Armenia, Travels and Studies (Volume 1 of 2) / The Russian Provinces

by H. F. B. Lynch

The general arrangement and appearance of the chapel or apartment in which they used to meet for prayer is this—the low ceiling is composed of narrow pine planks, the surface being relieved by delicate wood beadings along the seams where plank meets plank. The large pier of the stove projects boldly into it from the side of the door. The walls of such rooms are in general covered with a neat paper of common Russian pattern, and the floors are either painted a reddish colour, or the boards are left natural, and stopped, and scrubbed daily, like the deck of a yacht. Round this particular apartment there runs a low bench; this is the only sitting-place. Large pots of flowers, carefully pruned and tended, bloomed in the deep embrasures of the windows, and broke the light, diffused about the sober apartment in a warm and regular glow. In that part of the building where the queen used to live, the rooms, although smaller, presented a similar appearance; they were maintained in the same state of scrupulous cleanliness as though she inhabited them still. The furniture had all been removed from them; but, in addition to the pots of beautiful flowers, there was in each a dish of Easter eggs.

Fig. 21. Summer Pavilion at Gorelovka.

In the centre of the garden among the rose-bushes stands the summer pavilion of the queen (Fig. [21]). The kernel of the structure may be described as consisting of two square boxes, placed one above the other, and serving as living rooms. Each side of the upper room is broken by a large window; so that the view from within embraces the whole settlement and all the landscape around. The lower room contains a bed and a row of pegs, on which, behind a light covering, hang the dresses of the queen; that above is bare of all furniture, and was always used as a sitting-room. A broad wooden balcony with staircase runs round this inner kernel, supported on pillars of wood. They have lavished all their skill upon the decoration of this balcony, enriching it with delicate fretwork traceries and with figures placed at the angles of the roof. At each corner sits a dove with wings outspread, while on the summit of the roof a dove is just alighting, the wings just closing, the legs outstretched. In front of the pavilion, on the side of the house, there is a large standard lantern, a work of curious design and fancy, surmounted by an image of St. George and the dragon, carved with much life and vigour in wood.

By my side stood the man who had made these images, and I asked him whether they had any religious meaning, peculiar to their creed. I was loath to put the question, so obvious was their purpose, so universal the symbolism they implied. He answered good-humouredly that they were pure ornaments, and that he was flattered by my appreciation of his skill.

In a room, removed from the part of the village in which the queen lived, they showed us her furniture and effects, her personal ornaments, and every detail of her attire. Everything that belonged to her had been carefully kept and cherished, like the relics of a saint. Her possessions had been those of a simple peasant woman, verging on the middle class—a velvet chair or two, some statuettes in plaster, a few chromo-lithographs. Many trays of coloured Easter eggs were here collected—the offerings, I suppose, of many happy Easters, when she had led their congregations of prayer.

Seven years had elapsed, at the time of our visit, since they had lost their beloved Lukeria Vasilievna, their leader both in spiritual and in temporal matters; they honoured and obeyed her like a queen.[11] Her influence was supreme among the settlers on these highlands; and it appears to have extended to all the colonists in Transcaucasia of the Dukhobortsy sect. The traveller Radde, who visited Gorelovka in 1875, was privileged to meet her in her home. He describes her as a widow in the thirties, strong, tall, of full but still shapely forms. Her features wore the imprint of beauty. He testifies to the veneration in which she was held. That Lukeria was nothing more to them than the contemporary holder of an office which had been the outcome of their religious and social needs, would, I think, be no less fallacious to suppose than to credit the rumours current in the country that it had been in the character of a divine personage that her people had submitted themselves to her will. A childlike nature, at once the product of the religious temperament and its peculiar pride, may find it difficult to discriminate between the emotions of worship and of love. When I questioned them, they strongly disclaimed for Lukeria any pretension to supernatural gifts, and they rejected as a fable the imputation that they had paid her divine honours. They had loved and revered in her a good and noble woman, who raised their lives, relieved their sorrows, and led their aspirations towards the higher life. The evidence of her work and example is written in the appearance of this model village, and in the demeanour of its inhabitants. All were well clothed and clean and well nourished; it was a pleasure to see them go about their business in their quiet, earnest way. I saw no poor people in Gorelovka, not a sign of the habitual squalor of the East. Provision had been made for the orphans and the destitute, and I understood that all the colonists of the neighbourhood contribute to the funds. But what impressed me most, beside the evidence of their affection in these dwellings and this enclosure maintained in neatest order, as though in spirit she inhabited them still, was the love of flowers which the queen appears to have developed in her people and brought them to share with her. In the decline of wealth and of the arts, the sight of garden flowers becomes more and more rare in the East; and, at best, they are there little more than the ornament of luxury and the setting of sensual delights. At Gorelovka one cannot doubt that these geraniums and roses are cultivated for their own sake alone.

The religion of the Dukhobortsy resembles that of our own extreme Protestants; it is the Government fans their zeal into destroying flames. That they are Christians there can, I think, be scarcely any doubt; they told me positively that they acknowledged and worshipped Christ as God.[12] But God is a spirit, and they that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth. The spirit of God dwells in the souls of His servants, who themselves are sons of God. How therefore can a church, an image or an eikon claim reverence as a holy thing? In these there dwells no spirit, no effluence of Godhood; the Church of God is the human soul. Reasoning thus, the Dukhobortsy bow to one another after prayer, saluting the divinity that resides in man. Scripture they accept; but the book of God must be a living book, a book to which there is never any end. Hence their religious conceptions float about in the mouths of the people, in the form of psalms. New psalms may be sung; but the old psalms never perish—the Word of God, old yet ever new. They reject priests and all the apparatus of official religion, and themselves conduct whatever simple ceremonies may be necessary upon birth, at marriage and after death.

The moral ideas of the Dukhobortsy are such as might be expected from a people who hold this lofty view of the nature of man. Man, being the receptacle of the divinity, must not injure, must not kill his fellow-man. Hence they do not see the necessity of judicial tribunals; for they do not wish to wrong any man. Nor do they consider that one man should exercise authority over another; each one must do his duty, because it is his duty, and no compulsion can be necessary from outside.

That from such peaceful surroundings there should issue fierce dissensions, that a people trained to mutual love and forbearance should be inflamed by the worst passions of an opposite nature, and turn the hand which they had been unwilling to lift against their fellow-men upon the brothers of their own creed, is a melancholy example of the failure of purely emotional methods to elevate permanently the nature of man. It seems there are no short cuts to virtue; the standards attained under the impulse of religious enthusiasm have but an ephemeral life. With the death of Lukeria was removed the personality and visible example for which simple natures crave; and the exaggeration of sentiment, of which she had been the object, brought with it its own revenge. Although cut off at the early age of forty-three years, the queen was already a widow when she died. Her marriage had been childless, and, even had she possessed a natural successor, the place which she occupied in the imagination of her people would perhaps have been impossible to fill. Yet scarcely a year had elapsed from the time of her death when a pretended successor arose—a boy, who, I believe, claimed relationship with her, and who presumed to be worthy to wear the mantle which had hitherto descended on none. The inhabitants of Gorelovka, whose version of the story I am giving, were emphatic in their statement that this youth was an impostor. “He told lies,” was the expression which they used. His authority had never been acknowledged by them, and he had stirred up their own brethren against them. I gathered that they had not stopped short of actual violence in the ardour of religious and partisan zeal. Gorelovka, it appears, had been solid against the usurper; but opinions had been divided in the neighbouring villages and throughout the community settled in Transcaucasia of the Dukhobortsy sect. The Russian Government, as was natural, surveyed the situation from the standpoint of hard-headed prudence; they were not anxious to see installed a successor to Lukeria and a revival of the old religious flame. The weight of their authority was thrown in the scale against the pretender; he was suppressed without delay and banished from the country to a remote exile in the north.