EURASIA INSIGHT
ARMENIA: LESSONS FOR A MOLOKAN
Onnik Krikorian 9/13/05
A EurasiaNet Partner Post from Transitions Online
It’s not often that you encounter a village that makes you feel like
an “outsider” in Armenia but this is one of the few that do, and in
every sense of the word. It’s not that the residents of this
ethnically homogenous village made up of Russian Molokans don’t like
visitors. It’s simply that their presence is not considered essential
for Fioletovo to survive and prosper.
The Molokans are Russians that split from the Russian Orthodox Church
in the 17th Century. Fioletovo, a village inhabited by less than 1,500
people, is the largest community outside of Yerevan. Their total
population in Armenia stands at just 5,000 although 14 years earlier,
when independence was declared, there were approximately 12,000
Molokans living in the republic. Since then, most have left.
To call the community “closed” is not too far from the truth. Apart
from venturing out of Fioletovo and nearby Lermontovo to sell their
famous sauerkraut at market, the village resembles a traditional
Russian enclave cut off from the rest of Armenia. You might even be
forgiven for thinking you had entered a settlement somewhere deep in
the heart of Russia.
Many consider the Molokans as something akin to the Amish in the
United States.
True, the Molokans use motorized vehicles but otherwise, alcohol is
forbidden as is marriage outside the community. And, for the more
strict adherents to the faith, so is television. Streets are
impeccably clean with every other house sporting a fresh coat of
paint. The men wear long beards that haven’t been cut in years while
most of the women cover their heads.
Their fiercely blonde and blue-eyed children are unable to communicate
in any language other than Russian.
And herein lies the problem. As idyllic and refreshing as the scene
might be, the situation in terms of education is just the opposite. In
fact, according to a recent survey of education in national minority
communities by the Hazarashen Armenian Centre of Ethnological Studies,
“Molokans continue retaining [their] virtues over education and thus,
the inertia of perceiving education as secondary continues.”
The report, conducted for Armenia’s education ministry and the
National Statistics Service was made possible through the financial
and technical support of UNICEF. It follows a generic survey on
education in Armenia held during 2001. Then, UNICEF discovered that
school drop-out rates for national minority communities, in addition
to those made up of refugees, were twice the national average.
As a result, one of the recommendations from that 2001 report was to
conduct a new assessment but specifically focusing on national
minority communities. Although Armenia is considered a largely
mono-ethnic country, 2.2 percent of the population comprises ethnic
groups such as Yezidis, Assyrians, Russians and Jews. The report chose
to focus on the three largest in the republic – the Yezidis and Kurds,
the Assyrians, and the Russian Molokans.
“We discovered that there were no problems whatsoever in the Assyrian
community,” says Marine Soukhudyan, UNICEF’s Education Project
Officer. “Historically, as well as culturally, the Assyrian community
values education highly and does everything it can to ensure that
their children receive a normal education. Of course, there is still a
problem with the availability of textbooks and this is a serious issue
for every minority community in Armenia.”
Like the Molokans, the Assyrians receive much of their own education
in Russian but the textbooks that exist are mainly left over from the
Soviet era and do not comply with the requirements of the new
curriculum. There is also an insufficient quantity of teaching
materials in minority languages, but Soukhudyan says that the National
Institute of Education in Armenia is currently contacting
intellectuals within each community to address this problem.
However, she says that there are more serious concerns. “For example,
during the last 15 years, only a handful of children from minority
communities entered higher education,” she explains. “We also
discovered that in Yezidi communities, children attend school for two
to five months on average per year. At first, we thought this was
connected to poverty but later, we discovered that this reflected an
attitude within the community towards education.”
“With the exception of the Assyrians, the Molokan and Yezidi
communities prioritize labor,” continues Soukhudyan. “There is also a
great difference between attitudes towards education for girls
compared to boys. In many communities, grade 8 is considered the end
of the education cycle. This is mandatory under Armenian law but the
real picture is hidden away by many other factors.”
Children from national minority communities are instead expected to
tend the fields and shepherd livestock rather than attend school. The
UNICEF-funded report also noted that some Molokan families have even
been known to pull their children out of school as early as the second
or third grade.
“Parents think that 3 years of education is enough for a child to know
how to sell milk, cabbage and count 10 eggs, which means that the
child will be able to earn money,” says the report, summarizing the
attitude of Molokans in Lermontovo towards education. “Having a full
stomach is better than having an education.”
Education in minority communities is therefore seasonal and governed
by the agricultural calendar. At the same time, because teachers in
rural communities are also engaged in farming, they have no interest
in recording low attendance figures because they too are
absent. Soukhudyan calls it a “mutually beneficial situation for both
teachers and the families of schoolchildren.”
Indeed, when the survey team for the report visited Lermontovo in
August during harvest time, there was not a single child in the
village. Even pre-school children had been sent to help their parents
in the fields. Every year, they work there until mid-October and
sometimes, the beginning of November.
Even so, school work is still marked as “satisfactory” although
children have learned little or next to nothing. In some cases,
especially in Yezidi communities, pupils and teachers cannot even
communicate with each other. In these communities, while the teachers
are Armenian, each new intake of children from Yezidi families can
hardly understand anything other than their mother tongue.
“Textbooks are also in Armenian but it takes two or three years before
Yezidi children can understand the language,” says Soukhudyan. “Until
then, the child’s development is frustrated and, actually, prevented.
There are some Yezidi teachers, of course, but as they generally come
from other villages, there is also the problem of transportation,
especially during the winter months.”
Armenian teachers sometimes use body language instead of words to
“explain and impart knowledge to students.”
And while adverse socio-economic conditions faced by rural
settlements, as well as the poor upkeep of village schools, are
detrimental to education, the main problem is cultural. This is
especially true for females. “There are those who even consider
education dangerous for a girl,” says the report. “They reason that an
educated woman may have ideas and not be as obedient to men.”
However, despite these obstacles, there are children in minority
communities that would like to enter higher education. In the Yezidi
village of Zovuni, for example, one girl cries as she tells of her
inability to study French when she finishes school. Another Yezidi
girl says that if given the opportunity, she would like to study, and
later teach, Armenian language and literature.
Key to effectively addressing this issue, however, will be to launch a
public awareness campaign highlighting the importance of education
among national minority communities. The governor of the Aragatsotn
region in Armenia has already committed himself to supporting UNICEF
in this endeavor. In particular, there will be a specific focus on
teaching Yezidi and Molokan children the Armenian language from an
early age, especially in pre-schools.
UNICEF will also supply 100 schools in five regions of Armenia with
“school in a box” kits that contain essential supplies to meet the
needs of 8,000 schoolchildren. The kits will also be supplied to
vulnerable Armenian communities, especially those situated in
depressed border regions.
“It is my dream to become a doctor,” says one girl in Lermontovo, “but
how can a Molokan enter university? We can’t receive a higher
education because we don’t know Armenian. Nobody here does.”
Editor’s Note: Onnik Krikorian is a journalist and photographer based
in Yerevan. This article first appeared on the website of UNICEF
Armenia.
Posted September 13, 2005 © Eurasianet