The Dukhobortsy, 1863

by Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin

In 1863, Russian painter Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin (1842-1904) went to the Caucasus in search of subjects for his canvas. His observations were published in "Vassili Verestchagin: Painter-Soldier-Traveller, Autobiographical Sketches" (F.H. Peters, trans., London: Bentley, 1887). The following excerpt describes his visit to the Doukhobors in Elizavetpol (present day Azerbaijan) and provides a rare, critical glimpse of the Doukhobors during their early years in the Caucasus.

...Not far from the town of Shusha, where these festivals took place, live the Russian sectarians who were banished from Russia proper on account of their indefatigable zeal in propagating their doctrines. They live as settlers among the Armenians and Tatars; and as their villages lay but a short distance off my route, I went so far out of my way in order to visit them, to question them, and to observe them with my own eyes.

From a lofty mountain ridge we looked down into a valley in which lies the village of Slavianka, inhabited by the Dukhobortsy. A little further behind the mountains lie some more villages, inhabited by the same sect, but these I did not see. Presently we met some of the inhabitants returning home in large parties from their hay making, and carrying their scythes and rakes. They wear white shirts, stuck soldier-wise into their white breeches, and caps with broad peaks. Most of them had a merry air, and were talking and laughing together. When they was me they politely raised their caps.

Dukhoborets - Doukhobor Man

The village lies in a hollow, by a rushing torrent that falls into the Kura. The distance from Elizavetpol may be sixty versts or a little more. All round rise mountains, almost bare of vegetation; though in the place itself, which numbers 205 houses, and some 600 male inhabitants, there are trees and more vegetation in abundance. The Dukhobortsy came, or rather were transplanted, to this place from the Tauride district, whither they had been forced to migrate from the interior of Russia between 1820 and 1830. Many of their old men still remember quite well their homes in old Russia, in the districts of Tambov, Saratov and elsewhere. The first batch of these were sent here in 1840, others later. They had a hard time of it at first, as they had to take up their abode among the neighbouring Armenians and Tatars, who treated them with great cruelty, constantly robbing them and sometimes going to the length of murder. 

There are no no forests in the neighbourhood, and the carriage of timber by the mountain paths is exceedingly laborious, so that they could not think at first of making a permanent settlement. Many returned to the bosom of the Orthodox Church and went back to Russia. Those who remained gradually improved their condition, and today, after five-and-twenty years, the settlements of the Dukhobortsy (four villages, if I mistake not) are so well built and well arranged as to be an object of envy to the natives of the district.

In earlier times severe measures were taken against their doctrines, and great efforts were made to prevent them from spreading; and it was with this object that the Dukhobortsy were transplanted to the mountains of Transcaucasia. The Tsar Alexander I visited them while they were still in the Tauride district, was present at their worship, and by his gracious behaviour not only left behind him a good name among the sectarians, but also improved their position in the community, which at that time was far from enviable. "It is only since his visit," say the Dukhobortsy, "that we are looked upon as human beings and suffered to drive our cattle into the town and to buy and sell in peace. Before that, when we went among our neighbours on business, we heard nothing but insulting remarks, such as 'You are no Christians: you are people who are not fit to show your faces among men.'" It is easy to see that the Dukhobortsy retain a vivid recollection of the persecution and insult which they formerly suffered, and that though better times came afterwards few of them would care to return to the interior of Russia. 

The main thought of their religion may be expressed in a very few words - one God in three persons, vix. God the Father - the memory; God the Son - the understanding; God the Holy Ghost - the will: the Trinity in unity. They have no sacred books, and do not recognize the Old or the New Testament, or the writings of the Fathers of the Orthodox Church. "These books," say they, "are written by human hands, and the work of human hands is imperfect." Their conception of Christ is very obscure: beyond a confused notion that He is at once man and God, they have not the least idea how He lived or for what He suffered. The sources of their knowledge of Christ are their so-called 'Psalms of David'. These 'Psalms' are the only prayers in use among the Dukhobortsy; some specimens which I have collected show how absurd it is to ascribe them to David, whom they hold in high honour. It may be that these prayers had more meaning at the time when the sect was founded; but in being handed down from father to son (for to this day they are preserved by oral tradition only) it is not to be wondered at that many words and phrases have been so corrupted as to make the most ridiculous nonsense, especially as these people can neither read nor write. But the Dukhobortsy are convinced that these psalms have been handed down to them word for word as they came from the mouth of the Psalmist.

Their mistrust of, or rather aversion to, everything that is written sometimes leads them into strange absurdities. Besides the prophet David, for instance, there are three persons of the Old Testament whom they hold in special honour; these are Ananias, Asarias and Misael; and the reason is that these three stood still till the last moment by the cross of Christ. "The apostle Peter," say the Dukhobortsy, "was very near to Christ, and yet denied Him: these three stood by Him." When I remarked that these three men lived long before Christ, and therefor could not be present at his crucifixion, they answered that it was not their business to criticize, it was enough to believe what had been handed down by their fathers.

"Is it not known to you," said I to some old men with whom I was talking, "that besides David there are other prophets of the Old Testament who prophesized a great deal of Christ, for instance Isaiah?" "What Isaiah do you mean, little father?" was the answer. "Do you mean Abraham, or Isaac or Jacob? Who can know them all? They are many, and it is a long time since they lived." As for the saints of the Orthodox Church, they allow that they may have been very good men, but no more.

The dogma of obedience to the authorities is beginning, under the stress of practical necessity, to come into force with them, and, on the other hand, the favourite dogma of the Dukhobortsy, "Fear nothing and trust in God," is beginning to lose its significance. This reminds me of an amusing incident. One Sunday (which day the Dukhobortsy spend in idling and drinking brandy) a discharged soldier (for many men of this class are found in the sect) was cursing and swearing under my windows. I sent down my guide, a Cossack, to tell him to take his curses elsewhere. I watched from the window how my Cossack accosted him: "What do you mean by cursing and swearing here? Don't you see that a stranger, an official, is lodging here? It is most unseemly." The drunkard looked contemptuously at my envoy, rested his hands on his sides, and replied in a sing-song voice, "I fear thee not, but trust in God." The Cossack made an angry gesture, and returned to me in great vexation. "It is no good speaking to him, sir; a rude fellow, as drunkards are wont to be."

The Dukhobortsy protest that they honour the Tsar, and that it is a slander to say they do not. "It is impossible not to honour the Tsar: only, we do not call him our father as the Orthodox do."

Their worship is extremely simple. One Sunday I was taken into a peasant's house where the service was to be held. The room was such as you may see in an ordinary peasant's house, very clean, spacious but low, with a great Russian stove, and decorated with fine towels. It was crowded with people - the men on one side, the women on the other - the elders seated on benches, the rest standing. They repeat the prayers in turn. When one makes a mistake the others correct him: "That is not right." "How should it be then?" "Thus," and then the prompter himself makes a slip, and is corrected on all hands. I observed that the mistakes are mostly made by the men: the women know the prayers better, and the corrections come chiefly from their side. The saying of the prayers lasts a considerable time, till the whole stock is exhausted, or (as more frequently happens in seasons of hard work) till the congregation shows signs of exhaustion and snoring is heard from the corners and comfortable places. Then some one suggests to the meeting that it is time to pass from praying to singing.

"What think you? It is close here: shall we not go into the courtyard and sing?" All turn out into the court, and the men again take their places on one side, the women on the other. This custom is strictly observed, for it is counted as obedience to the precept "During prayer have God's image before thee." The singing also lasts a long time, and is always in such a sad and pensive strain as to make one quite melancholy; one's thoughts turn to the distant home - to the Volga and the Burlaks with their songs. At the head of the men stands a precentor who begins each psalm. In the village of Slavianka this post of honour was held by an old man, who often came to chat with me, and never came empty handed: one day he would bring a piece of honeycomb, another day some fresh cucumbers; and I, on my side, never failed to slip into his pocket a handful of cigarettes, which which, as I heard, he made a great display before the neighbours. "All these the Government official gave me, to show his respect for me." Often he alluded complacently to the importance of his office - "It is not everyone that is equal to it: one must have a calling to it." Only the precentor and perhaps a few others keep to the words in singing; the rest merely make meaningless sounds.

Dukhoborka - Doukhobor Woman

Before the end of the service the congregation form a semicircle, bow, and kiss each other, the men passing in turn along the men's ranks, and the women doing the same on their side. They grasp each other by the right hand, bow twice, kiss, and again bow twice. A final and more profound bow is made by the men in the direction of the women, and by the women in the direction of the men. The bows look very awkward, and are made rather to one side. Each member of the congregation goes through this ceremony with every other member, without any distinction of age. But I did not see any very small children at these services. The singing goes on during the salutation; as soon as it is finished, they put on their caps and all go to their houses.

I wrote down their psalms as dictated to me by members of the sect - some old, some young. Both the old and the young, but especially the old, have a very imperfect understanding of what they say, and gabble the words off by rote without any regard to the sense. If I asked them to explain a passage the old men would answer, "Who can understand it? The wisdom of God is hard to grasp" or "God knows, I know not. So prayed our fathers before us, so pray we and teach our children to pray. As for what it means, we leave that to God." I did also get some explanations, but they were mostly very obscure, and it was impossible not to remark that likeness in the sound of words and phrases was taken for identity of meaning. When they are repeating their psalms, if they forget a word they at once get confused and have to go back to the beginning.

It also sometimes happens that a good Dukhobortsy leaves out a long piece in the middle of a prayer and is not conscious of the omission till he comes to the end. After a little reflection he will say, "I seem to have left out something, for I have come to the end too soon." Sometimes he will notice the omission at once. "No, that is not it. Read, please, what you have written down there." I read "and we become partakers of the holy communion of the divine, the life-giving..." "Yes, yes. Now write 'Saviour', " and he begins to gabble through the words by rote, "the divine, the life-giving Saviour - the divine, the life-giving" - add "the immortal". How does it go on? To make sure I am forgetting nothing, read it right through again from the beginning."

When they are saying their prayers together of course this does not happen, because each mistake is at once corrected by those present. They have prayers not only on Sunday but also on week-days, late in the evening when their work is done, especially on Saturday.

It is strange that the Dukhobortsy, with their sound common sense, should ascribe their psalms to the prophet David, seeing that the greater part of them contain the plainest allusions to the time and the circumstances of the foundation and development of their sect. As an instance of this I here give a prayer or psalm which serves as a sort of catechism of the doctrine of the Dukhobortsy. I repeat that I wrote it down word for word as it was dictated to me:

"The God whom we serve in the spirit we glorify in Jesus Christ. The spirit was given to us; of the spirit we partake, and are of good cheer. We believe in the universal almighty God, Creator of the heavens, and the earth, and the bright light. In Him we believe. We are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We pray to God in the spirit: in the true spirit we pray, and to the true God. With my voice I call upon God, and with my voice I pray to God. we make confession to our heavenly Father, for He is gracious, His goodness is everlasting; and as our sins are remitted we receive the holy, divine agonizing, life-giving communion of the immortal Jesus to the forgiveness of sins. We go into the church of God, into the only holy apostolic cathedral, where the true Christians are gathered together. We have an upright and honourable priest, not a false and wicked one, who is set apart from sinners. The mother of God we name and venerate, for she bore Jesus Christ to the forgiveness of the sins of Adam. We honour and emulate the saints. We adore the holy picture of God, the priceless picture of God, the holy picture, which sings and speaks: true pictures of saints, unlike written parchments, made by the SOn of the Father and of the Holy Ghost. 

The Tsar we hold in honour: God save the Tsar! Hear us, O God! We observe the fasts - continence in thought. Keep me away from all evil, from murmuring with my lips, from sudden death, from incontinence. Take away from me all untruth. We have marriage, an institution of eternal welfare, wherein we make ourselves sure. Into a church built with hands we will not go. The painted images of saints we do not adore, for in them we see no holiness and no saving virtue. Therefore we practice not the laying on of hands, but turn to the word of God, the life-giving cross. To our God is all honour due!"

After I had written down the psalms, of which the above is a specimen, I read them to various members of the sect in order to make quite sure that they had been given to me correctly. All assured me that, with some unimportant exceptions, what I had taken down agreed with the tradition as known to them.

These same Dukhobortsy, who glorify God and their faith in this wise, live an honest, reasonable, and prosperous life. These qualities, indeed, they share with other religious communities that have been banished and forgotten, such as the Molokans, the Subbotniks, and the Skoptsi in Transcaucasia. But, being acquainted with the Molokans as well as the Dukhobortsy, I place the latter far higher than the former in respect of morality. For instance, among the Molokans the use of wine and tobacco is forbidden, and they do not take either in public; but in private they indulge in these forbidden pleasures. The Dukhobortsy, on the other hand, openly drink and smoke and grow tobacco. The Molokans are not averse to cheating, or even to stealing when the opportunity occurs; with the Dukhobortsy, on the contrary, acts of this kind are so rare that you might count them upon your fingers. It is remarkable that the Dukhobortsy regard the Molokans as apostates from Dukhoborism, while the Molokans declare that the Dukhobortsy are apostates from Molokanism. Probably the Molokans are right. The two sects hate each other. "Godless creatures, worse than dogs," say the Molokans of the Dukhobortsy, who in their turn, say of the Molokans, "Are they human beings?"

With regard to myself and my occupations the Dukhobortsy showed much less distrust than the Molokans, who apparently persisted in believing that my visit had secret inquiries for its purpose, and their transference to Siberia for its probable result. The Dukhobortsy, indeed, were not at once ready to talk. "You question us about this and that," said an old Dukhobortsy to me, "but you have not yet told us who you are." "Why do you want to know that?" "So that we may know what we may say to you and what me may not. We want to know whether you are an official or not, whether you are a noble or a simple gentleman, and by what name we are to call you." I explained as simply and clearly as I could that I was nothing but a traveller who wanted to see what sort of life is led by Russians, Tatars and Armenians.

"You live in the mountains," I said, "and it is seldom that anyone comes to you, or that you leave your villages. Hence various rumours about you are spread abroad, and I wanted to ascertain what was true in these rumours and what was false." Some seemed to understand my motive, and nodded their heads in assent: "So it is, indeed; much nonsense is talked about us." There were even some "politicians" among them who thanked me for the honour I did them by my questions.

As I have already mentioned, the Dukhobortsy have no books and keep no kind of records. The old men cannot read, and do not get their children taught, for they consider such knowledge superfluous for peasants. The only exceptions are the clerks to the village governments, who are generally discharged soldiers that know how to read. When I learned about this systematic ignorance (for so it may be called), I saw that an old man had not been joking when he asked me to reckon how old he was now, having been a boy of fourteen when he moved with his father from the Government of Tambov into the Taurus district in the year 1822. "I have long been trying," he said, "to find this out; but there is no one here whom one could ask." When my old friend learned that I had travelled a great deal he would have me tell him where the sun goes to rest. "Is there, he asked me several times, "Is there, then, no place at all where the sun rests?"

I wanted to know where the men's dress came from. In answer to my questions the Dukhobortsy said theirs was a genuine Russian costume; but it is not found anywhere in Russia. As to their long and broad trousers, there may be truth in what they say; but what is the origin of the short archaluk, embroidered in soldier fashion, with a stand-up collar, which is always fastened with hooks, as among the Cossacks? This archaluk is worn by all without exception. The women wear the ordinary Russian dress, but their head-dress is shaped like a sugar loaf, and has a kerchief or piece of stuff tied round it with the ends hanging down. The houses of the Dukhobortsy are like the peasant's houses of Southern Russia. On the outside they are decorated with wood carvings representing a little horse, a man on horseback, a cock, etc; the interior is always extraordinarily clean; the walls neatly adorned with embroidered towels, samplers, popular pictures and other knick-knacks.

Their carts are very like those I was in East Prussia - great ladder wagons, ie. with the sides not made of solid boards, but of rails sloping outwards. A telega of this kind will hold twenty persons, and even a twenty-first can find a corner.

The village abounds in beehives, and a good bee master will make as much as a hundred rubles a year out of his honey. Besides honey they sell yarn and linen cloth, and in good years other products, especially potatoes and corn.

The soil is somewhat stony, but nevertheless bears good crops. They sow oats which yield ten-fold, or even fifteen fold; wheat and barley do not succeed so well as oats; buckwheat does well; millet, again, not so well. They also grow good crops of spelt. From hemp seed they extract an oil which they use for food, and also bring to market. Their potatoes and linseed are nothing to boast of.

The Dukhobortsy in the village of Slavianka, with 205 houses, have about 7,000 head of cattle. Their horned cattle, a cross between the native and the Black Sea breeds, have a splendid appearance. Their sheep, too, which they call shpanki, and which probably come from Spain or the south of France, deserve notice: their wool fetches from eight to nine rubles the pud, while the natives in the neighbourhood only get three, four or five rubles for theirs.
 

Dukhobor sheep - sketch by V.V. Vereshchagin

It is evident that the Dukhobortsy are thriving; it is only of their neighbours that they complain. About these neighbours - ie. the Tatars and the Armenians - they express themselves in very severe terms. The only difference between them is that the Tatars have recourse to robbery and murder, while the Armenians deceive you and cheat you on every opportunity. There is no end to their tales of robbery and murder.

"It is only since the arrival of the new governor of the district," say the Dukhobortsy, "that we have begun to live in any tolerable manner; before that we had no chance against the Tatars. They robbed us in open day; they would seize you, bind your hands behind your back, and hold a dagger to your throat while others drove off the cattle. It is useless to think of getting satisfaction or appealing to the law; if you do, you are summoned before the court from your work just when the day is worth a ruble, and have to go into the town merely to learn that the thieves have not been discovered. "So sign this paper, little brother, so that we may have no more charges brought on this score." And there the matter ends. When you undertake a journey, your friends do not know whether they will ever see you again; and if you come back safe from even the shortest excursion you say, "The Lord be praised!" If a night passes quietly, without a single theft being committed, we all thank God and think, "Perhaps we shall get through the day too without any misadventure."
 

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