Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)
Sept 23 2004

Last Days of the Georgian Dukhobors

Squeezed out by their neighbours in southern Georgia, the religious
sect is returning to the land of its forefathers.

By Mark Grigorian in Gorelovka, Georgia (Photographs by Ruben
Mangasarian) (CRS No. 254, 23-Sep-04)

A large loaf of white bread, which our hostess had just pulled out of
the old Russian stove, was lying on the table surrounded by cheese,
tomatoes and sour cream. Suddenly a bottle of `samogon’, strong
Russian homemade alcoholic brew, appeared from nowhere as if by
magic.

`Oh no, don’t pour me any,’ 75-year-old Aunt Niura protested in
embarrassment but took the glass and immediately pronounced a toast.
`To your health! If your health is strong, then everything else will
follow. But if not…’

She was interrupted by her neighbour Nastya, `I just wish that God
keeps at least a handful of people here. Because if everyone leaves,
what will become of all of this?’

`Let’s drink to our dear little corner, to our mountains…’

That little corner is the village of Gorelovka in the mountains of
southern Georgia, home to some of the last members of the Dukhobor
sect to remain in the country. Sadly, they may not last long. Almost
all have close relatives in Russia and almost all are planning to
emigrate.

Only fifteen years ago Dukhobors inhabited eight villages, but today
the community, which once boasted some 7,000 people, shrank to less
than 700.

Dukhobors (the Russian word means `spirit wrestlers’) are ethnic
Russians, representatives of a rare Christian Orthodox sect expelled
to the Caucasus in the mid-nineteenth century.

They do not recognise the church or priests, but believe that each
man’s soul is a temple. Dukhobors do not worship the cross or icons
and they reject the church sacraments. They believe that Jesus Christ
transmigrated into God’s chosen people – the Dukhobors. The life of
every Dukhobor should serve as an example for others because love and
joy, peacefulness and patience, faith, humility and abstinence, reign
in each believer.

In the late 19th century, having become acquainted with the ideas of
the great writer and pacifist Leo Tolstoy, the Dukhobors refused to
serve in the Russian Tsar’s army. And in 1895 they famously collected
together all their weaponry and set fire to it.

`The Dukhobors put all the weapons into one big pile and lit it up,’
said Tatyana Chuchmayeva, leader of the Dukhobor community in
Georgia. `When the government called in the Cossacks, they stood
around the fire holding each other’s hands and sang psalms and
peaceful songs. All the time the Cossacks were flogging them with
whips.’

Many of those who burned the weapons were punished and around 500
families were exiled to Siberia. However, Tolstoy managed, with the
help of English Quakers, to organise the resettlement of Dukhobors to
Canada where they were spared military service.

Many others stayed in Georgia and survived all the tribulations of
the 20th century.

However, life under independent Georgia has proved the biggest test.
Two censuses conducted in 1989 and 2002 show that of 340,000 Russians
that lived in Georgia in 1989 less than ten per cent – about 32,500
people – remained there thirteen years later. Other ethnic minorities
also left.

Fyodor Goncharov, chairman of the Gorelovka village council, said
that the first wave of emigration occurred in 1989-1991 when the
extreme nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia was leader of Georgia. About
half of the Dukhobor population left the region.

In the late 1980s, the Merab Kostava Foundation was set up in Tbilisi
with the stated aim of making Georgians the dominant ethnic group.
They focussed strong attention on the southern province of
Samtskhe-Javakheti, where over 90 per cent were ethnic-Armenians and
the rest, with few exceptions, were Russian Dukhobors.

The Merab Kostava Foundation bought about 200 of the Dukhobors’
houses and gave these to Georgians. Clothes and funds were provided
to the new arrivals.

However, the experiment failed. `They could not endure our living
conditions and ran away from here after one year,’ said Konstantin
Vardanian, a journalist from the local town of Ninotsminda. `During
the first winter they heated their houses with coal and firewood that
the foundation had left for them. Then, after they ran out of coal,
they lived in one room of the house and pulled up floors in the other
rooms and burnt them in stoves. When spring came they all left.’

Local Armenians were alarmed by the Merab Kostava project and one
result was that the Armenian Javakh Committee, founded to fight for
Armenian rights in Javakheti, also began to buy houses from Dukhobors
– just to keep them out of Georgian hands. `It was some sort of
competition, really,’ Vardanian said, with Armenians and Georgians
vying for the same houses in Dukhobor villages.

At first, Armenians enjoyed being neighbours to the Dukhobors.
`Akhalkalaki people always preferred to buy butter, cheese, curd
cheese and other dairy products from Dukhobors,’ remembers Karine
Khodikian, a well-known Armenian writer originally from the local
town of Akhalkalaki. `It was a sign of respect for them, their
cleanliness and tidiness.’

But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenians got envious of
the Dukhobors and their apparently orderly, calm lives. `Armenians
saw that the Dukhobor community in Gorelovka was self-sustaining,
they said that Canadians Dukhobors helped it,’ Vardanian said.

Armenians from mountain villages, where living conditions were much
worse than in Gorelovka, began to move into the houses purchased by
the Javakhk Committee and to buy land. They were joined by immigrants
from Armenia who used to live in the city of Gumri and its
neighbouring villages – a region almost entirely demolished by the
1988 earthquake. Relations between the Dukhobors and these newcomers
was far worse than with their old neighbours.

Enterprising Armenians opened small shops and started producing sour
cream, butter and cheese, traditional Dukhobor products. They
purchase milk from the Dukhobors, but the latter are very unhappy
with the buying prices.

`Armenians buy milk in our village,’ said Goncharov. `Then they make
cheese out of it, take it to Tbilisi and sell it. They pay us only 30
tetri for a litre (about 15 cents), while we have to pay 70 or 80
tetri just for one litre of fuel.’

Dukhobor villager Sveta Gonachrova said that her neighbours were
frightened by the incoming Armenians, `You step outside and get
punched in the face.’

Vardanian believes that antipathy between the Dukhobors and Armenians
is not the only reason Dukhobors are leaving, but `it contributed’.

This new wave of emigration has found help from the Russian
authorities.

In December 1998, Russia’s then-prime minister Yevgeny Primakov
signed a decree on assistance to the Georgian Dukhobors and the
Russian parliament, the State Duma passed a special resolution on the
group. The International Organisation for Migration helped with the
resettlement, while Georgia’s emergencies ministry provided buses.

In January 1999, community leader Lyuba Goncharova led a large number
of her community on a journey whose final point of destination was
the Bryansk region of Russia. Many of those left behind are now
seeking help from the Russian embassy in Tbilisi to go and join them.

The remaining Dukhobors say they are worried by Georgia’s new
president, Mikheil Saakashvili, whom they see as a Georgian
nationalist. There are also rumours in the community – denied by
Georgian officials – that all non-Georgian schools will be closed.

`Saakashvili’s rise to power scares everyone,’ said Chuchmayeva.
`Everyone is panic-stricken. People see what is happening in (South)
Ossetia and feel scared,’ she added in a reference to Saakashvili’s
attempts to restore central authority to that breakaway region.

`Now they are talking about making all schools switch to the Georgian
language… And that scares people. They are terrified that main
subjects in schools will be taught in Georgian from 2006 and our
children will not be able to study.’

Georgia’s minister for refugees and migration, Eter Astemirova, told
IWPR that `the main reason they are leaving, as far as I know, is due
to problems with the local Armenian population. There is no basis to
their worries about the Georgian language or schools’.

Astemirova said the Georgian state was entirely neutral in the
affair. Dukhobors are not helped `to leave or to stay’, she said. `If
there is a problem, we will try to address it. … So far, I don’t
know, because we have no information about Dukhobors.’

The cultural attaché of the Russian embassy in Tbilisi, Vasily
Korchmar, said another reason for the Dukhobors’ desire to leave is
the difficult economic situation in Georgia and its tense
relationship with Russia.

Gonachrova agreed that tradition counted for nothing as this
community made up its mind. For young people in particular life is
better in Russia than in Gorelovka, `We are sorry to leave, but what
can one do? There are [proper] conditions for young people in Russia.
Discos and all sorts of amusement. We have nothing.’

Mark Grigorian is a producer with the Central Asian and Caucasus
Service of the BBC World Service in London.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress