins‘ (+bakery) on 3554 Whittier boulevard and Shubin Brothers on 1512 West Olympic Boulevard, were family-operated businesses and are still successful today. Both closed by 2000. Explanations of the kosher diet of Dukh-i-zhizniki Molokans can be found in W.B.Moore, 1973: 11-19.

Spiritual Christians Molokans at first held their worship services in 2 buildings managed by the Bethlehem Institution, and in any of the larger homes of the elders' and built the first sobranie (church meeting house) during the first four years in the city.

Distorted biased History and analyses of the urban years of the Molokans are partially provided by Dukh-i-zhiznik Klubnikinist the Molokan elder and historian John K. Berokoff in his Dukh-i-zhizniki Molokans in America and by sociologist Pauline V. Young. Oral history and folklore also provide for a description of this experience. Basically, with extensive charity from several church sponsored settlement missions and women’s clubs, it was a process of first obtaining unskilled laboring jobs in order to accumulate capital, learning English, followed by a collective family venture which allowed many the Molokans to be independent and self-sufficient , free of non-Molokan schedules and demands. Thus, between 1905 and 1940, a male Molokan who was twenty years old at the time of immigration might have gone from hired hand in a lumber yard to lumber delivery to carpenter to independent contractor. Many in the city preferred independent and flexible rubbish collection and recycling, and farming in rural settlements. As soon as his sons were old enough to leave school they joined their father, their uncles, whoever was involved in the [page 88] business. This way of earning a living left some more the Molokan free to observe his own religious holidays or memorials and leave the his world at any time to attend a religious church function.(7)

7. Dukh-i-zhizniki Molokans observed only the Levitical holidays rather than the traditional Russian Orthodox feast days, some of which were retained by Molokane and Pryguny. Weddings are traditionally held on a Sunday but funerals are held on any day and attendance is more or less obligatory, especially if the deceased is an elder. Such rites of passage are followed by large community dinners in the church meeting house.

One of the most important things about their Molokan urban experience is the settlement pattern. Living in East Los Angeles, later known as the “Flats” or and today called “Boyle Heights,” they Russian sectarians continued as much as possible the lifestyle and form of religious expression they had brought from Russia. But by the mid-1920s, a traditional wedding or funeral procession through the streets was deemed a hazard to traffic flow by city officials. As the Molokan population grew, new meeting halls churches were built outside the old neighborhood and each church took on the style of worship and attitudes reflecting those of the faiths and village from which its members emigrated (Berokoff, 1969: 53-54). These changes, as well as Los Angeles city planning projects and shifting black and Chicano populations, caused them Molokans to scatter from “Flats” and take up residence in new streetcar suburbs in various parts of greater Los Angeles.

The Molokan community did not die, however. It merely restructured itself. The sobranie became more than ever the focal point for Molokan social and political interaction and a forum for spiritual and artistic expression (8) for adults, while the the youth were polarized by 3 competing organized meetings to prevent delinquency while teaching different forms of Christianity in different languages.*

8. For a discussion of this expression, see W. B. Moore, 1973: 26-38. Throughout this paper the word “political” means simply the interaction of individuals with greater and lesser community influence or status. At no time is there a connection implied with any organised political party or movement.

* UMCA (1926+), molodoi sobranie (Young People’s Meeting, 1930s+), and YRCA (1939-1958).

So far, we have been talking mainly of the Spiritual Christian Pryguny, or Molokans who call themselves “Holy Jumpers", and Zionists, New Israelites, Maxsimisty, etc. Far fewer Steadfast Molokans emigrated to America than Pryguny Jumpers and before 1906 most, if not all, settled first in the Los Angeles area.(9) After 1906 most Molokane went to Northern California, some on farms near Vacaville and north of Sacramento, and the most dense population was on or near Potrero Hill in southern San Francisco.

9. This is still not entirely clear. All sources consulted state the account of the Hawaiian venture. One account of the period implies that Molokans were in San Francisco since 1904 but who they were and where they lived is not disclosed. (See Ivan G. Kostrikin. “San Frantsisko Russkia Gorka," [Сан Франциско Русскя Горка,] Vestnik [Вестник] of the Spiritual Christian Molokan Church, 1975: 36-38). Berokoff, 1969: 20, also mentions a few individuals who came to California on their own but the implication is that they all settled in Los Angeles. San Francisco was first settled primarily by Molokane returning from Hawaii in August 1906, 4 months after the earthquake. A few Pryguny with other zealous Spiritual Christians also stayed on Potrero Hills but met separately up to the 1960s.

In early 1906, one of the Molokan Steadfast elders, Jakov S. Fetisoff, broke with the other elders and led a party of twenty families and ten single men to Hawaii with a contract from a sugar plantation on the island of Kauai Kawaieu, northwest of Honolulu.(10)

10. See Berokoff, 1969: 44. Fetisoffs’ personal account of the event was printed in a publication celebrating the 150th jubilee of religious independence granted the Molokans by Tsar Alexander Pavlovich, 22 July 1805. It was issued by the Spiritual Christian Molokan (Steadfast) Church, 22-24 July 1955, San Francisco, California: 167-170.

[page 89]

According to the company and to the report of the delegation sent ahead by the Spiritual Christians Molokans, they Russians would be allowed to buy land, organize themselves in a traditional manner, and live in a rural atmosphere. It was their Molokans’ understanding of the terms, moreover, that the recruiting agency would bring in from Russia over one hundred families to join the initial party. The delegates signed a letter, probably written by Demens, stating that 5000 were ready to leave Kars oblast, Russia.

According to oral tradition today, the contract turned out to be an agreement not for land settlement and an independent existence, but an agreement to work in the fields of the sugar plantation as dependent wage earners and to exist side-by-side with oriental laborers who followed entirely different modes of behavior and belief. The agent also did not fulfil his promise to transport the families from Russia and the disappointed Spiritual Christians Molokans broke the contract, accumulated funds from relatives and friends, and struggled back to the mainland. They came in several parties, arriving by ship in San Francisco between August and October of 1906.

What they saw from the deck of their ship was enough to make them wonder what they had blundered into. The city was in ruins from the famous earthquake of 18 April 1906. They saw militia and piles of rubble everywhere. Makeshift shelters for the homeless stood between partially destroyed buildings, and telephone poles and chimneys stood at odd angles. Elderly informants in San Francisco’s Molokan community on Potrero Hill have described how their families and belongings were hauled by wagons from the wharf to what was then open countryside and left there to shift for themselves.

Actually, they were transported from the wharf by police or military to a refugee camp on the east side of Potrero Hill, one of many such camps around the city managed by the U.S. Army and charities, where they were offered tents or sheds, sanitation, food and water. If they refused the camps, “small temporary dwellings were scattered all over the hill.” *

* 1906 Refugee Camp (map); 1906 Changes the Hill Forever and The Immigrants, by Cheryl and Clark Kaplan, Shaping San Francisco's digital archive at Foundsf.org, 1964.

The men quickly found work in reconstruction projects and later in factories, shipyards, and lumber yards. Women went to jobs in factories, laundries, and even private homes; children were left with grandparents. During the first years the usual pattern emerged: Molokan families crowded together in a single home until money was saved for a separate house in the same neighborhood. Religious services were held by various congregations in one of the larger homes until a permanent sobranie was built in 1927-1928. The union of all Molokan congregations in Northern California in 1928, the same year the Kniga soltse, dukh i zhizn’ was published in Los Angeles, may have stimulated diverse Spiritual Christian faiths in the Los Angeles area to try to unite in a Bolshoe sobranie (Big meeting hall, “Big Church”) in 1932-1933, which probably dampened future efforts for pokhod for those congregants..

Throughout their years on Potrero Hill, the Molokans established themselves as thrifty, pious, and a generally debtless folk. There is no record of welfare or community aid and little evidence of police arrests.(11)

11. For research in this sector I am grateful to Dr. Stephen P. Dunn and Ethel Dunn of the Highgate Road Social Science Research Station. Berkeley, California, who shared their data with me. Much aid for immigrants was provided by charities, especially the Neighborhood House, and delinquency existed. Several murders, a suicide from the Golden Gate Bridge, and other acts were not repeated in oral history, but can be found in newspapers, many now online.

They remained socially distinct and apart from the rest of the city and their non-Molokan neighbors and especially from San Francisco’s rather large Russian Orthodox emigre population some five miles north of the Molokan neighborhood.(12)

12. To my knowledge little or no scholarly work has been done on the San Francisco Molokan community. By 1979, no book had been written about Molokans in America; J. K. Berokoff ignored them in his book. List for easier reading:

• Brief articles on the Spiritual Christians sectarians appeared in the Russian language newspaper Novaya Zarya (A New Dawn, San Francisco), 25 December 1936 and 9 April 1939.
• In 1939, Sidney Robertson Cowell recorded some of the music and sermons of Steadfast Molokans. Her tapes are in the Archives of Folk Music, Hertz Hall, University of California, Berkeley. A description of her findings appeared in “The Recording of California Folk Music.” California Folklore Quarterly 1 (1942). In the 1990s the Cowell collection was digitized by the Library of Congress and posted on the Internet.
• A study in watercolor was done by Pauline Vinson and William Soroyan, Hilltop Russians in San Francisco (Stanford University: Delkin, 1941).
• Finally, some evidence of Molokan community awareness is evidenced by articles which appear in the Vestnik published periodically by the Molokan elders church and
• by a photographic essay presented at the Potrero Hill branch of the San Francisco Public Library by Linda Lee Loskutoff. 4-31 August 1973.

For this paper, a lot of available material and detail were missed because:

1. The Dunns, who guided Moore, were both handicapped with cerebral palsy which limited their mobility and ability to gather information, especially before the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990; and
2. Moore was a cultural anthropologist, mostly interested in oral history metaphors about communes, about which he did an excellent job in interviews. He did not attend sobraniya nor analyze the rituals, hymns, songs or prayers, or prophesies.

Part of what they overlooked among Molokane in Northern California was being documented by others and continues to be collected:

• Interviewing L.L. Loskutoff, who, with an elder Bogdanoff, compiled a map and list of residents in their ancestral Selim village, Kars oblast; and she was writing a photo-history book, yet unpublished, but available when Moore was doing his research.
• Material in local libraries

• Newspaper articles could have provided more than 100 stories.
• City Directories showing phone numbers, addresses, occupations.
• Showing 1910-1940 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps to elders to prompt stories.
• Archived photos of Potrero Hill in several collections.

• The early work of the Olivet Presbyterian Church which donated property for the Neighborhood House, its pastor (Dr. W. E. Parker, Jr.) who personally taught English in his home, and its women’s club that raised funds for programs and burials in its cemetery.  (Bevk, Mark. "Local Landmark #86: Julia Morgan Stunner in Potrero Hill," San Francisco Curbed (blog), March 17, 2014.)
• Photos in the Neighborhood House lobby showing Molokane women in cooking and sewing classes.
• The wiki website FoundSF (1,500+ pages, 2,500+ historic photos, 100+ contributors) hosted by Shaping San Francisco, started in 1997, has categories for Potrero Hill , Russian, and Neighborhood House, which present Molokane.

• George J. Poppin who was writing his history of the Hill, Poppin and Seminoff families. In the 1990s his daughter Nancy Ann Poppin Posey helped him compile a book: Ach Amerika!, Only in Amerika: The George John Poppin Story, 2003.
• In the early 1980s Julie Gilden started the Potrero Hill History Project, mainly interviewing long time residents starting with Molokane. Materials were stored in the Potrero Hills Public Library (drawer on 2nd floor) and mostly moved now to History Room (6th floor), San Francisco Public Library. In 2000 they began co-hosting an annual Potrero Hill History Night which is recorded in video. The Project now has 2 websites: Potrero Hill Archives Project and Facebook.
• Peter Linenthal and Abigail Johnston joined the Project and published 2 books:

• San Francisco's Potrero Hill, Arcadia Publishing, 2005, 128 pages. — Molokane on pages: 54, 55, 56, 57, 73, 74, 75.
• Interviewed: O & A Interview of Images of America, San Francisco Potrero Hill Book - Arcadia Books, October 5, 2005, by The San Francisco Bay Guardian News — Oct. 19-25, 2005, Vol. 40, No. 03.
• Potrero Hill, Arcadia Publishing, 2009, 128 pages. — Molokane on pages: 24, 25, 60.
  

[page 90]  Life centered around communal work and visiting and, as the population grew and some moved off the Hill, the sobranie, with its periodic community dinners and religious services. Extended families were the rule in each household, Russian steam baths were found in most backyards some overlooking the Bay, and bearded elders in Russian shirts were a common sight on wooden benches along the streets.

But the Steadfast Molokans on Potrero Hill did not remain alone for long. Perhaps through marriages or other alliances, Congregations of Pryguny (Jumpers) and some Russian Baptists, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Adventists also settled in the neighborhood and set up their respective meeting halls churches. Interaction among these groups was rather more fluid than it was in Los Angeles among zealot Dukh-i-zhizniki and there occurred some shifting of membership from one to another as assimilation and internal friction became manifest. Intermarriages and other alliances developed because kids attended the same schools, they socialized, shopped in each other’s stores, were neighbors, and in 1932 five non-Orthodox congregations joined to purchase and manage their Russian Sectarian Cemetery Association in Colma.

Mexico

From the centers of Molokan settlement enclaves of Spiritual Christians from Russia in Los Angeles and San Francisco a number of smaller communities were initiated. Many failed but in some ways several of them today are more viable as Molokan communities than the older urban centers. Certainly the best known was the traditional Prygun Russian village in the Guadalupe Valley of Baja California near Ensenada established sometime around 1906. Those Pryguny Molokans acquired 13,000 acres for $40,000 aided by C. P. De Blumenthal, and under the leadership of two experienced elders who chose to live in Los Angeles, went forward with the idea of escaping the threat of assimilation by returning to an isolated, agricultural lifestyle. Instead of building homesteads on separate tracts of farmland, however, they Molokans adhered to the traditional Russian mir (obshchina : крестьянская община) with a central village surrounded by fields. Division of labor and responsibility was in the hands of elders who also maintained social norms and established spiritual continuity. Some of the fields lay too far from the village for daily commuting and often men returned home from work camps only for the Saturday steambath and weekend religious services. What is perhaps even more important is the fact that their Molokans’ preference for a traditional relation to the land was paralleled by similar examples of allegiance to the methods of the forefathers which may seem rather astounding:

(1) the title of the whole tract of land was vested in the names of three trustees.

(2) No grant deeds or other evidence of ownership were issued to the individual owners. The names of individual owners were simply recorded in a community book which was entrusted to a person elected for [page 91] that purpose.* 

(3) The land was never officially surveyed by a government surveyor nor was the subdivision recorded in government archives. Parcels of land were assigned to individual responsibility through oral agreements on natural boundaries such as rows of trees, rocks or gullies. Berokoff (1969: 40-43), Schmieder (1928), and Story (1960) describe how the entire plot of land was divided into functional units: wheat fields, corn fields, pasturage, and so on.(13)

*  Accurate ownership records and accounting of loan individual payments in wheat was kept by staff at the wheat mill in Ensenada built and owned by attorney-investor Donald Barker, Los Angeles, who brokered the land sale, equipment loans, and payment terms. Little is documented about his mill.

13. I visited the Guadalupe colony in July 1970, and found only one family there active in the Prygun Molokan faith. Since then, several in the family have deceased and the remainder have moved to Los Angeles. Previous studies of this village include Schmieder and Story. See later publications by Muranaka (1988, thesis 1992) and Mohoff (1993).

Then each unit was subdivided and assigned by lots to each of the fifty families in the colony. The families then drew lots for “ownership” or responsibility according to the need of each family. Those who got poor lots were among the first to leave. Amazingly, the parcels remained intact although they changed hands many times through sales or inheritance, and never in the history of the colony was there any litigation over property. Certainly the clue to such stability was the patriarchal structure of the society and persistent loyalty along kinship lines. Yet there is abundant evidence that internal friction was not uncommon. One outcome of dissension was that a party left the colony about 1916 1911 to farm the Chino Valley, Central Arizona, which they abandoned to join the new settlement 2 miles west of in Glendale, Arizona, which will be described below.

Forces external to the Guadalupe Colony were not as easily dealt with. In 1952, squatters (Paracadistas, parachutists) began to raid (fall from the sky) and settle (land) on Prygun Molokan land despite some attempts by Mexican federal troops to displace them. Though they had Without official deeds and registration evidence from the central authorities, the pacifist Pryguny felt out numbered and Molokans were helpless and by the late 1950s the village Russian population had dwindled to a few families and most their homes were sold to occupied by non-Russians. George Mohoff, a Prygun historian born and raised in Mexico, said many began to leave during WWII to get much better paying jobs in Los Angeles.

The Guadalupe experience was not inspired by prophecy but was merely a chance to take advantage of unoccupied land in what seemed an economically and politically benevolent environment. Unfortunately they left revolution in Russia to move into a revolution in Mexico, “out of the frying pan into the fire.”

Impelled [driven, compelled] as they were to return to the soil and escape the strictures of American urban living, the immigrant Molokan families still needed certain factors in their favor in order for the move to have been made at all. These included

(1) the approval of the elders and the inclusion of two elders in the new colony’s hierarchy who were also strongly supported by large family units of their own, and

(2) their location in Guadalupe was a relatively short distance from Los Angeles.

Trips back and forth were uncomfortable but possible and many marriages between the two communities were successfully arranged.

Two other attempts at resettlement outside of urban neighborhoods are worth our attention for their evidence of the Molokan courage, endurance, and flexibility of these immigrant Spiritual Christians from Russia.

17 families of An unknown number of Spiritual Christians Jumpers from Selim village, Kars oblast, presumably between ten and twenty  families, bought land as a group in [page 92] Potter Valley along the start of the Russian River, ten miles east of Ukiah in Mendocino County, California in about 1911 1910. Their principal interest was escape from “sin, evil, and outlandish dress and behavior” of the people of San Francisco with whom they were forced to mingle in their daily life.(14) They named their colony Novo-Selim, New Salem.

14. My personal interview with Mrs. Alice (nee Popin) Popoff, San Francisco, July 1972, and with Mr. John J. Bogdanov, Sacramento, California, June 1971.

None were skilled farmers and many were cheated by neighbors. When they found that the land was not rich enough to support their numbers, many men elected to commute 120+ miles to San Francisco to work in shipyards during the week, returning home on Friday to help with farm work and take part in religious services. The strain of long hours and a general feeling of social and spiritual disorientation caused by the lack of a larger supportive community finally forced the Potter Valley farmers to give up. They sold their land at a loss and all Molokane returned to San Francisco by 1919 in about 1918.

Other attempts at farming were more or less successful, depending upon size, natural resources, and the flexibility with which Spiritual Christians from Russia Molokans adapted to the legal and commercial aspects of life in the United States. One of the most successful ventures began in 1915 near the town of Kerman in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Here the Pryguny Molokans abandoned the traditional settlement pattern for an American model of individual homes on separate family holdings. They were able to purchase this fertile land for $130.00 per acre and easily traded their small homes in Los Angeles as down payments (Berokoff. 1969: 61). The Kerman community is today one of the the wealthiest. It is also divided into 2 Dukh-i-zhiznik faiths (Mendrins’, 2 others), one of which is the most close knit and conservative in its form of religious expression (Mendrins), a compensation perhaps for what it had to concede in the domains of law and social structure. Later more faith divisions occurred.

Earlier, we noted that various faiths of Spiritual Christians from Russia occasionally the Molokans and Dukhobors maintained close relations. In North America there was frequent visiting back and forth, and a few of the smaller non-Dukhobor Spiritual Christian Molokan groups settled near already-established Dukhobor communities.(15) This happened in Oregon (map) and Washington, in Yuba City and Manteca in California, and is today still voiced by elders and youth doukhalike as one of the possibilities for security on the land and a simpler way of life. (Maps by Jonathan Kalmakoff, Doukhobor Genealogy Website.)

15. The Molokan-Dukhobor relationship may be a major factor in communal experimentation. Studies of Dukhobors in California include Maloff, 1948: 407-410, and Ethel Dunn, 1973.

Note that “Dukhobor” is used here as an umbrella term for all Spiritual Christians in Canada. “Dukhobor” fellowships with non-Dukhobor Spiritual Christians in North America were not as numerous, long-term or significant as Maloff and Dunn imagined or wished in their papers. Moore relied on the Dunns for information, and did not travel across Canada to interview the varieties of “Dukhobors” himself. Since Cherbak’s large colony failure in 1910, any attempt to initiate regular interfaith fellowship among varieties of Spiritual Christians from Russia in North America was countered by disinterest among most, and hostility from zealot Dukh-i-zhizniki who consider all “other” faiths, including Pryguny and Molokane, as heretics of their faiths.

None of the settlements discussed so far can be called “communal” but in all cases there was a high degree of initial cooperation among Spiritual Christians Molokans who settled together. In most cases and in the Potter Valley experiment specifically, farm machinery was owned communally and shared but communal living and ownership of all property was resorted to only in the initial period of settlement when families moved in with one another. The Guadalupe colony, as documented by Schmieder, was a typical Russian village or “mir” — a village [page 93] collective working under chosen elder leaders who are, in turn, directly responsible to or at least delegated to deal with some regional governmental representative (Taniuchi, 1968: 56).

Before looking at two examples of what Spiritual Christians Molokans themselves have chosen to call “communes,” we must explore one other aspect of their traditional Molokan ideas about resettlement. Shared with the Freedomites (svobodniki) Dukhobors, and perhaps inherited from them,* is the concept of pokhod (поход: campaign, crusade) or flight into spiritual refuge in times of crises; or, among Freedomites, a mass protest march (trek). Such an exodus is almost by definition inspired and directed by divine prophecy, and the best example to date is the move by some of the most zealous faiths of Spiritual Christians Holy Jumpers from the Transcaucasus to the United States inspired by prophet E.G. Klubnikin.** Although some Molokane Steadfast came with them, it is critical to our understanding of the event that the motives were different.

 * Since about 1852 one young prophet (E.G. Klubnikin) in one Prygun congregation in Romanovka village, Kars oblast, Russia, announced pokhod. Freedomites formulated pohkod about 1902 in Canada to return to Russia, and modified it during protest marches, or “trek.” Unknown to each other, zealots in both countries (Canada and USA) have Russian songs and verses about their flights, marches and treks, with keywords like выход, идите, поход, пойдем, шли. Dukh-i-zhizniki have 17+ songs about pokhod, of which 4 are published in their Sionskii pesennik (Songbook of Zion) — song numbers 139, 308, 446, and 512. Also, both the Community Community Doukhobors led by P.V. Verigin (before 1924) and Pryguny led by A.T. Bezayeff (before 1920) conducted marches and maneuvers. (Berikoff, Ahna. "Songs of Existence: Sons of Freedom Doukhobors Within Time," PhD dissertation, School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, British Columbia, 2013, pages 224-225; Conovaloff, Andrei. Dukh-i-zhizniki in America, pages 34, 152.)

** Early mass movements of the most conservative Anabaptists (1870s) and zealous Spiritual Christian Doukhobors (1899+) from Russia to North America are extensively documented as being against Russification (assimilation), maintaining religious freedoms and their economy, with no hint of divine prophecy involved. Meanwhile, since about 1852, one Prygun prophet (E.G. Klubnikin) had been unsuccessfully announcing doom and flight to refuge, partially heeded only after about 200 neighboring Dukhobortsy were arrested for burning arms, 100s of prisoners marched on the road by his house, and nearby villages were vacated to exile. Though more than 2000 of the remaining Spiritual Christians in Russia followed the first wave of about 7500 Dukhoborsty to North America, most non-Dukhobor Spiritual Christians stayed home in Russia for many reasons.

The difference lies in the religious expression of the various faiths two bodies of Spiritual Christians Molokans. The varieties of Pryguny Jumpers, breaking away from the Steadfast formed in the early to mid-1800s nineteenth century, claimed that the Holy Spirit manifests itself in individuals who jump or prophesy in the Spirit. Leaving on pokhod as response to prophecy about impending disaster to their Molokan brotherhood is, however, a complex affair. It is generally true with Spiritual Christians Molokans of any either group that no voluntary move, including former migrations within Russia,* is plausible unless the number of participants is substantial enough to carry on all social and spiritual traditions and provide for mates for the young, marriageable members Molokans. If the prophecy does not for some reason receive immediate support or if some fault is found with the prophet, the movement usually fades or is supported by too small a group for a successful undertaking. The circular mechanism of questioning the validity of a given prophecy and the tentative involvement of individual families until suflicient numbers of people are secured for the move tends to postpone hasty commitment to any proposed pokhod until it seems to have spiritual sanction in the form of “one-mindedness" (edinomyslie : same faith, unanimity, political unity, think alike).

* See: Great Trek of Mennonites in Russia to Central Asia 1880-1884, Doukhobor migration maps by Jonathan Kalmakoff, Hutterite migrations in Europe. 

4.  Two Molokan Experiments In Communal Settlement 

Arizona

In August the spring of 1911, a group of thirty mostly zealous Spiritual Christian Maksimist, Prygun and other faith Molokan Jumper families left Los Angeles to settle in the flat, virtually treeless area two three miles west of Glendale, Arizona. They were very soon joined by 3 other congregations —  a group from the colony at Guadalupe in 1916, and in 1912, a party moved to rural Glendale directly from Russia. A fourth group arrived from San Francisco and the Potter Valley settlement about 1915 in 1917, bringing the population to well over one hundred families (Berokoff, 1969: 56).

The motivation for this move varied in degree and in kind. First, the construction of the Salt River Irrigation project and the new Roosevelt Dam would provide water for what was to become an extremely productive agricultural area, 1 of 5 funded by the U.S. government. There was a great deal of land for sale at $125.00 per acre (some sold by speculators who acquired public lands for about $1.25 /acre under the Desert Lands Act), and intrusion by urban sprawl and industry seemed remote if not altogether impossible. Second, a beet sugar refining plant was [page 94] built in Glendale on 51st at 5243 West Glendale Avenue by W. J. Murphy, 1903-1906 R. P. Davey between 1908-1911. Davey, who was a land developer and had The plant failed, closed and was restarted in 1908 with new management under R.P. Davie, whose investment company sold the land and extended credit to the Spiritual Christians from Russians in the first place, and planned to develop the area as a sugar beet center. He promised all farmers the Molokans a market for all they could raise.(16)

16. My research in Glendale in 1972 revealed that the beet sugar beet plant operated by R.P. Davie Davey closed in 1913 after only 4 two years in operation. On 29 July 1911, 1400 acres (2.2 mi2) of land owned by Southwestern Sugar and Land company was sold to 40 families, about 320 people. The recruiting agent was Mr. Peters, coast representative of Green & Griffin real estate company, Phoenix. The colony was named “Town Davie” * and the main colony street later named Griffin Lane, now officially Griffin Ave. It had one resident-owned store (long closed) and a communal meeting hall, destroyed by fire about 1952 and rebuilt, renovated in 1980, and standing today.

* Palmborg, C.F. "Palmborg Colony," Palmborg Colonization Company, Los Angeles, 1915, page 3.

The irrigated land was also excellent for other crops, and disappointed settlers from other rural communities were visited and aggressively solicited by Darochak presbyter M. P. Pivovaroff, as well as Molokans who spiritually sensed that the enterprise would quickly succeed and urged everyone to rushed to join the Arizona groups. When the United States entered the First World War the demand and price for cotton was sharply increased and the Salt River Valley of Arizona was on the verge of an economic boom.

A third motivation for joining the Arizona colony was spiritual. Several informants told us that the way in which certain Salt River canals were laid out suggested that early prophecies foretold the Glendale area as the site of divine refuge.* These grounds for a pokhod were enough to attract some zealot Spiritual Christians Molokans. Others were encouraged by certain vigorous and colorful leaders, especially M. P. Pivovaroff. Many were stimulated at the idea of joining with relatives directly from Russia — a longed-for reunion and a cultural rejuvenation against the tide of assimilation.

* Contrast with Klubnikinisty who believe Los Angeles is their refuge; Pryguny who settled in Guadalupe Valley, Mexico; Maksimisty who believe in Mt. Ararat, Turkey; Subbotniki who went to Israel; Mennonites in Russia to Central Asia; Staroobryadtsy to the Far East; Dukh-i-zhizniki to Ararat, Australia, and to Uruguay; etc.

As is their custom wherever they settle, the Spiritual Christian Molokan settlers from Russia named the various villages in Arizona after former village homes in southern Russia. The first settlers established themselves at Darochak which remains today as the only Dukh-i-zhiznik Molokan colony in Arizona. Several Maksimist families from Nikitino (now Fioletovo), Armenia, joined them, but called their settlement “the Colony.” A second village was set up and called Bychanak by the people who were more than 100 miles south neighbors of the Dorochak village in Erivan guberniya, Russia.(17)

17. A map of the area occupied by Spiritual Christians Molokans in Armenia is found inside the cover of the Berokoff book. See Google map showing all villages.

• Darochichak, Darachichak, Darachak in 1947 the name was restored to Tsaghkadzor (Цахкадзо́р).
• Bichanak, Bichinakh (Бичинах) was founded by Spiritual Christians relocated from Russia about in the 1850s as Karmalinovka (Кармалиновка), and renamed in 1920 after muslim Azeris recaptured this territory.

A small third group seems to have originally come from the village of Shorzha, on the east shore of lake Sevan, who were called Shorzhy,* 36 miles south of near Delizhan, Armenia. but they called their village A third group came from “Tiukma” village (Diukma, Dikme; Russian name: Novo-Mikhailovka), and first settled in Mexico, then moved in January 1916 to unsuccessfully farm all of Chino Valley, Arizona, where they were renamed “Jerome” (Dzheromskiy, Джеромский) after the sign pointing to Jerome at the depot town of Jerome Junction, somewhat to the north and similar in topography. Chino Valley is 17 miles north of Prescott, and 105 miles north of Glendale. Most of the Dzheromskiy congregation moved to the north side of the Darochak village by the end of 1916.  

* The mistaken inclusion of Shorzhy as a “third group” is probably due to Moore having extensive interviews with William Wm. Prohoroff (“Billy Pro”) whose family is one of the few who immigrated from this village. His ancestors were part- Mordvins (mordva) from central Russian, who joined up with a zealous band of Pryguny and eventually settled at Lake Sevan, comprising about half the village. Their heritage and dialect is mostly forgotten. Despite embracing Maksimist doctrine, jumping, prophesy, and singing, they were partially accepted by zealots from other tribes and some 2nd generation Tolmachoff elders scorned them, especially after W. W. Prohoroff led almost half of the Arizona congregation to Australia in the 1960s, and returned in the 1970s.

Not mentioned is the Tolmachoff clan can from Nikitino village, home of prophet M.G. Rudomyotkin; and Pivovaroffs may have come from Semeonovka, both in Erevan guberniya, now Armenia. Some Tolmachoffs believed they inherited a “spiritual bloodline” because one of their ancestors was Rudomyotkin’s sister, which allows them to abuse outsiders, ne nashi, to defend their spiritual territory.

The fourth group, arriving mainly from the small “New Salem” Prygun Jumper community in Potter Valley, California, San Francisco and perhaps including families without previous experience in living and working together, was called the Obshchaia kommuna — the “commune.” According to interviews conducted in 1972. the kammuna was located along near 83rd Avenue, between Thomas Road and McDowell Road, 5 miles south of the Darochak colony Glendale and nearer to Tolleson, Arizona.

Finding out what happened in the kommuna has been next to impossible for an outside researcher. No living male members were located. A few widows of former members survived in 1971 but could not convey extensive information. Two widows are now married to men from other groups and preferred not to comment on past history.* One was Martha Lukian (nee Conovaloff) Pappin then remarried to widower William S. Tolmachoff, presbyter.

*  Both Moores, Willard B. Moore from U.C. Berkeley doing this article and William Haas Moore from Arizona State University, were conducting research about the same time in the 1970s, and both were treated with hostility by several women in Arizona. My mother, Ann (nee Shubin) Conovaloff, bragged to me about how she chased a student away who came into the farmyard asking questions about my grandfather, Jake Dan (Yakov Danielich) Conovaloff. She did not know much, and would have been of little help. My father was not in the yard, and was shy due to his lack of knowledge and fear of making a mistake. Some who were approached may have discussed with other congregation members the issue of these 2 invasive student researchers, who probed until they randomly found willing informants for private interviews.

Yet, by putting together bits and pieces of comments and opinion, I surmised the following:

(1) the Selim (New Salem) kommuna was a collection of random families from Selim village Kars oblast, Russia, some of whom had been [page 95] unsuccessful at farming in northern California and were now eager to try for security once again on the land;

(2) there were no widely-recognized leaders in the group with a broad following beyond their own kinship lines and sub-faith tribes;

(3) most of the members of the kommuna apparently did not follow the example of the and other three colonies could not tolerate the hot summers, nor earn enough to pay for by securing deeds and written registration of land ownership.(18)

18. I reviewed the records in the county office building in June 1972. I also looked at marriage records and found that the only Molokan marriages on the books were registered between 17 January and 1 December 1920 even though some of the marriages took place some time before that. Apparently the Molokan elders performed services and then recorded an accumulation of matches whenever they visited the county seat. Also, there may be some relation between their Molokans‘ willingness to record personal information and the trials of conscription and other involvement with the government, 1917-1918 (Berokoff. 1969: 63ff; William H. Moore, 1972).

These zealous Spiritual Christian faiths, like those in Los Angeles, did not register births, marriages or deaths, because they never did in Russia, and many refused to deal with the government; therefore many fled from Los Angeles during the “bride-selling scandal” (1911-1915) to isolated rural settlements to continue their traditions. In 1920, 2 Arizona presbyters (1 Maksimist Darochak, 1 Prygun Bichinakh) were together fined $600 for not registering marriages since 1911. Their lawyer entered pleas of guilty, and they were ordered to re-do all marriages, which explains the concentration of records that Moore found. After 1920 most moved to California due to the post WWI recession, which explains why marriage registration seemed to have stopped in Arizona.

The settlements in Arizona all parcelled out land and worked it as their fathers had done in Mexico and in Russia. Though Few theological differences separated the four sobranija and there was some the usual visiting and limited intermarriage. Most found spouses in California. But in Molokan oral tradition, the Obshchaia kommuna labored under certain weaknesses that made it more vulnerable than the other groups. While the Depression of 1921 and the sudden drop in the cotton market wiped out many of the family's’ holdings, the kommuna had already begun to fall apart long before the crash came. Stories still simulate about unilateral decisions, wild charging of goods to the commune‘s account, individual appropriation of machinery without group consent, and a general lack of cooperation and trust. But names and details are not forthcoming; lurid tales are not shared with outsiders.*

 * My father explained that as more than half of the New Salem congregants began to move away and/or abandon their property, their presbyter Lukian Conovaloff brought many of the properties and paid all debt before disbursing the remaining money, if anything, to the debtors. Those who did not understand his financial transaction were angry, and some stayed in Arizona intermarried with Maksimisty, perpetuating their bitter oral histories which were later enhanced (modified) by the Maksimist Darachak (Tolmachoffs) to attack descendants of Salem Pryguny.

The bankrupt members of the commune, like the other impoverished families of 1921, filtered back to Los Angeles and a few joined the community at Kerman, California. None returned to San Francisco directly because they were not Molokane. Undoubtedly, they sought security in the larger gatherings of Pryguny Holy Jumpers and needed broad contact with kin and friends to begin again.*

* My grandfather, Jake Dan Conovaloff (died 1971), explained that the commune failed within 2 years due to not everyone doing their share of work. A neighbor woman (Bogdanoff) told me that women, like my grandmother Parasha (nee-Loskutoff) Conovaloff could not work the fields because she had little kids to care for and her husband was in military prison (with 5 others) for refusing to sign any paper upon release from jail in Prescott in 1918. Because the commune would not provide for her, the neighbor woman secretly gave my grandmother food.

The New Salem Commune Pryguny intended to buy property plotted 20 acres per household from Davie and grow sugar beets; but they were about the last to arrive in Arizona and first to abandon their land after the post-WWI recession, leaving unpaid debt at stores. The debt was paid by presbyter Lukian Conovaloff who assumed payment for their abandoned land, therefore his family acquired about half a square mile. During this time my grandfather was assumed to be in prison for the rest of his life, but returned in 1924 when all CO prisoners were pardoned by President Coolidge.

During the 1920s most all of the Bichinakh and Dzherom members moved away, leaving part of the New-Salem Prygun and Darachak Maksimist congregations, 2 different faiths.

6.  The California Commune in the USSR, 1923-1928

Soviet Union

The early Molokans left the Russian Transcaucasus and Harbin, China, in 1904-1905, some guided by prophecy of other faiths. The Pryguny and other faiths Holy Jumpers had been warned by a nineteenth century prophet that a worldwide cataclysm could engulf those who did not heed God’s word (Berokoff, 1969: 15; W. B. Moore, 1973: 8). But there were other, more easily documented problems weighing upon the Spiritual Christians sectarians at the turn of the century and among these was the threat of military conscription, abhorrent to serious pacifists and a threat to social cohesion. Those very few Spiritual Christians (1%) who left, whether Jumper or Steadfast, were saved from the disasters of the war but everyone lost some relatives in Russia the holocaust.

In 1914, Turkish troops wreaked havoc and death in the Spiritual Christian Molokan villages along the border in the [page 96] district of Kars. By 1919, many refugees from these villages had moved north, seeking help from the tsar, Kerensky’s provisional government, and finally from the Bol’sheviki under V. I. Lenin.* In 1920, Soviet representatives interviewed Spiritual Christian Molokan delegates at to a conference in Ashkhabad about their willingness to work within the framework of the regime. Finally, by 1922, as a result of the Eighth Party Congress and the new Land Code, Spiritual Christians sectarians were included in the Soviet plan for development of the rural economy.** Spiritual Christians Molokan, Dukhohor, and other sectarian villages were given good farm land in the Ukrainian black belt (chernozem). Word was sent out also to Spiritual Christians sectarians in other parts of the world that the new government welcomed them back to the land (Klibanov, 1969: 219-258; Dunn. 1967: 128-139; Taniuchi, 1968: 12-21).

*  Lenin’s 1918 Decree about the Separation of the Church from the State included:

• The Church is separated from the State.
• ….it is forbidden to pass any local laws or regulations which would restrain or limit the freedom of conscience ….
• Every citizen may confess any religion or profess none at all....
• … in all official documents every mention of a citizen's religious affiliation or non-affiliation shall be removed.
• The free performance of religious rites is granted as long as it does not disturb public order …. (...'disturbing public order' was used as grounds to outlaw religions sects with 'extreme mysticism' such as Skoptsy, Hlysty, Pentecostals and Jehovah's Witnesses….)
• The school is separated from the church. ...Citizens may receive and give religious instructions privately.
• ... allowed for laity to assert increasing control over their churches...

** See Note 1: "Speeches at a Meeting of Non-Party Delegates to the Ninth All-Russia Congress of Soviets," Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, pages 370-374. Translated by Bernard Isaacs, copied from Marxists Internet Archive.

This announcement brought a variety of responses in Canada and the United States. We are concerned here with one small group and its response: the community of Steadfast Molokans on San Francisco’s Potrero Hill.(19)

19. Much of this information was spread in the United States by the Society for Technical Aid to Soviet Russia, formed in 1919 by Russian immigrants in New York City. One office was in San Francisco until 1925 but there is no evidence that Fetisoff was responding to the Society‘s messages. It is more likely that he gathered information through Dukhobor friends with whom he was in close contact (see also Dunn, 1970: 300-326).

Earlier, we mentioned that one Jakov S. Fetisoff broke away from leaders in Los Angeles and struck out for the ill-fated Hawaii sugar plantations. Sometime around 1914, his younger brother, Vasilii S. Fetisoff, left the Steadfast Molokan sobranie and organized, together with a few other families, a Dry Baptist* congregation church in that neighborhood. Fetisoff apparently was a dynamic leader and an innovative person. He visited frequently the Dukhobors, wrote some articles for a Russian language newspaper,(20) had tried to set up a cooperative Molokan grocery and, much later in life, even agreed to record some songs for a student from the University of California.

* Adults, not children, baptized with the Holy Spirit, not water. Similar congregations existed in Russia, USSR. Similar to the evangelical and/or fundamentalist Christian term “born again.”

20. This was Anton Scherbak‘s [Cherbak] Tikhii Okean Tikii Olian published in Los Angeles then in San Francisco until 1918. Fetisoff was acquainted with the editor who resided for a short time on Potrero Hill in San Francisco.

The concern of V. I. Lenin with the Spiritual Christian sectarian communal villages in Sal’sk Okrug during the 1920s is well documented by A. I. Klibanov and others. It was Lenin's hope that Spiritual Christian sectarian farmers would settle this area, bringing with them materials and machinery, and provide a model for collective farms throughout the region.

Vasilii S. Fetisoff organized a party of thirty families in San Francisco. The basic fee for each family was $300.00. With this money they purchased farm machinery and seeds, basic household goods including an iron stove, tents, and so on. Fetisoff himself led the first party to Russia in May 1923; a second party left in 1925. In all, only twelve of the families actually made the trip. ($300 x 12 = $3,600 = about $150,000 in 2015 values.)

[page 97]

The details of the journey, the difficulties adjusting to a new country, sketches of village life and personal interpretations were provided in interviews with Vasilii Fetisoff’s eldest son, Alex, in Sacramento, California, in 1971. At the time of the trip he was only sixteen years old. Within three years he would marry a Molokan Soviet citizen, become an integral part of a Russian village commune, and broaden his personal knowledge considerably.

The party landed in Rostov-na-Donu and travelled by train to Tselina, about 80 one hundred and fifty miles south-east of Rostov. From the station, the Molokans transported their goods by wagons about six miles to the Spiritual Christian Molokan villages.(21)

21. Some villages were occupied by Molokane Steadfast and a few some by Pryguny Jumpers.There was also a village just north of this area, Red October (Krasnyy Oktyabr'), settled by New Israelites. Alex Fetisoff thought they were from South America, yet they had also(?) named their village “Kaliforniia”; probably before it was given a politically correct name by the Soviets. There is some record of New Israelites on Potrero Hill and known by the Molokan community. 

In 1911 Vasili Semionovich Lubkov (1869-1931+?), leader of one Novyi Izrail’ movement visited San Francisco scouting a refuge for his 300 followers waiting in Baku guberniya (now in Azerbaijan). He did not like the city environment of the Molokane, then arranged with the Uruguayan Embassy in San Francisco to move himself and all of his people in Russia to rural west-central Uruguay, where they founded the town of San Javier. An earlier settlement of Molokane from Russia was established across the river near Buenos Aires, Argentina. Other Spiritual Christians, Old Ritualists and Anabaptists (Mennonites) from Russia moved to this area, including Svobodniki (Freedomites) from British Columbia, Canada; Subbotniki; and Dukh-i-zhizniki from Southern California.

In 1925, Lubkov heard that Spiritual Christians were favored by the new Soviet government, and New Israelites there planned a reorganization conference to be held in Krasnodar krai. He sent a representative. The conference decided to form their own co-operative and the government offered land in north eastern Rostov province, an area already half populated by other non-Orthodox groups — 17,500 of 35,000 total households. In 1925 Lubkov led 300 (about half of this followers) from Uruguay to the USSR forming a huge New Israelite community of thousands. In the 1930s, Soviet politics drastically changed and all prosperous Spiritual Christians were accused of being "enemies of socialism", their co-operatives became collective farms. Lubkov, over 60, was arrested. It is unknown if he was executed or died in prison. The New Israel faith quietly continued in the USSR, but freely in Uruguay for decades; similar to the fates of other Spiritual Christians residing in the USSR and abroad. (See section "Building God's Kingdom" in “New Israel: Transformation of a Branch of Russian Religious Dissent,” by Sergey Petrov, Doukhobor Genealogy Website, 29 February 2008; and Viola, Lynne. Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance, Oxford University Press, Jan 28, 1999, pages 164-166.)

Earlier, the Soviet Rural Administrators had set up Dukhobor villages in rows, each approximately three miles from the next. There were twice as many fewer Molokan and Prygun villages in their own territory, east and they were placed at the end of the Dukhobor settlements and under the Dukhobor Sel’sovet (Rural Council). Alex Fetisoff remembers that the names of the villages were taken from former settlements in the Transcaucasus: Kara, Salim, Prilesnaya; Fetisofl's village was named “Kalifornia” and was occupied by Molokane from San Francisco Steadfast.*

* The location of the Kalifornya village was somewhere in the center of the village cluster probably east of Prelestnyj (Prilesnoe: Прилесное), but not exactly pointed out to us in 1992, nor did others who tried to find it later tell me exactly where it was.

The Molokan party got quickly to work. Their threshing machinery was far more efficient than what the Soviets had been using, and much of the younger Fetisoff’s remarks about production are supported by the figures of Soviet scholars.* The Molokans worked closely with the Dukhobors and found them generous and supportive of other Spiritual Christians sectarians. The Molokans had earlier contacted members of a German colony during one of their trips to Rostov and learned from them the process of making “swiss” cheese. They then built a cheese factory between Prilesnaya and Kalifornia and further increased their productivity as well as the variety of their own diet.(22)

*  "By 1920 ... The supply of agricultural machines ... was extremely poor, ... [as was] ... the distribution of machinery ... " — Narkiewicz, Olga A. The Making of the Soviet State Apparatus, Manchester University Press, Jan 1, 1970, page 85.

22. For portions of this information I am grateful to Dr. Stephen P. Dunn and Ethel Dunn who shared with me their interview with Mr. William W. Loscutoff, Sheridan, California, 12 May 1973.

History later translated from Turkish (Turkdoghan, 1972) by Dunns, reports Spiritual Christians in Kars made a type of Gruyère cheese which they taught to locals. Turkdoghan interviewed Spiritual Christians remaining in Kars province before their 1960s repatriation to the USSR.

In 2015 in Kars, I noticed many competing shops selling mostly cheese and honey. When I walked into the first store and asked for “Malakan pendir” (Spiritual Christian cheese), it was immediately pointed out to me in the refrigerated case. The history of swiss-cheese making in Kars oblast goes back to the 1850s, details later.

Missing is context, a broad view of major political changes from 1900 to 1930, positive in Russia to improve peasant agrarian life, and negative in Turkey to threaten non-Turkish Christians. In Russia the Stolypin agrarian reforms (1906+) enhanced peasant farming; and the 1920s Soviet "indigenization" policy (korenizatsiya :коренизация) facilitated managing the huge multi-lingual, -confessional and -ethnic populations such that each major group got their own territory, leaders and cultural freedom to facilitate central governmental control. By 1929 Germans in Russia had 11 national autonomous districts. From 1921 to 1929 about 200,000 Armenians were repatriated to Soviet Armenia. Simultaneously in Turkey, during the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) about 4 million Christians were massacred, and about a million Christian Greeks fled to Greece as Muslim Turks moved to Turkey from Greece. When the Treaty of Kars was enacted (1921-1923), the new Republic of Turkey began Atatürk's Reforms for rapid Turkification of all peoples. After the Soviet Bolsheviks aided the successful Turkish civil war, non-Orthodox Christians (heretics, Spiritual Christians) from Russia in Kars province were offered repatriation to the Soviet Union during a decade window of opportunity for minority groups, perhaps to clear villages in Turkey for incoming Muslims repatriated from other countries, and to populate unused prairie (steppe) in Russia with farmers. The most zealous Spiritual Christians, a majority of whom later transformed to varieties of Dukh-i-zhizniki, remained in Kars up to the mid-1960s when they were repatriated to Stavropol krai and Astrakhan oblast.

Naturally, they did not own their land. They had been assigned sections of land as if they were a kolkhoz (collective farm) and were expected to produce enough to fulfill various norms. In addition, whoever wished to plant twenty acres for himself could do so, and many families worked cooperatively at this for personal profit.

Despite high productivity and resourcefulness, the Spiritual Christians Molokans and the Dukhobors did not please the government’s rural representatives. They were accused of withholding produce and of refusing to integrate politically and socially with the general plan for the Soviet countryside.(23)

23. See Klibanov. 1963a: 244-250. At one point, Klibanov documents mutual testimonies of support between Spiritual Christians sectarians and the new Soviet government (p. 244). For the Soviet analysis of Spiritual Christian sectarian attitudes in the struggle for success in agriculture, see Klibanov, 1965b: 44-60.

[page 98]

Fetisoff‘s remarks substantiate these accusations, but he made it clear that

(1) Soviet administrators tried to take more than the norms required and this threatened to leave the Spiritual Christians sectarians without enough produce to get them through the coming year.

(2) The Spiritual Christians sectarians could not replace their spiritual and familial loyalties with secular, political concerns without destroying the entire fabric of their social structure.

In addition, the Soviet government introduced universal conscription which withdrew the sectarians’ exemptions from military service and began to draft everyone, including young Molokans.*

*  Since WWI the Soviet military was increasingly enforcing universal conscription for all formerly exempt peoples (non-Russian-speaking nationalities, nomadic tribes, Muslims, sectarians). Religious conscientious objectors got exemptions from military service due to early support from V. Bonch-Bruyevich, V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin) and L. Trotsky so they would join the 1917 Revolution. After Lenin became disabled due to a stroke (1922, died 1924) and Trotsky was forced from office (1927), Joseph Stalin dominated the Politburo (1927). The exempt Baptists had increased about 500% in a decade, from ~100,000 (1917) to ~500,000 (1926), and appeared to be a haven for draft evaders. Baptist leaders were forced to defend how they could be good Soviet citizens and oppose the Bolsheviks who saved them from the White armies in the civil war; and after years of debate, in 1926 the 26th All-Union Congress of Baptists of the USSR voted to reinstate their military obligation. (Steeves, Paul D. Russian Baptists and the Military Question, 1920-1929, Stetson University, January 1996.)

Finally, these new conditions increased the disillusionment and dissatisfaction of the younger Molokans who had known easier times in the United States. When the NEP (New Economic Policy) was begun and collectivization enforced, the Molokan party under Vasilii Fetisoff began to make plans for a return to America. After some difficulties with officials, both Soviet and American, the party arrived in San Francisco in 1928.

David Bogdanoff, San Francisco (October 16, 2016), adds:

“My mother was there as a child and I heard a few things from her viewpoint. She remembers her mother (my grandmother Fetisoff) hiding grain* from the government agents to ensure sufficient food for the winter. She said the grain was buried beneath fence posts. (See: Prodrazvyorstka and Soviet grain procurement crisis of 1928, Wikipedia)

*  In contrast: "An example of outright distortion — and one very widely repeated in Western works — is the claim that the peasants hoarded a grain surplus." — Narkiewicz, Olga A. The Making of the Soviet State Apparatus, Manchester University Press, Jan 1, 1970, pages 86-87.

“The article mentions NEP starting in 1928; actually it started in 1921 and ended in 1928. This is well known and documented, so the misstatement was undoubtedly inadvertent. Of course the "tough times" was collectivization and persecution of the "kulaks".  Undoubtedly the Molokane from San Francisco would have been classified as kulaks and faced a one-way trip to Siberia, or worse. That was a close call.

“One point not mentioned in Moore's account is that Vasilii Fetisoff was specifically warned by government authorities in Rostov that tough times were coming for farmers and that if they had thoughts of returning to America they should not delay as the opportunity would be gone in the future.

“The trouble with the American government in issuing the required visas (for the return trip to America) was that some members in their party needed brand new visas (i.e. they had never been in America) and this required extra paperwork.

I think the advance warning in Rostov from the government is significant because the coming collectivization of the farms would probably have been kept secret from the public for obvious reasons. Years ago I told this story to an informed soviet emigre who expressed great surprise that Fetisofff was warned in Rostov in advance.

“It would be interesting to know the terms of the agreement between the Soviets and the Molokans. Was there a written document?”  (Answer: Probably in a Russian archive.)

Forgotten in Dukh-i-zhiznik oral history is the 1928 pokhod attempt to central Alberta, Canada, by Pryguny from Mexico and Los Angeles — to be reported later.

7.  Summary and Conclusions

To the Steadfast Molokans of San Francisco, the Fetisoff party had taken part in a "conununal enterprise.” From our field work among the Spiritual Christians from Russia in California Molokan sect it appears that communal activity is diflicult and even cooperative business ventures such as groceries and bakeries are not supported but fall prey to overextended credit (which is somehow taken for granted) or some social condemnation. The experience of the members of the California commune in Russia in the 1920s was an anomaly and runs counter to the Molokan way of life. It was primarily an example of a single, charismatic leader forming a group of like-minded people and seeking with them for spiritual and social refuge. It was not a community-wide venture and probably Fetisoff felt no need to strive for a large number of members since they were moving to join the main area of Spiritual Christian sectarian settlement in the Soviet Union. The marriage of Alex Fetisoff to a woman from a neighboring village proves that the California group was very much at home.

By contrast, the New Salem Pryguny Holy Jumpers who moved from northern California to Arizona about 1917 lacked a strong leader and organizer. They had community wide involvement but whether the individuals were of like mind or inspired by anything beyond material gain is a critical and unclear issue for future study (Berokoff, 1969: 61-62). It is perhaps more clear that Fetisoff’s efforts were motivated by an identity crisis of his own which he tried to resolve through traditional Russian means of involvement with a group.

There is probably also some justification for an argument that Molokans who tried communal ventures were trying to copy the work of their spiritual brothers, the Community Dukhobors led by P. V. Verigin (Woodcock and Avakumovic, [page 99] 1968; Mealing, 1972). Yet the differences between their social structures and ideologies of the two sects account for the failure of the Molokans.

In Russia Molokane had no single “leader” after their founder S. Uklein died. In contrast, Dukhoborsty always had a single leader until they divided after Kalmakova died in 1886. About a third went to Canada, mostly followers of Verigin’s “Large Party”, which he further divided in 1907 by forfeiting about 80% of the land given to them in central Canada to move his loyal Community Doukhobors to scattered purchased land, most in British Columbia, and incorporate their Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood in 1917.

Curiously enough, the Dukhobors are not the only model for communal living to which Molokans may turn.* During the nineteenth century there was a fairly strong branch of the Molokans known as the Obshchie or communal Molokans. Klibanov has documented clearly the problems which lay between the factions. Both upheld chiliasm (millennialism) and eschatological concepts but whereas the larger body of Pryguny Holy Jumpers prepared for a heavenly Jerusalem, the Obshchie Molokans felt it possible and indeed necessary to work for an earthly Jerusalem in communal living (Klibanov, 1965a: 134-136).** The Prygun Holy Jumper prophets who opposed communal living have become the revered martyrs for contemporary Molokans Dukh-i-zhizniki in America and it is natural therefore that today‘s followers of the faiths would side against the communal idea.(24) This may also be an underlying reason that few Molokans claim any association with the Arizona commune.

* Not explored are the 1924 Independent Doukhobor communal colony in Manteca CA, 80 miles east of San Francisco; the 1946 Freedomite Hilliers communal settlement on Vancouver Island;  100s of Hutterite communes; and many others.

** Several Obshchie Molokane may have immigrated to the U.S., but not enough (critical mass) to form and maintain a commune. Also, none of the acclaimed immigrated leaders (E.G. Klubnikin, V.G. Pivovaroff, I.G. Samarin, F.M. Shubin, etc.) of the various spiritual christian congregations in Los Angeles could unite or lead the various faiths of their Brotherhood of Spiritual Christians.  

24. See the writings of the Prygun Molokan prophet David Esseevich in the Molokan book of prophecy, Kniga solnste, Dukh i zhizn‘, published privately by l. G. Samarin in 1928, pp. 138-140. Current editions are available through the UMCA, 16222 Soriano Dr, Hacienda Heights, CA 91745  1059 South Gage. Los Angeles, California 90003. Missing is the persistent prophecy of the return of M.G. Rudomyotkin to Mt. Ararat, and believers’ duty to return to that spiritual homeland for their exclusive millennium.

8.  The Future

Lacking a theological or leadership framework for sacred migrations, there is little chance that the Steadfast Molokans will migrate from their settlement in Northern California. Their community is too small and fragile, despite an influx of brethren from Iran in 1952 which brought about a spiritual and cultural rejuvenation. Today, the recently arrived families occupy leadership positions. Their fluency in Russian, their relative youth and vigor, and their image as being “more Russian” than others their age reinforce their influence in the community. But they have also encouraged younger Molokans to become actively involved in the social and spiritual affairs of the community. Thus supported, the young have little reason to chaff and complain that they must wait too long for responsibility.(25)

25. The main obstacle to this type of involvement is mastery of the Russian language. This places a great deal of responsibility upon parents to speak Russian at home and get their children to attend language schools. Those parents who immigrated from Iran (“Persians”) in 1952 speak Russian more fluently than second and third generation residents of Potrero Hill with some exceptions. This gives some advantage to the children of the newer families.

The Dukh-i-zhizniki Jumper Molokans, being more numerous and of diverse faiths in the United States, have needed to establish new colonies over the years. Generally, these movements have been led by elders, but the bulk of the group is usually made up of younger families with small children. Ofien they are motivated by periodic threats of local crime, assimilation of the young, or national policies contrary to their basic beliefs. When a clear and acceptable [page 100] prophecy is the impetus, their Jumpers’ generally accepted self-image as a “chosen people” spiritually reinforces the motivations and the movement becomes a type of revitalization process. As the plans for a move gather momentum, the people’s involvement provides opportunity to refocus their identity and beliefs to assess traditional practices, and often gives younger zealots Molokans a chance to assume positions of leadership within the new community.

These groups are usually quite zealous and attempt to retain some of get back to the traditional ways imagined of their forefathers. Their organization is somewhat cooperative, if not communally oriented, because it is pragmatic and because perceived traditional and spiritual modes are seen as coterminal.

Unlike the Community Dukhobors who have expected their highly egalitarian codes to support a series of charismatic leaders of a particular family (centralized management), the non-Dukhobor Spiritual Christians Holy Jumper Molokans retain a more complex leadership system in which power and influence are variously galvanized (decentralized) along kinship lines, government, aggressive or zealous people, different prophets, democratic group decisions, the holy spirit, individual whim, etc.(26)

26. Woodcock and Avakumovic (p. 43) suggest that these relationships are “intuitive rather than codified" (learned, not written) among the Dukhobors.

This is evident in the organization of individual meeting halls churches or sobranija and in the economic structure. Breaking family ties and leaving a sobranie in which one was raised is a serious matter because it causes a weakening of the family. Whether or not one joins in a pokhod would be determined by the stagnation, assimilation, or lack of opportunity felt by any individual Molokan within his own kin-oriented congregation church. Of course, there are also degrees of religiosity to be considered as well as the status and influence of one‘s family within the total community of Dukh-i-zhizniki Jumpers.

The current Dukh-i-zhiznik concept of pokhod as such is not open to question, but the leaders and organizers of such a movement, as well as the prophet who claims to know the place of refuge, are closely scrutinized and open to all kinds of community criticism. Therefore, much depends on the interpretation of the prophecy and upon the reputations of those involved. It is not unusual to find a prophet accused of self-interest and the story will circulate that he has manipulated his own prophecy (or that of another prophet) to suit his own inclinations (Berokoff, 1969: 88-89).

Brazil

Pokhod destinations named over the last forty years include Utah, New Mexico, Washington and Mississippi as well as Australia, Turkey, Peru, Central Mexico, Baja California, Israel, and Brazil. One noted prophet (?) announced in the 1940s that his people would move to Brazil and live in a glass city. A similar prophecy (“houses of glass”) was made, according to legend, by the Dukhobor leader Luker’ia Kalmykova about her people‘s destiny in Canada for those who will not “return to their fatherland”. (Woodcock and Avakumovic, 1968: 261).(27)

27. Variants of this the Molokan prophecy were collected from numerous members of the Los Angeles area Dukh-i-zhizniki community between 1971 and 1973.

The prophecy has been interpreted in various ways, but in the mid-1960s, interest began to build in a pokhod to Brazil. After several false starts and much controversy, there appeared in the community [page 101] newsletter in October 1974, an announcement that the Dukh-i-zhiznik Molokan Agricultural Colony (M.A.C.) had purchased land in Matto Grasso, Brazil, invested many thousands of dollars and had commitments from one hundred and fifty people.(28)

28. The Molokan by and about Dukh-i-zhizniki is a community newsletter published and distributed by the United Molokan Christian Association, 1059 South Gage, Los Angeles, California 90023 with intermittent publication starting in 2007.

Paul Alex Efseaff and Walter Shinen were the 2 lead prophets of Staraya Romanovka sobranie (Old Romanov, Blue Top, Clela street), East Los Angeles, who delivered numerous prophecies about this this pokhod which they called M.A.C (Molokan Agricultural Colony). They were so prophetic that Efseaff was nicknamed “Apostle Paul” by the youth. Their personalities were very different, Efseaff was extroverted, Shinen introverted, except during sobranie. I met Efseaff many times as a student of his youth song class (spevka). One summer night, after class, Paul Efseaff privately tried recruiting me for more than an hour, saying they needed more farmers on their list of 200+ people. I tried to explain I was really not a professional farmer and wanted to finish college with a degree in science. I don’t recall if he added my name to their list.

The date of emigration and the families who will make up the group who settle in Brazil are not yet public information.

Several details, however, are already at hand which support the data we have reviewed and the conclusions they point to about Western Spiritual Christian Molokan communal experiments. First, the leaders of the MAC group are cousins, that is, from one extended family and therefore are from one sobranie (Staraya Romanovka, Blue Top).* Second, the settlers who have already begun work on the land now live communally in one long wooden building but there is no plan to remain communal after the initial stage of settlement.(29)

*  There is no rule that all members of an extended family are “therefore” members of one congregation. Sometimes this occurs, when one clan will control, or try to control, a congregation.

29. Personal communication from Dr. Stephen P. Dunn and Ethel Dunn. I am grateful to the Dunns for reading an earlier version of this paper and offering many helpful suggestions. All interpretations and conclusions are the responsibility of the author alone, however.

Finally, not all of the participants in this movement are from one sobranie or one geographic community. Evidently, they are of one mind about their individual and community needs, both spiritual and social, and they have united in a common effort towards renewal via the mechanism of pokhod provided by their belief system. The initial communal period eases the disengagement from their prior identity with and commitment to kin group and community. The intensive interaction of the like-minded communal participants under the stresses of new conditions accelerates the formation of a new commitment and group identity. Clearly, such revitalization movements can resolve both individual and collective identity crises and allow participants to refocus their lives by what James Fernandez refers to as “movement through quality space” (1974: 119-133).

Certainly much of the success of this new venture depends not only upon the men and women and their unity of belief but also on the extent to which their new country of residence can tolerate a Dukkh-i-zhiznik sectarian enclave which may stubbornly refuse to be committed to Brazilian national aspirations. The colonists remember clearly the previous attempts to integrate them into the dominant culture at traditional Molokan settlements — Guadalupe (Pryguny, Baptisty, Klubnikinisty, etc.), Arizona (Pryguny, Maksimisty, Klubnikinisty, etc.), and even Russia (Molokane). That they cherish the fortitude and the sacrifices of their forefathers is commendable. Let us hope that they profit by past mistakes as well.

9.  Epilogue Added : Pokhod debate, Brazil lawsuit

Pokhod debate

In the early 1970s, Dukh-i-zhizniki in Southern California and Arizona were confronted with 2 competing emigration movements — Australia and Brazil. A few had already returned from Australia and Uruguay. Youth began asking: “Which was the correct prophecy and pokhod; and, should I go, or stay home? College solution: Debate.

The idea was hatched during ad hoc parking lot discussions among college students, including Peter Paul Ledieav, Michael Jack Tickenoff, Svetlana Vinogradov, George George Shubin and many others. Ledieav and Shubin each had been editors of the U.M.C.A. newsletter, “The Molokan”, and in touch with concerns of Dukh-i-zhiznik youth. Shubin also coordinated the 1970s republishing of the Kniga solntse, dukh i zhzn’, and its 1980s publication in English.  

They asked themselves:

• How can we make an intelligent choice without more information?
• How can we tell which is a true or false prophet and/or prophesy ?
• How can we get accurate information to compare and contrast prophecies?
• Whom should we seek for help?

Most were familiar with forms of debate, which was chosen as the format for gathering information for decision making about which pokhod, if any, was the best for anyone interested. Each side would make a presentation, with questions selected in advance from anonymous notes. Answers would be recorded and used for the the next session, alternating for 2 presentations each — 4 total. Their differences would be summarized to the most significant issues before the presenters met together for 2 more timed sessions — 6 total sessions. I forget which side was selected first.

Algebraically, the 6-session schedule was: A, B, A, B, A-B, A-B.

This format was planned as the youth surveyed elders most familiar with each pokhod and by consensus selected 2 who volunteered to address the youth with facts and arguments for their pokhod. The project was called “The Pokhod Debate,” not mentioned here by Moore.

Volunteering for Brazil was Harry Sokoloff, Whittier, and for Australia was Alex Fred Wren, Lindsay- Porterville. I don’t recall why neither Shinen nor Efseaff were recruited for Brazil, maybe they already left the country.

The U.M.C.A. and all congregations except “Persian” (Kern Ave) refused to allow use of their buildings. I forget what days of the week were scheduled, how often, who led the organizing, and most of the questions. But, the debate was recorded in shorthand by Svetlana Vinogradov, whose notes were used to plan subsequent sessions. She and Peter Paul Lediaev married about this time and worked as a team.

I was not involved in the planning, but attended most, or all, of the first 5 debates. Perhaps a 100 or more came each time, and most came for all sessions. It was conducted very well due to intelligent planning and competent coordinators. The questions selected were about what most people wanted answered. Though open to the public, few elders attended. I think there was chai for those who wanted it.

After session 5, with Sokoloff and Wren together once, the U.M.C.A. was successfully lobbied to open their doors for the final 6th session, because it had a large parking lot. Lediaev approached me on a Sunday night, on the porch of molodoi sobranie (Freeway, Beswick st) asking if I could draw a flyer to promote the final session. I do not have a copy to show here,* but recall it announced something like: “Pokhod Debate: Australia versus Brazil”, then “or the Un-pokhod: Montebello”; with date, time, place at the bottom. “Un-pokhod” was my humorous reference to the concurrent  “Un-Cola” TV ads by 7-Up. Most Dukh-i-zhiziniki were not moved by either campaign, and preferred to stay home (many lived in Montebello). Those who already moved to Australia and remained, were typically the most zealous and/or afraid of nuclear war.

* In 2016, I tried to retrieve my papers on loan in the UMCA Heritage Room, Hacienda Heights CA, but could not find all of them, nor this poster/flyer. It appeared that much had been purged from the U.M.C.A. Library by zealots.  

The final session never occurred because Al Wren refused to participate further, claiming that we advertised a “boxing match” not a spiritual-religious-educational meeting. Someone called him to describe the flyer I designed and printed. Wren said he mostly objected to the word “versus”. Lediaev visited his home to try to comfort him to return for the final session, with no success.

I visited the Wrens a few years later, as they were packing to move to Australia. To me, he appeared have been insulted by his peers for participating in a non-traditional, ne ponashemu public “debate” at the forbidden U.M.C.A. where it was prophesied that the “devil dances on the rooftop.” He may have felt that his spiritually clean (chisti) status as an elder was threatened if he debated further.

Both sides of my family were associated with the Wrens. Al Wren’s father, Fred Wren, was among the “Arizona 6” during WWI with my grandfather, Yakov Danielich Conovaloff, in federal prison for not registering for the draft and upon release, not signing any papers. 6 of the 34 arrested became military prisoners, until pardoned after the war. The Wrens credit my taller grandfather for saving their shorter father from excessive beating by prison guards by telling them to beat him instead of the little guy. Wren later wrote the only book to date about this history: True believers: Prisoners for conscience (1991, 179 pages).

Al Wren’s nickname was “Al Beaner” from the “Beaner” gang in the Flats who all wore beanies, hats, some perhaps with small propellers on top. He was best friends (BF) with my oldest uncle John Andrew Shubin, whose Beaner nicknames were “Coe” and “Coey.”

I recall the 5th session, where, in my opinion, Australia won because Wren knew more, and quickly cited many prophecies about pokhod, going “South”, and/or for Australia than Sokoloff could recall for Brazil. Wren had done his homework for decades, collecting every prophecy he witnessed or heard about in a notebook. It was like his personal appendix or addendum to the Kniga solntse, dukh i zhizn’.

The loss of the 6th final session was one of numbers. Planners hoped to draw a much larger audience. The fact that Brazil lost the debate, in my opinion, was prophetic.

Besides Wrens, a few who attended the debate moved to Australia, like Jerry Bogdanoff, now in Perth, WA. Many more, it appears, heeded prophecies to live away from large cities and moved to central Oregon, including most of the debate organizers. Sokoloff stayed home as a postoyanniye prophet at his Akhtinsky, Samarin, Percy street (now Pioneer street) sobranie.

Brazil lawsuit

By the time this paper by Willard Moore was published and distributed in 2 journals, the Dukh-i-zhiznik colony in Matto Grasso, Brazil, failed. The Alex Kotoff family complained that the leaders were not obeying their own rules (“This is not what we signed up for.”) and requested to withdraw their share of money and return to the U.S.A. His request was denied. Kotoff claimed breach of contract, and struggled to get his family to California where he filed and won a lawsuit against the commune leaders. This case dampened discussion and prophesy among Western (American, Australian) Dukh-i-zhizniki for decades.

About 2005, the Kotoff’s recorded their story for history, distributed on C.D. (to be posted). I also interviewed Kotoff’s soon after their court case in which they described how insulted the women felt when Paul Efseaff and his wife returned after a buying trip to the local town, and only she would get a can of hairspray not to be shared. Many such examples of inequity in the proposed utopian commune created discord.

After the court case, Paul Efseaffs moved to Oregon, Walter Shinens to Central California (near Fresno). Shinens joined the most Dukh-i-zhiznik Mendrin (McKinley Ave, rural Kerman) sobranie, then in the 1980s separated to establish their own sobranie in Madera. (In the early 1960s, Mendrins’ separated from Buchnoffs sobranie. By 2000 the Mike Metchikoff family also separated from Mendrins’, but not to join Shinen.)

In 1984-1986 Efseaff published 4 essays apologizing for the pokhod failure, explaining how he was misled, confused, by the Holy Spirit and his Dukh-i-zhiznik faith.

1. A Labor Of Love — The Faith Of Your Forefathers And Mine (Spring 1984), 41 pages.
2. A Labor Of Love — The Mind and Gospel of Maxim G. Rudometkin (Spring 1984), 39 pages.
3. A Labor Of Love — In My Own Defense (May 1985), 16 pages.
4. A Labor Of Love — Least (sic: Lest) Anyone Forget: Brazil — The Molokan Jumper Refuge (December 1985), 32 pages.

A 5th part (“The Khlyst Connection”) was announced in booklet 4, but evidently never published.

I find the “A Labor Of Love” booklets too wordy and difficult to understand. The first 2 are online, and I plan to post all 4 summarized and edited.

1000s of copies were printed, reprinted (2007), and distributed to nearly all Dukh-i-zhizniki in America; and in the 2000s the first 2 were translated into Russian, and distributed in Armenia and northern Stavropol’. “Labor of Love” (Parts 1,2) was very controversial among zealot Dukh-i-zhizniki around the world. Nearly all copies delivered to Mendrins’ sobranie (Lake Ave., Kerman CA) were immediately burned, and at Novyii Romanovskiy (Freeway, Beswick street, Los Angeles CA) they were thrown in a dumpster. The most zealous probably never touched a copy of what they consider a blasphemous sinful booklet.

In Stavropol Russia, the booklet was falsely blamed on the Molokane. A delegation of Dukh-i-zhizniki who drove to Kochubeevskoe to complain, and were told by senior Molokan presbyter Timofei V. Schitinin, that (a) he had nothing to do with this booklet, and (b) neither the Dukh-i-zhiznik author (Efseaff who died in 2005), nor they, were Molokane.

In the late-1980s, about a decade after his pokhod to Brazil failed, I visited Paul Efseaff in Woodburn, Oregon. I heard that zealot Dukh-i-zhizniki shunned him and anyone who associated with him. I asked my former spevka teacher to elaborate on his booklet, which I thought was awkwardly written. Unfortunately I did not take notes, or record our final visit. He elaborated about the pokhod prophecies and how authentic each prophecy seemed at the time, organizing M.A.C., selecting the land, cutting trees, making lumber, building a long communal building, life in the tropical rainforest, buying supplies, and how he came to write the essay about his many secular (temporal, non-spiritual) mistakes regarding the legal business of their commune. They never consulted a lawyer, real estate agent, or the American Embassy, therefore never got clear title to the land. He compared their commune with neighboring farmers from Japan who prospered because they negotiated through diplomatic government channels. In contrast, he trusted the Holy Spirit entirely, which he confessed was a huge mistake. He should have also trusted professional ne nash men, and the U.S. Embassy. He was the last to leave Brazil, staying to protect the property, but was chased off by gun-carrying strong men who nearly killed him as he fled through nearby burned forest, and walked for days to find a bus to a city, then flew to the U.S.A.

After losing their case with Kotoffs, Paul Efseaff moved to Woodburn, Oregon, where he often attended the nicknamed “Norwegian church” in Salem which he probably joined, but never officially abandoned his heritage Dukh-i-zhiznik faiths, perhaps practising his form of dvoeverie (double faith, belief). When he died in 2005, no Dukh-i-zhiznik presbyter in Oregon would dare conduct the ceremony (the most zealous considered him unclean, ne nash, to their faiths), so independent presbyter Martin Orloff volunteered from the Los Angeles area. The ceremony was conducted half in English by the local pastor, and half in Russian by Orloff, who tactfully did not recite the Maksimist “new ritual” used by local Dukh-i-zhizniki.

Besides fallout between families and congregations, within families members departed. Some married out or joined other faiths. I knew both teenage daughters from each of the Kotoff and Shinen families who fled from their heritage faith and families.

Since Brazil, a few Dukh-i-zhiznik families have moved individually from the U.S.A. to Australia or to Uruguay, some back; about 50 moved from Armenia to Australia and U.S.A. (about 25 to each country); not to establish communes, but not all fully accepted by Western Dukh-i-zhizniki.

Current Western Dukh-i-zhizniki show no detectable arousal for Apocalyptic prophesies from “the world”, those not originating from their own prophets. For examples, the much publicized 2011 end times prediction broadcast to American evangelicals, Nostradamous for 2012, the December 2012 Phenomenon (Mayan prophecy), and many others, may have concerned some who left their heritage faiths and are more in contact with contemporary religious media, but they were mainly ignored by practising Dukh-i-zhizniki.

About 2012, in Stavropol, Russia, a prophesy by a Dukh-i-zhiznik woman born in Kars province, Turkey, announced pokhod back to Kars, and oral news reports that several were trying to reclaim their spiritual homeland near Mt. Ararat.

10.  References

Berokoff. John K.

  1969        Dukh-i-zhizniki Molokans in America, Whittier, California: Stockton-Dow.

Cowell, Sydney Robertson

  1942        "The recording of Folk Music in California folk music,” California Folklore Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1. pages 9-23.

[page102]

Kniga solnste, Dukh i zhizn’

  1928         Edited by l. G. Samarin, 944 Orme Street, Los Angeles, California.

Dunn, Ethel

  1967        “Russian sectarianism in new Soviet Marxist scholarship." Slavic Review 26.

  1970        “Canadian and Soviet Doukhobors: an examination of the mechanisms of culture change," Canadian Slavic Studies 4, pages 300-326.

  1973        “American Molokans and Canadian Doukhobors: economic position and ethnic identity.” Paper presented at the IX International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Chicago. — Published in Ethnicity in the Americas, ed. Frances Henry, Walter de Gruyter, Jan 1, 1976, pages 97-114.

Fernandez, James

  1974        “The mission of metaphor in expressive culture." Current Anthropology 15.

Hostetler, John A.

  1968         Amish Society. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. Revised edition.

Klibanov, A. I.

  1965a         lstoriia religioznogo sektanstvav rossii, 60e gody XIXv—1917. Moscow: Nauk. — «История религиозного сектантства в россии, 60 е годы хх в-1917»

  1965b        "The dissident denominations of the past and today." Soviet Sociology 3.

  1969        Religioznoe sektanstvo i sovremennost’. Moscow: Nauk. — «Религиозное сектантство и современность.» Москов: Наук

  1973        Religioznoe sektanstvo v proshlom i nastoiashchem. Moscow: Nauk. — «Религиозное сектантство в прошлом и настоящем.»

http://publ.lib.ru/ARCHIVES/K/KLIBANOV_Aleksandr_Il'ich/_Klibanov_A.I..html#001

  1984        History of Religious Sectarianism in Russia, 1860s-1917, Pergamon Press, Jan 1, 1982, 450 pages. — 1965 book translated by Ethel Dunn and Stephen P. Dunn. 

Maloff, Peter N.

1948        Dukhobortsy, ikh istoria, zhizn’ i bor‘ba. Thrums, B. C.

Mealing, F. Mark

1972        Our People's Way: A Study of Doukhobor Hymnody and Folklife. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

Molokan

           A newsletter published by the United Molokan Christian Association, 1059 South Gage, Los Angeles, California 90023. In 1980 the U.M.C.A. moved to Hacienda Heights.

Moore, Willard B.

  1973        “Molokan oral tradition: legends and mentorates of an ethnic sect." Folklore Studies No. 28. Berkeley. California: University of California Press.

Moore, William Haas

  1973        “Prisoners in the promised land,” The Journal of Arizona History 14: 4. Not related to W.B. Moore.

Otchet Dukhovnylth Khristian Molokan (Postoiannykh) po povody 150-ti Letnogo lubileia

  1955        (Account of the Spiritual Christian Molokane—Steadfast —on the Occasion of the 150th Jubilee of Religious Independence and the 50th Jubilee of their settlement in the United States of America), published by the First Russian Christian Molokan Church, 841, Carolina Street, San Francisco, California 94107, July: 22-24.

Samarin. Paul I., Ed.

(undated) Molokan Directory. The editor: 944 Orme Street. Los Angeles, California 90023.

Schmieder. Oscar

  1928        Lower Californian Studies: II : “The Russian colony in the Guadalupe Valley." Publications in Geography. — Peveril Meigs Baja California Research Materials. MSS 530. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego. Box: 3 Folder: 10, Journal 14, 1929 June

Story, Sydney Rochelle

  1960        Spiritual Christians in Mexico: Profile of a Russian Village. Doctoral dissertation. University California at Los Angeles.

Taniuchi. Y.

  1968        The Village Gathering in the Mid-1920's. Birmingham. England. Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies, 1968. Translated from the Japanese; apparently published in-house. (The Workers Advocate Supplement, 20 October 1991, page 26, bottom of column 1)

Vestnik

  1975        A publication of the First Russian Christian Molokan Church. 841 Carolina Street, San Francisco, California. April.

Woodcock, George, and Ivan Avakumovic

  1968        The Doukhobors. Toronto. Canada: Oxford University Press.

Young, Pauline V.

  1967        The Pilgrims of Russian-town. First published in 1932. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. New York: reissued by Russell and Russell. — See my review

11.  More by Moore

“Russian Molokan religious legends,” Master’s thesis, Folklore, University of California, Berkeley, June 1971.

“Molokan oral tradition: legends and memorates of an ethnic sect,” University of California Press, 1973, 82 pages — Based on his 1971 master’s thesis about Western Dukh-i-zhizniki mainly in Southern California.

“The Spiritual Christian Molokans in the United States : a cognitive analysis of metaphors and symbols,” Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1983

"Metaphor and Changing Reality: The Foodways and Beliefs of the Russian Molokans in the United States," in Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States: The Performance of Group Identity, ed. Linda Keller Brown, Kay Mussell. University of Tennessee Press, 1984, pages 91-112.

Spiritual Christians Around The World