Discussing the projects of our future travel, I was reminded by Colonel Tarasoff that we must not fail to make a stay in one of the villages of Russian peasants which were situated upon the route of our journey south. The Governor had so often sung the praises of these villagers that we were all anxious to comply with his advice. If only this fertile country could be inhabited by such a peasantry; what crops it would bear, what riches it would produce! He added: “Be sure to visit Gorelovka; there you will see what Russian colonists can bring to pass.”
Russian colonists! But, of course, Russia is not yet in a position to colonise, however much these distant provinces of her Asiatic empire may be in need of new methods, of new blood. Indeed, the rulers of Russia early recognised the expediency of introducing into their lawless possessions beyond Caucasus a leaven of orderly and strenuous elements from the West; and in the dearth at home of such material, which might be available for the purpose, they invited or encouraged settlements from abroad. It is possible that they were shown the way by the finger of Providence; it is at least certain that, when once the favourable opportunity arose, they did not suffer it to pass them by. In the earlier years of the present century the kingdom of Würtemberg was the scene of a struggle among the Protestant community, of which the origin was no less curious than the results were strange. It had been solemnly announced by several popular pastors that the second coming of Christ was near at hand. Such was the confidence of the reverend teachers in their prophetical powers, that they had already fixed the date when the sun and moon should be darkened, the celestial bodies should reel, the ocean roar, and men expire from fright before the crowning event had been accomplished—the Son of Man appearing with glory in the clouds. These signs and stupendous portents should be revealed to a distracted world in 1836.
Greater credence was attached by the people to these terrible predictions by reason of what was passing in their little world. Their clergy were divided on a religious question well calculated to touch to the quick the popular mind. The predominant party succeeded in effecting an alteration in the prayers and hymns of their beloved Church. Passions became inflamed which appeared to herald persecution, which rallied the faithful in defence of the old forms. Were not the days of tribulation already upon them; and in what asylum among the mountains should these Christians of a larger Judæa find the refuge which had been promised by the word of Christ? The same teachers assured them that such an asylum would not be wanting, and might be found in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea. The fearful nature of the Divine warning, the conviction that it would be early realised, the aversion which the new-fangled forms of worship inspired in many earnest souls—all contributed to steel the old Protestant courage; to induce a large body of human beings to leave home and native land behind them, and, without superfluous forethought, to embark on the perilous journey to that distant land where they might await in peace and spiritual contentment the glorious coming of the Redeemer of the human race. Their ranks were swelled—such is the irony of our complex society—by many who were in search of change and adventure; they left Würtemberg 1500 families strong. Two-thirds of these are said to have perished before reaching Odessa, where the remnant was reinforced by a further body of their countrymen, to the number of 100 families. In the Emperor Alexander I. they found a friend who extended to them extensive privileges upon their arrival in Georgia in 1817. They were settled in several colonies in the Governments of Tiflis and Elizabetpol, which have endured to the present day. They have been tried by afflictions and internal dissensions; some have perished by wild beasts, some were carried into captivity during the course of the Persian war. Still their numbers have increased, their standards of life have been maintained, and the traveller rests with pleasure within their villages. But neither the paramount object of their migration nor the wider purpose of Alexander has been fulfilled up to the present time. The jealousy of the Russian Church-State has deprived them of much of their potential usefulness; and mankind are still groping beneath dark clouds of error, faintly silvered with the precious promise of perfect light.[1]
The fate or fortune of these German settlements was recalled to me at Akhalkalaki not only by the mention of the Russian colonial experiment, but also through our intercourse with a forlorn individual, whose history linked him with the early history of that courageous company. What use to conceal his name, since I cannot hide his identity, since I am only dealing with the current facts of provincial life? It was the mission of Sembat Baghdasareantz to sow abroad the seeds of the Gospel, carrying his liberty and even his life in his hand. An Armenian by birth, he had pursued his studies in Europe, where he had resided among the Methodists of Frankfurt, although not a member of that persuasion himself. A Protestant, he disclaimed allegiance to any particular denomination; he belonged to the society of Evangelical preachers which had been founded some seventy years ago in Shusha, the capital of the province of Karabagh, by missionaries from Basle. Zaremba is the name of the teacher whom his successors most closely associate with the origin and early struggles of their brotherhood; his memory is joined with that of his colleague Dittrich, who shared his labours from the first. These missionaries represented a Society whose devout zeal had been directed to the Mohammedans of distant Persia; prudence dictated the choice of a base within the territory of Russia; yet the Russian Church was a formidable enemy on Russian soil. She claimed the right of baptizing and holding within her own communion all converts to the Christian faith. But an exception had been made in favour of those communities of heterodox Christians which were tolerated by the Russian State; it was permissible for a Mohammedan to become converted to their tenets and to be enrolled as a member of their sect. The Society of Basle were therefore encouraged to attempt the expedient of a protected colony, which should receive a special charter from the Russian Government and be invested with the character of a tolerated sect. An example of such a colony was already before them; their Scotch brethren were engaged in preaching to the mountaineers of Caucasus from an adopted home at Karass. In the pursuit of this purpose, Zaremba and Dittrich were sent to St. Petersburg in 1821. They were received by the same Alexander who had favoured the Germans, and in a spirit which partook of their own zeal. Liberal provisions were attached to the charter of their prospective colony, among which the right of baptizing converts was included. They were further authorised to establish a printing press, to found elementary schools, and to organise a seminary in which the higher learning should be dispensed. In the meanwhile they were invited to travel in Transcaucasia with the view of selecting a locality for their future home.
When the missionaries arrived in Georgia in the spring of 1823, their interest was aroused by the condition of the German colonists—their co-religionists, almost their countrymen, settled in this remote country without spiritual direction, without the elements of ecclesiastical order. Could there exist a prior claim upon their own activities than was furnished by the spectacle of this flock without shepherds, severed from the homestead and wandering where it might? Their first summer was devoted to the charge of these brethren, among whom the slow blight of purely worldly preoccupations had already sapped the vigour of early zeal. The success of their efforts appears to have awakened the Lutheran Consistory of St. Petersburg, to whom the spiritual interests of their co-religionists in Russia are entrusted by Russian law. The Consistory sent a pastor, duly commissioned; and the colonists were resigned into his hands. But the hardy Germans had not quarrelled with ecclesiastical authority in their native country in order to subject themselves to similar tyranny in their new seats; they disclaimed any connection with the Consistory, and refused to accept its nominee. The dispute was referred to Alexander, and was by him decided with his usual good sense. He consented that the Society of Basle should supply them with pastors, and he went so far as to endow their churches himself.
When the missionaries next turned their attention to the pursuit of their original purpose, they were confronted by difficulties of a different kind. To their surprise they were informed by the Governor-General of Transcaucasia that the Government possessed no land on the Persian frontier which could be spared for the settlement they had in view. The Mission itself would be allotted a building in any town which they might select; and, although the privilege of receiving converts would not be legally attachable, the Governor himself would exert his influence to protect them in its exercise should their efforts be blessed with fruit. Shusha was their choice for the establishment of their Mission; schools were opened and a printing press set up. But in the countries west of India the conversion of Mohammedans has at all times been an arduous and ungrateful task. Our own missionaries, established in Persia, are roused to extreme enthusiasm should a stray Moslem embrace their faith. I remember travelling across Persia with one of these pampered individuals, who appeared to me to be admirably equipped for early perdition among the surroundings in which his walk in life lay. The experiment was boldly made by the missionaries of Shusha, although the conquests of Russia, a few years after their installation, provided them with an ample field for conducting their operations without crossing into Persian soil. Zaremba followed in the track of the armies of Paskevich, distributing the Scriptures, duly translated into Turkish, and arguing the eternal truth of Christianity and the errors of Islam. But his books were torn in pieces by a population among whom contempt for Christians is engendered through their mother’s milk; and I do not know that the bread which he cast upon the waters has been found up to the present day. Better results might be expected from their labours among the Armenians, whose clergy they discovered sunk in the depths of ignorance, where the beginning of the twentieth century finds them still. But they had not anticipated the existence of this sphere for their activities; and in the absence of special powers it was not permissible to them to receive converts from a Christian Church. It was open to the proselyte to enter the Orthodox Church of Russia; but, if he desired to be baptized by a minister of the tolerated sects, his own clergy could claim him back. It was inevitable that, with the progress of their schools and religious teaching, such a case should soon arise. It is, no doubt, the lofty virtue and the traditional practice of the Armenian Church to respect the religious tenets of other Christian Churches, and to inculcate a large tolerance among their congregation of the doctrines held by their brothers of a varying creed. In this respect the reverend traveller, to whose work I am indebted for this little history, might have learnt but failed to learn a valuable lesson from a clergy whose general standards he justly condemns.[2] But the attitude of these militant missionaries, no less than the success of their efforts, touched the vanity of the Armenian hierarchy to the quick. Two deacons of their persuasion had become allied to the Swiss teachers, without formally renouncing their own Church. They were accused of influencing the people against their old religious practices, and, according to a time-honoured usage, it was ordered by the katholikos that they should be bound and sent to Edgmiatsin. The missionaries appealed to the Governor-General, who, in the spirit of a Roman proconsul, inquired for what reason they were interfering in the concerns of the Armenian Church. Let the Germans remain Germans and the Armenians remain Armenians—a ruling which was modified by the Imperial Government, to whom this high functionary referred the case. It was decided, much to the dismay of the religious communities, that if a man were determined to leave the bosom of the Armenian Church, it was not permitted to the clergy to retain him by force. But this favourable disposition on the part of the central Government was in advance of Russian methods. The victory of the missionaries was not of long duration; the multitude of their enemies overbore the power of their few friends. Their printing press is long since silent; they have no successors, except a few Armenian preachers, faithful to the old traditions, of whom our friend at Akhalkalaki was one. He himself was confined by Government within the limits of this remote fortress; two years he had already passed in this manner of imprisonment; for three more years he was sentenced to remain. He earned his own subsistence as clerk and assistant in the large draper’s shop. In Shusha itself, if I may trust the official statistics, the members of the Armenian Protestant community did not exceed twenty-six souls in 1886.[3] Russian policy of the present day abhors missionary effort; it has been justly remarked by a recent clerical traveller that if a priest wishes to travel in the Russian provinces he must divest himself of his clerical character and clerical garb.[4] I myself can testify to the extreme difficulty with which the Protestant missionaries in Turkey obtain permission to cross Russian soil. Such is the jealousy of that Orthodox Church, the object of British episcopal blandishments, to whose mercies it is announced that the Archbishop of Canterbury is about to transfer his long-cherished pupils, the Chaldæan or Assyrian Christians of Kurdistan.[5]
To Sembat the Russian colonists were an object of peculiar interest, not indeed in the same capacity in which they appealed to the Governor, but by reason of the kind of religion which they professed. Here was a people who, like himself, were exiles for the sake of religion, who resembled, in their aversion to the trammels of ecclesiasticism, the congregations in whose bosom he had himself been reared. The history of the Dukhobortsy or Dukhoborians—I became familiar with the latter termination, and such is the name of the sect to which these settlers belong—composes a chapter which is neither the least remarkable nor the most creditable in the history of the Russian Church-State. Their origin would appear to be wrapt in some mystery; according to one account a discharged soldier first disseminated the teaching in the Government of Kharkov and in the year 1740.[6] Count Tolstoy adopts the view, which would appear the more probable, that it was a foreigner, a Quaker, immigrant to Russia, who spread the seeds of their belief.[7] Neither their opinions, nor the temper which was the outcome of their convictions, were calculated to promote the smoothness of their early course. In a country where Church interests permeate every act of policy, they denied the necessity, even the expediency of a Church. Among a people attached with devotion to their temples, images and eikons, they professed the uselessness of all such external aids to religious life. The crusty formulas cracked under their merciless logic; and the grim earnestness with which these spiritual combatants grappled with themselves and with society wore out the patience or aroused the apathy of the State. Already in the eighteenth century they suffered persecution; and so bitter grew the feeling against them, that in the early years of the nineteenth century the Emperor Alexander I. settled them in the Tauric province, in the neighbourhood of the Sea of Azov. But Alexander was not the man to become the instrument of their enemies, whose hostile instances provoked an Imperial rebuke. It had been proposed that a further migration of the sect should be required; the ukase of 1816 enacted that no such migration should take place. The same edict recited the favourable testimony to their character which had been received from the official in whose district they lived, dwelt on the proved futility of the measures previously taken against them, and proclaimed that, far from meditating the repetition of any such measures, it was the Imperial will that every unnecessary restriction should be removed and that all annoyance of the sectaries should cease. The humane, the wise policy of this enlightened ruler has not been followed by his successors on the throne. Nicholas the First expelled them to the Transcaucasian provinces, and they are being persecuted at the present day. The principal emigrations took place between 1841 and 1845. They were allotted seats in the bleak country on the south of Akhalkalaki, whence they have spread into the Government of Elizabetpol and into the more recently acquired province of Kars. According to the census of 1886 their numbers in their adopted country amounted to 12,500 souls at that date.[8]
In the eyes of a philosopher the Dukhobortsy may appear to practise pure religion, and to observe the spirit of the teaching of Christ. Yet in the view of the majority of Christians their doctrines would be deemed heretical and their religious usages would be condemned. Such an attitude is the fruitful parent of misrepresentation and calumny; and the account of them which we received from our itinerant preacher was not untinctured by these defects. In justice to him one must remember that his own services would be repudiated by these fellow-offenders with him against the majesty of the Orthodox Church; that neither a Zaremba nor an Eli Smith would be welcomed by these simple peasants and solicited to direct and elevate their spiritual life. The imagination of the Oriental may have been coloured by the prejudice of the Christian teacher; yet I cannot doubt that the tales which he told us about them were widely current in the gossip of the countryside. According to Sembat, considerable mystery surrounded the religion of these peasants, which he himself had not sufficient knowledge to dispel. Pagan practices were freely imputed to them; and they were said to worship images of birds and beasts. Whether they worshipped them, or only regarded them as symbols, it was at least certain that they were in the habit of making such images, and we could judge for ourselves what purpose they served. And then he related to us a portion of the story of Lukeria—half-goddess and half-queen.
September 5.—In the East mankind is usually a monotonous animal, which you would scarcely notice, such is the majesty of his natural surroundings, were it not for the needs which you share in common with him, and which he most indifferently supplies. It was therefore with expectations of no ordinary character that we set out from Akhalkalaki to visit the Russian colonies on the southern margin of the great plain. The direct distance between the town and Gorelovka, the principal settlement, is seventeen miles. The road, although it constitutes the avenue of communication with Alexandropol, is little better than a track. In places the carriage is jolted in a merciless manner by protruding boulders, embedded in the soil. We started at half-past two, on a course a little east of south; the vastness of the expanse and the billowing surface of the naked soil suggested the appearance of the sea. But the horizon was outlined by the forms of lofty ranges, encircling the floor of the plain. Banks of white and grey cloud were suspended about their summits, while the zenith was blue and the air crisp, yet full of sun.
At three o’clock we gained the margin of the Toporovan river, a flash of water slowly flowing over the surface of the plain. On the further bank a small Armenian village; a little Tartar settlement on this shore. We paused awhile, that we might realise the features of the landscape, the same we had commanded from the summit of Abul. On our left hand we were skirting some stony hummocks, which flank the mass of Abul. That broad-based mountain rose beyond them, closing the landscape in the east. On our point of course, some eight miles distant, a range of gentle vaulting stretched from east by south to west by north. It may be identified with the outer framework of the mountains which encircle Lake Chaldir. In the south-west we discerned a break in the ranges, the distant passage of the Kur. On our right the level plain; and beyond it, at a long interval, the lofty ridges which border the Kur on the left bank. Behind us, from a second cleft or opening in the mountains, a long serrated ridge, which belongs to the northern border ranges, and which formed a striking feature in the prospect from Abul. This chain and that in the west appeared to be the highest, except for the nearer outline of Abul.