Dukh-i-zhizniki in America

An update of Molokans in America (Berokoff, 1969).   — IN-PROGRESS 

Enhanced and edited by Andrei Conovaloff, since 2013.  Send comments to Administrator @ Molokane. org

Chapter 2 — The First Years   <Chapter 1 — Contents — Chapter 3>  Updated: October 25, 2024

Contents

  1. Demens Chose Los Angeles — 25 October 2024
  2. Bethlehem District — Updated:
  3. Dr. Rev. Dana W. Bartlett, Bethlehem Institutions — Updated:
  4. Mystery Woman, Land Donor Insulted — Updated:
  5. Bride-Selling Scandal — Updated: 25 October 2024
  6. Mexico Colonies — Updated: 26 October 2016
  7. Hawaii Colony — Updated: 26 October 2016
  8. Folk Medicine — Updated:
  9. Weddings — Updated:
  10. Funerals — Updated: 29 February 2020

1. Demens Chose Los Angeles

Click to ENLARGEPAGE  32 The city of Los Angeles was chosen, instead of Canada, for by these Spiritual Christians from Russia Molokans by P.A. Demens* as for their haven because was in many respects it was ideal for their purpose though they may not have been aware of the fact at the time. Los Angeles in those days (1904+) was not the overcrowded, smog ridden city it is today was in 1969 when Berokoff published his book. Indeed, by present day standards it could not be called a city but a pleasant,** quiet, overgrown smokey town with a population of 102,000 according to the census of 1900. It was a center of a fertile agricultural district*** populated mostly by white Protestant elderly people seeking health or a comfortable place of retirement in a healthy, mild climate as advertised.

* J.K. Berokoff oddly never mentioned P. A Demens, who diverted them all from Canada to avoid the fate of the Doukhobors there, to the City of Los Angeles, and falsely recast this "Brotherhood of Spiritual Christians" into a simple single unique word: "Molokans" (dairy eaters). He probably re-branded them with this very easy-to-pronounce word to simplify their introduction as ideal White Protestant settlers, hard workers, non-drinkers, non-smokers, etc. Few were Molokane, and most moved to San Francisco. The non-Molokane were a diverse mixture of about 25 different congregations, much too complicated for him to quickly explain.

For 30 years, since he arrived to the U.S. in the 1880s, this Russian-born tycoon Pyotr Alexeyevitch Dementyev (Пётр Алексеевич Дементьев), recast himself as Peter Demens and became a prominent citizen and businessman. He wanted all Russian immigrants to come to Los Angeles first. For many with little money, he personally arranged for their travel to Los Angeles, got them jobs in businesses he either owned or had co-owned — a lumber yard, planing mill, soap factory, and commercial laundry in Los Angeles; his citrus farm in Alta Loma; and, with his friends. He also helped them negotiate farm colonies in Hawaii, Mexico and California; and explore many settlement sites in North America.

**  The Bethlehem and Flat(s) districts smelled of factory smoke and asphalt oil, methane from natural gas storage tanks, and horse shit, with flies, rats and ground squirrels. Many streets were dirt dusty, rutted from wagons in mud, and occasionally oiled.

*** Around 1900, Riverside

Few, if any, immigrants came here directly from their port of entry. Although there were many some foreign-born speaking immigrants here when the first Spiritual Christians Molokans arrived, mostly Jews and Italians seemed to live closest to us in the Bethlehem district.

English (11K), German (11K), and Canadian (10K, mostly English). Later Jews (Hebrews, 10K), Mexicans (35K), Germans (11K), Russians (7.5K), Japanese (7.5K), Croatians (7.5K), and Italians (6.5K) arrived with the Spiritual Christians. Excluding Mexicans, Japanese and Chinese, many may have indirectly come to Los Angeles These came after spending some time in the cities of the Eastern seaboard or Canada, and having heard of the wonderful climate advertised in Southern California, its roomy new towns and cities, fled the crowded tenements of the East and remained here permanently.

 

Settlement Houses  (added Sept 23, 2020; updated May 28, 2023.)

Immigrants had a 3-year probation to be productive or be deported. Many wealthy people created charities to help them stay, like settlement houses, the early form of today's social service organizations and agencies. The main difference is that the providers lived in the settlement house which was funded by private donors, decades before the government sponsored social support programs for the needy.

Several American churches had "foreign missions" and "home missions". Presbyterian foreign missionaries met and documented a new tribe of Molokane in Novorossiaya (New Russia), Tavria oblast, (South Ukraine) in      

In 1894 the Los Angeles Settlement Association (LASA) was founded. "The settlement house movement sought to help migrant and immigrant families to adjust to their new surroundings by offering a community space, social events, education, food, and shelter. By 1911, there were six settlement houses operating in Los Angeles, four of them with religious affiliations and two secular (non-religious). Many of the settlement house workers tended to be educated women from upper or middle class backgrounds. (Judith Raftery, Land of Fair Promise: Politics and Reform in Los Angeles Schools, 1885-1941, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992, page 19 ; Woods, Robert Archey; Kennedy, Albert Joseph, eds. Handbook of Settlements. Charities Publication Committee, New York, The Russel Sage Foundation, 1911, page vi.)


Major Immigrant Nationalities in Los Angeles by 1915

Mexican  
 35,000
  |||||||||| |||||||||| |||||||||| |||||
English
 20,000
   |||||||||| ||||||||||  + Canadian English
German
 		11,000
 		  |||||||||| |
Hebrew
 		10,000
 		  ||||||||||  many Jews from Russia
Russian
 		7,500
 		  ||||||||  Orthodox + non-Orthodox
Japanese
 		7,500
 		  ||||||||
Croatians 
7,500
 		  ||||||||
Italians
 		6,500
 		  |||||||

Though people of color (non-whites) were a large fraction of the population, advertisements for Los Angeles promoted it as the "White Spot of America" — propaganda to attract more white residents. "In 1920-21, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce created maps designating business conditions around the country — areas shaded black were “bad,” grey was “fair,” and white was “good.” On this map, LA was literally a “white spot” among areas shaded in black and grey, leading Harry Chandler to dub Los Angeles as “The White Spot of America.” The term caught on and by 1924 the phrase “Keep the White Spot White” was used throughout the city." (Hollywoodland, Finding Los Angles, blog by Rachel Kafka and Nate Hennagin, January 7, 2019.)


Map of the Foreign-Born Population of the United States, 1900
A Spotlight on a Primary Source by Henry Gannett, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/map-foreign-born-population-united-states-1900

Immigration to the U.S. in the Late 1800s : Map of immigration to the U.S. from the east and west, National Geographic Society
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/immigration-1870-1900/

Naturalization Act of 1906
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_Act_of_1906
Bolger, E. (2013). Background history of the United States naturalization process. Retrieved from https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/federal/naturalization-process-in-u-s-early-history/


Click for SOURCE

Source: "Immigration Education Leaflet No. 1," Annual Report of the Commission of Immigration and Housing of California, Volume 2, 2 January 1916, page 125.

Eugenics was a new "scientific" policy adopted in California to justify racism (White supremacy) and for population control. Preference was given to white, protestant eastern and southern Europeans. People of color and non-protestant faiths were not preferred. 

The politically correct and preferred immigrants were white Protestants from north-western Europe. Fortunately, the Spiritual Christians from Russia met 2 of these 3 preferred requirements — white (some blond, blue eyed), and protestant. The probable advice given by the first Russian hosts in Los Angeles (de Blumenthals,  Cherbak, Demens) for those planning to stay in Los Angeles, was to quickly learn to mimic the north-western European immigrants in America in dress, behavior, education and speech. Those who wished maintain their peasant Russianess should move to farms.

Note that the "Estimate of Foreign Born" table above is divided into European (most desirable) and Non-European (least desirable, colored); and the Europeans are divided into Slavic (less desirable) than the Non-Slavic. Earlier immigration was mostly White northern Europeans — the superior Nordic race. The Brotherhood of Spiritual Christians from Russia were classified among the moderately desirable upon arrival, but Demens did his best to present them as the "most desirable" future best citizens, as white Protestant non-drinkers, non-smokers, strong, honest and economical workers.

Demens had traveled extensively and testified to anyone who would listen that life in Southern California is the greatest. He enjoys the mild year-round outdoor working climate, new water for rural and urban use, new trade via the Panama Canal — and Southern California businesses launched a huge advertising campaign to lure "white" investors and "white" workers to their "White Spot" to compete with San Francisco. These geo-economic factors earlier diverted the Demens family from continuing their original move to San Francisco in the 1890s after they stopped in Los Angeles.

But the Spiritual Christians from Russia Molokans, profiting from the two year experience of the Agaltsoff group, were spared these needless trials when most they came directly to Los Angeles lured by Demens. Had they by some unfortunate mischance landed in New York, Boston or Philadelphia as hundreds of thousands of other immigrants did and were per force compelled to live in the crowded, unheated, rat-infested slums of those cities, they would have abandoned their place of refuge and fled headlong back to their village homes in Russia as fast as they were able to save enough money to do so because such living conditions were simply not for them.

Berokoff obviously did not know that they were destined for Canada because he describes what could have happened if they stayed in the United States. He obviously did not know that Demens knew they were coming and intercepted many at the immigration docks in New York and Winnipeg, Canada, to guide them directly to Los Angeles, and he loaned money for train tickets. A Maksimist might ponder if Demens was sent by the Holy Spirit to guide them first to Los Angeles where many stayed and accepted as their "promised land"..

In the first place they could not have endured life in a tenement house where dozens of families of all nationalities PAGE 33 lived together. Secondly, it was a positive necessity for them to have a place of worship isolated from crowds of non-Spiritual Christians Molokans (ne nashi). It would have been utterly impossible for them to conduct their worship, their holiday feasts, their wedding or funeral ceremonies in the prescribed manner. It would also have been impossible for them to conduct prayer services in their own homes as they were accustomed to do because other dwellers of the multi-familied tenements would have forced them to give up the custom. Not so.

Many of the first Spiritual Christians from Russia lived in cramped conditions with outsiders (ne nashi) as neighbors in the slums of Los Angeles. Many first lived in horse barns (garages) and small dirt-floor shacks built from scrap materials, somewhat similar to their former houses in Russia. One of the worst neighborhood slums was called "Ficket hallow" at the bottom of a wash bed along Ficket street south of Stevenson blvd. (renamed Whittier Blvd. in 1923) See map of Karakala below. My mother's cousin, Fred Wm. Shubin told me that their house in Karakala had a "dirt floor with no foundation" — just a wood shack built on the ground. I got to know Fred when he and his brother/ contractor W. A. Shubin helped found the Heritage Club in the 1980s.

This was the first climate these people ever lived in with no winter snow. Many tenements and cooperative housing in large eastern cities had community rooms which would have provided space for assembly until they bought their own property, as did similar immigrant groups in those cities. All large American cities had more settlement houses and immigrant aid societies, better than in Los Angeles. But Demens was very persistent to bring most all to Los Angeles, away from Canada which was their original destination.

On the other hand, Los Angeles, being a new city with no natural obstacles to expansion, was able to spread itself, allowing space between houses as well as front and back yards for the use of each occupant. Its houses too, were relatively newer with individual plumbing and in some cases, wired for electricity, which was not the case in the East. Many older houses used gas lights. All these things combined, permitted the Spiritual Christians Molokans the environment to practice their religions undisturbed. Not so.

While most of the East settled by immigrants was electrified by the end of the 1920s, California ranked third in the country.

 Click to ENLARGE

From: Madrigal, Alexis C. "A Map of American Electricity Use in 1921. Power was not evenly distributed." The Atlantic, July 26, 2013.
Original: "Rank of States as Users of Electrical Energy" (3 maps) with article: "Electrical Importance of the Various States : Map Indicates that Almost 80 per Cent of the Electric Light and Power Industrial Field Lies East of the Rocky Mountains [with 92% of population and 61% of land area] ... ", Electrical World, March 19, 1921, pages 650-651.
Also: "Electrical Rank of States," Literary Digest, April 23, 1921, page 21; and Welter, Ben. "An electrifying infographic," Blog, Star Tribune blog from archives, Minneapolis, MN, Feb. 27, 1921. Image saved at Archive.org.

The new houses with plumbing that Berokoff mentions was due to (a) an extensive slum rehab program conducted on the east-side of downtown Los Angeles, from the Mexican quarter (Olvera Street area), through Chinatown, to the Flat(s). The goal was to reduce vice (prostitution, gambling, drugs, theft, drunkenness, juvenile delinquency, etc.). In 1907, Los Angeles City began to fine slum landlords if they did not eliminating their "cholo courts" — several shack houses on a lot with a single outdoor water faucet and outhouses. Many of the targeted properties were along Utah street and visible from the streetcar lines extending to the new subdivisions farther from downtown.

By 1913 the Rev. Dr. Dana W. Bartlett was the head of a commission

Land speculators were selling property lots to developers, and contractors were building houses along the electric street car tracts farther from downtown which provided jobs for skilled immigrants. My mother's grandfather, Ivan Vedenoff, was a carpenter on at least one house on Anderson street along the Los Angeles River, which was pointed out to me by my grandmother Sasha (Vedenoff) Shubin in the 1960s.

Several police reports were filed, and large hearings held about the noisy "Russian Holy Jumpers" disturbing the peace. Much effort was expended to move the most resistant to city life out of Los Angeles to any rural area, including Mexico and South America. At least a dozen land agents approached them, some on behalf of tycoons offering large tracts of land.

After three years or so in Los Angeles, the more enterprising ones were able to purchase their own homes.* These immediately proceeded to install in their back yards the typically Russian institution, the "bania" (Russian: bath house), which, for a fee of ten cents were utilized by those who did not possess such a luxury. One enterprising Armenian Prygun family built a large family-size banya in their which they rented by the hour (@ 10 cents). They got free wood from Armenian rubbish wagon drivers who tossed it over the back alley fence, which saved the driver from taking it to the city dump and incinerator. It was not very long before other families also bad the added luxury of a home-made brick bake oven in their back yards where delicious bread was made by the enterprising housewives. Many in cramped houses cooked outdoors on fire (wood and kerosene), which injured people and burned a few houses. The air was polluted with smoke from homes, businesses, and burning at a city dump north of Aliso street on the east side of the Los Angeles River.

* In 1918, Sokoloff estimated that about 1 of 200 heads-of-household had applied for citizenship, less than 1%.

Although during the first years the Spiritual Christians Molokan families made the utmost use of each house by crowding each bedroom, there was, nevertheless, some houses where a large room was made available for the community as an assembly (meeting) house (собрания : sobraniya) a church and since the houses on either side were usually occupied by Spiritual Christian Molokan families, there was no disruptive interference from neighbors or from hoodlums.

I wonder why Berokoff wrote "hoodlums" here. I suspect from these kinds of stories:

Private congregation meeting halls were not likely until the 1920s due to a series of culturally disruptive events which removed thousands from the Bethlehem district of Los Angeles, and a decade later replanted most back to a more accommodating rapidly growing suburban metropolis east of the Los Angeles River called "The Flats":

By 1916, few, if any Spiritual Christians from Russia attended Amelia Street School, Bethlehem district, indicating most moved east of the Los Angeles River to the Flat(s). (Chase, Amanda Andrews. "Report of A Home Teacher," Commission of Immigration and Housing, in Annual Report of the Commission of Immigration and Housing of California, Volume 2, 2 January 1916, page 139.)

The inter-urban migration of Spiritual Christians from Russia eastward across the Los Angeles River, probably oriented these people to continue east across Los Angeles County for the next century. They aimed east in steps.

  Probably due to poverty and the need for group support by familiar people (relatives, fellow villagers), a "follow-the leader"
 
shifted those from Russia southward into the Flat(s), mainly between First and Fourth streets. This path could have slotted them eastward along a radial projectory from the city center to their low-class residential sector that continues today, along a ray from Los Angeles city center, through the Flat(s), Karakala, Boyle Heights, East LA, Montebello, Pico Rivera, and Whittier. The Jews developed their businesses along Brooklyn Ave north side, while Japanese tracked in-between, mainly along First street. In later decades the Jews would abandon Boyle Heights for the west side of Los Angeles; and, the Japanese, having lost their property during WWII internment, would maintain a strong Downtown to Boyle Heights presence along First street and Second streets but scatter to find new housing. The more rapid assimilation of "other" White groups who left Boyle Heights allowed the Spiritual Christians from Russia in the city to fully integrate among Mexicans (Hispanics) and Japanese which allowed them to maintain their separate foreign Russian culture probably longer than if they were concentrated in a White (Caucasian) area.   

The section of the city where the Spiritual Christians Molokans first settled was in a close proximity to all their needs. Lumber yards, cold PAGE  34 storage plants and the rail road yards where work was to be found were all within walking distance. The downtown shopping district was not more than half mile away.

The first 6 families arrived in Los Angeles about May 1904. They were led by Vassili Gavrilovitch Pivovaroff and financially assisted by P. A. Demens. They called their united faiths the "Brotherhood of Spiritual Christians," and settled east of the Los Angeles River on Utah Street, north of 1st Street, near Utah Street School. There are no reports of more arrivals until about 7 months later in January 1905. Many of the 1905 arrivals settled in the Bethlehem district, which was closest to the main train station and the Bethlehem Institutions where they got extensive free help in the Russian language, many free services and free use of facilities. During the first decade, many lived in small crowded wood shacks, some with dirt floors and outhouses, some in horse barns, for the cheapest rent. It was a huge cultural shock for people who lived in rural villages. Upon arrival, they saw street lights at night, tall buildings, electric street cars, a long bridge that separated the 2 clusters of their Brotherhood. They lived next to and walked among many nationalities and cultures — Japanese, Blacks, Jews, Italians, Slaves, Mexicans, etc. 

Click to ENLARGE
 Click to ENLARGE

2. Bethlehem district

 Click to ENLARGE


The Bethlehem district mapped above was bounded on the west by Alameda street, on the East by the river bed, on the South by East First Street and on the North by Aliso Street.

The label "Bethlehem district" was created for this history of Dukh-i-zhizniki in America because it was needed to identify this unique Los Angeles immigrant neighborhood that is often referred to, but was never officially named nor outlined in any publication. Up to 1909 the most common label was the "8th Ward." Now, and in recent decades, it is sometimes associated with, or part of, what is variously called the Arts District and East of Alameda. Historically, reporters often referred to a "foreign district / quarter" of which this was a part, but which shifted in time by immigrant group and by reporter. This Bethlehem district was part of the 8th Ward, in an area often called the "wholesale/ warehouse district." In 1909 Marco Hellman (son of banker Isaias W. Hellman) promoted a "commercial district" on the east side of Alameda, through and across the Bethlehem Institutions, to the Los Angeles River, to help destroy at least 9 of the of the 21+ residential units used for prostitution in the "red light" area. In the early 1900s the 8th Ward was the most blighted over-crowed industrial and commercial area with shanty shacks, the most bars, and the most prostitutes. Many of the incoming discriminated immigrants (Jewish, Japanese, Slavic) lived in garage horse barns with dirt floors and they cooked outdoors. Many rented a shack in "slums" and "courts" where renters shared a common water faucet, outdoor bath and outhouses. As many as 10 people would share a 10'x10' room (100 sq. feet, size of a small one-car garage).

Housing Commission, 1906-1913

In 1903 a city Housing Commission was proposed, but not formed until 1906, to survey and recommend demolition of slums and solicit investors to build affordable new housing with indoor plumbing. Even the women's clubs were asked to build housing and a maternity hospital for the poor. During its 5 years, the Commission produce 3 reports from February 1906 to 1913. The board and support staff consisted of men and women, least one medical doctor, architect, several building inspectors, social workers, and an advocate for the poor (Rev. Dana Bartlett). The Commission had no regulatory power, but worked with the Board of Public Works and the Health Commissioner. The social workers tried to teach residents how to live healthy, and the inspectors advised owners of building code violations. Many buildings were demolished near the Plaza and replaced with acceptable housing. East of the river, the Flat(s) and Boyle Heights had more vacant land to develop in compliance with the new codes. In 5 years the Commission improved housing for about 10,000 inhabitants, and it projected 100,000 foreigners per year when the Panama Canal will be finished in 1915.

February

"The Russians are gregarious and have formed a "Little Russia" covering an area of 15 to 20 square blocks. It has been estimated that there are 10,000 Russians in the city, many of whom own their own homes." (1913, pp. 20-22)

"There are ... 33 nationalities ... The majority of them are Mexicans, Russians, Italians, Slavonians and Austrians.

"The Russians ... are employed in the lumber yards and seem to have almost a monopoly of this work and receive from $2.00 to $2.50 per day. But among the Russians are some carpenters, plasterers and plumbers. Some Russians own their own [horse and wagon] teams and do heavy hauling. The Russian women find employment in the laundries and during the summer in canneries." (1913, p. 24)

Bridges built across the Los Angles River to extend streetcar service eastward to new sub-divisions caused many Bethlehem residents to also move eastward across the L. A. River into the alluvial river Flat(s) in the 9th Ward, followed by social services (Y.W.C.A. International Institute, Volunteers of America, Maternity Cottage, city parks, etc.)

Bethlehem Timeline, 1892-1908

The Bethlehem Institutions (1892-1914) were a complex of buildings dedicated to provide every service needed by the homeless, the working poor, and to assist immigrants with food, baths, housing, medical, citizenship and language education, legal guidance, counseling, clothing, furniture, job training and placement, meeting places, etc. It was a social support structure to uplift the poor, the "submerged tenth" of the population.

Immigrating waves of Spiritual Christians from Russia of all faiths were invited to the "Mother Church" where staff fed them, showed them to the bath house and laundry across the street, let them sleep anywhere, allowed them to use the halls for meetings (sobranie), helped find jobs and housing, orientated them to the local surroundings and city life in regular group counseling classes. The Bethlehem Institutes could temporarily house and feed up to 300 people in an emergency.

For 6 weeks in February and March 1905, 2000 American Christians marched, played music and sang daily through Los Angeles slums in huge evangelic parades to save sinners (mainly prostitutes and drunks). The Bethlehem Institute hosted the guest marchers when they marched by. More than 400 arriving Spiritual Christians witnessed this event. Years later the Russian prophet Bezayeff also performed spiritual "maneuvers" (маневров : manevrov). Bezayeff probably trained marchers in the Stimson-Lafayette Industrial School lot before taking his spiritual troops to the streets. At least one of his spiritual marches went to City Hall, a 1.5 mile (2 km) round trip. Bezayiff could have been inspired to march from the American Christians in 1905, or from Community Doukhobors led by P.V. Verigin who also conducted marches (Маршировку) and "maneuvers," which Sons of Freedom later interpreted as prophecy for their own glavnoe pokhod (Great Trek) and song in 1962. (Berikoff, Ahna. "Songs of Existence: Sons of Freedom Doukhobors Within Time," PhD dissertation, School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, British Columbia, 2013, pages 224-225. ) 

Despite the fact that the gas works (built in 1912), a soap factory and a brewery were located on the perimeter of the area, it was still primarily a residential district, populated mostly by immigrant Jews, Mexicans, Japanese and others (33 nationalities) with a good school in the very center of the area. The Amelia Street School where Berokoff and many pioneer families attended classes became for many Spiritual Christian Molokan children, from 8 to 14 years old, their first contact with American culture.

3. Dr. Rev. Dana W. Bartlett, Bethlehem Institutions

Dana Webster Bartlett was born in Maine in 1860, graduated college in Iowa 1882, taught in Utah. He continued his education at a theological seminary in Connecticut 1884 and graduated from the Chicago Theological Seminary in 1887; and the same year was ordained a Congregational Minister, married Mattie McCullogh, and was assigned as a Pastor in Missouri. In 1892 he returned to Utah. In 1896, at age 36, he was assigned to Los Angeles as Superintendent of the Bethlehem Institutions (1896 -1914). They had 5 daughters. He published 4 books (1907, 1911, and 2 in 1923). In 1911, he earned a Doctorate in Divinity. He was appointed to the Los Angeles City Housing Commission (1909) and Planning Commission (1910), California State Commission of Immigration and Housing (1912), Pacific Coast Immigration Study League (1912), and Pacific Coast Immigrant Congress (1913). After losing Bethlehem in 1914, he served as Pastoral consultant to First Congregational Church, Los Angeles. He died in 1942, age 81, and was Buried Inglewood Park Cemetery. Many Spiritual Christians from Russia attended and sang at his funeral.

Within the area there was also a Congregational church and a settlement house* managed by a sincere devout Christian, the Rev. Dr. Dana W. Bartlett who was the first American-born to befriend the Spiritual Christians Molokans in Los Angeles and who later became a close friend of their leading elders and who was also very helpful to them in many ways and was respected by all who came in contact with him.

* Several other religious missions, buildings and aid organizations were also in this polyglot pluralistic area to serve Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Pentecostals, Society of Friends (Quakers), Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc.


Click to ENLARGE

This is what Dr. Bartlett said of his very first contact with the Spiritual Christians from Russia Molokan people:

Click to ENLARGEChapter II: Russian-town

The flight into refuge. — The appearance of the Spiritual Christians from Russia Molokans in Los Angeles was as sudden as it was unobtrusive. Rev Dana Bartlett, an eye-witness, tells the story thus:

"One bright morning in the winter January of 1905 as I was walking along the street near the Bethlehem Institute, an institutional church, I perceived many new and strange people, Russian peasants as they later turned out to be. They seemed quiet, industrious, dignified, preoccupied with their own affairs. I talked sign language to them, inviting them to come to my church [Photo right].  . . . In a short time these people became the object of much attention in the neighborhood. Large numbers of Spiritual Christians from Russia Molokans continued to settle on and around Vignes and First Streets converting the district into a veritable Russian village." *
* Footnote: Quoted from "The Pilgrims of Russian Town" by Pauline V. Young. Page 11

In his books Bartlett called them "Russians" or the "Brotherhood of Spiritual Christians," not Molokans as stated by Young, whose book was edited by Berokoff. Also see a Christian cross on the Bethlehem church steeple which was cropped (cut) in Mohoff, George W. and Jack P. Valoff, A Stroll Through Russian Town, 1996, page 234.

The full title of Young's book is: Young, Pauline V. The Pilgrims Of Russian-town: Обшество Духовеныхъ Христиiанъ Прыгуновъ въ Америкѣ: The Community of Spiritual Christian Jumpers in America : The Struggles of a Primitive Religious Society To Maintain Itself in an Urban Environment. Chicago, 1932. Note the word Molokan is not in the title, but the word Prygun appears twice, in Russian and English. Young also mentioned Rev. Bartlett on pages 155-156:

Chapter VII: The Outer World: Citizenship And Americanization Programs
...
 Informal approach to Americanization. — In contrast with the proselytizers, there are other individuals who established lasting contacts with the [Spiritual Christians] Molokans. Among these, Dr. Dana Bartlett,(1) former pastor, is perhaps the most outstanding American leader in the [Spiritual Christian] Molokan Colony. He is one of the most venerated persons—a "living angel"—which the group found in America. Without exception, every [Spiritual Christian] Molokan who has come in contact with him pays him high respect and refers to his lack of ulterior motives in helping them: "Dr. Bartlett will never be forgotten by the [Spiritual Christians] Molokans. He befriended us as soon as we had arrived here. He stood ready to help us without trying to impose his beliefs. He asked us what we needed and never tried to decide for us what he thought we needed."
Dr. Bartlett's own statement (corrected) is significant:

The [Spiritual Christians] Molokans were convinced that I was not trying to win them over to my church. Their religion has considerable merit, and I worked on the assumption that a good [Spiritual Christian] Molokan is better than a poor Methodist.(2) They were cordial and trusted me, confided in me all sorts of problems. The first few years were very trying for them. Strange, idealistic, tongue-tied, they were exploited by many real estate men who sold them dry, sandy desert land with no prospects for water or crops. They moved their families hundreds of miles away from the main Colony, only to come back penniless, and a few of them broken in health. If they came to me before the contracts were signed, I could generally ward off an unscrupulous deal. ....
These people have genius in community organization of the type which they are accustomed to, but they are at a loss in the city. They have had enough misfortune to distrust social workers and social reformers alike and soon came to consider them intruders.(3)

    1. Others are Fannie Bixby Spencer, who carried on a form of settlement work for children of working mothers, Lillian Sokoloff (1915-1918), and Michel Leshing, an officer of the Los Angeles Russian Society, Russian by birth, and friend and adviser to many families.
    2. Italics added.
    3. Document 51b. Personal interview.

— End The Pilgrims Of Russian-town quote.

The Dr. Rev. Dana W. Bartlett, "The most useful citizen of Los Angeles" (1860 - 1941) specialized in urban renewal and immigrant assimilation. He was a graduate of Chicago theological Seminary, then an ordained Congregational church minister who worked in Utah, Missouri, and California where he was assigned to manage the church charity mission in the slums. He is widely known for advocacy for the poor, homeless, alcoholics, immigrants, 3 books, lectures, lobbying, city planning, running for city council (8th Ward), and developing the 6-lot campus of social services — the Bethlehem Institutes. He served as Pastor and Supervisor at Bethlehem for 17 years (1896-1914) until it was closed by the Municipal Charities Commission for poor management. Bartlett retired as pastoral consultant of First Congregational Church, Los Angeles. Spiritual Christians sang at his funeral in 1941.

The Brotherhood of Spiritual Christians arrived at the right time and place to be assimilated. The Bethlehem Institutions was a full-service agency that provided nearly everything the poor uneducated immigrants needed to become tax-paying American citizens — free food, free baths, free laundry, free temporary housing, free English lessons, free citizenship classes, free job training and placement, free adult education in Russian, free medical care and medicine, free meeting rooms, cooperative store, free recreation, free legal help, etc. Those who participated quickly assimilated, while the most introverted avoided outside help. After Bethlehem closed in 1914 immigrant guidance continued when the Y.W.C.A. started the International Institute in 1914 in the Flat(s) aided by the Salvation Army, other charities, and the schools hired 47 Home Teachers by 1923.

PAGE 35 The Spiritual Christians Molokans lost no time in establishing themselves in the district. In 1906 they already had their own cooperative grocery store and meat market on the corner of Vignes and Turner (renamed Temple) Streets where real Russian Molokan bread, home baked in their own brick ovens, as well as meat butchered by themselves in local Jewish slaughter houses could be bought. Matvey Konovaloff also had a grocery store at 310 Amelia street (renamed Garey street).

At first the Spiritual Christians were invited to conduct their own Saturday and Sunday meetings (sobranie) in the Bethlehem Mother Church, because there were very few suitable rooms in their overcrowded houses. Their traditional Russian service required a large room with a table and movable stacking backless benches. The American church, arranged with heavy backed benches and a pulpit, was awkward for theses Russians, especially the most zealous, when they arrived for whom the cross on the steeple may have been another distracting factor.

In 1906 too, through the efforts of Dr. Bartlett, a regular assembly church building main hall of the Stimson-Lafayette Industrial School, managed by Barlett, located in the center of the district, on Lafayette Street between Jackson and Turner Streets was made available to them. It was quite roomy, with a large vacant lot in the back where, as occasion demanded many samovars were gathered and prepared for meetings the use of the sobrania [Russian: meeting. Singular: sobranie; plural: sobraniya ].

For about the first 5 years (1905-1910), all the Spiritual Christians from Russia who met on Sundays at the Stimson-Lafayette Industrial School were led by the Russian-speaking Presbyterian minister Rev. Henry Teichrieb who mistakenly reported they were Stundists from Russia, an error in some literature. Anton Cherbak and others conducted free classes in English as a Second Language, citizenship, geography, and other topics to assist their integration.  

Most Spiritual Christians probably used this building for Sunday meetings until 1910. After that time the great majority moved east of the river bed to the district now know as "Flats", or the "Flat". The assembly church* too was then moved to South Clarence Street at 1st street address to the building now known as Klubnikin's Podval or Shubin's sobranie. 

* Note that Berokoff refers to his congregation as "the church", as if it was the main congregation in Bethlehem and in the Flat(s). Throughout his  book, his context is biased towards the perspective of his prophet, his presbyter, his faith, and his congregation — which he erroneously calls "Molokan." Berokoff avoids the history of other congregations which compose the majority of the diverse ethno-religious enclave from Russia around him.

Immigrants from Russia settled in in the Flat(s) mainly for socio-economic reasons — social closeness, jobs, cheap housing, running water, abundant food, free child care at school, social services, and fascination with the city.

Initially, each major congregation in the Flat(s) had its own store, transplanted from Russia and supported mainly by their own congregation. The same system of multiple stores occurred in San Francisco for the various Molokan congregations on Potrero Hill. Shopping at the store of another congregation was religiously incorrect, particularly for the most zealous adherents. Congregations with no store had a choice of where to shop.

When Dr. Bartlett said that the Brotherhood of Spiritual Christians Molokans* soon became an object of much attention he knew whereof he was speaking, for it must be said that their very appearance invited attention from various quarters. The men especially, wearing their beards long and clinging to their peasant clothes and boots, their shirts worn outside their trousers and girded like smocks, some even wearing home-made peasant pants, they were radically different from any other newly arrived immigrant seen in America.

* In his 1908 book The Better City, Bartlett did not call them "Molokan. He twice called them the "Brotherhood of Spiritual Christians" (pages 80 and 229), and "Russian" (7 times). No other terms were used. It appears that Bartlett understood these immigrants from Russia were a broad mixture of perhaps at least 12 different Spiritual Christian tribes, led by more than a dozen different elders.

The women too, with their black woolen shawls and their vari-colored, bright-hued Sunday clothes, were different from any women on the streets of Los Angeles. Within a few decades the bright Russian peasant colors and patterns, still seen on Staroobriadsty (Old Ritualists) near Woodburn, Oregon, were normalized to pastels and shades of white, while the women added lace, typical of wealthy Russians. Soon many fashionably dressed more like Lev and Sophia Tolstoy than the style of Russian peasant who immigrated.

Of necessity, they were compelled to walk daily along East First street, the main thoroughfare adjacent to their residential area. This thoroughfare abounded in saloons and pool rooms with the usual complement of the type of people that frequented such places. These hooligans naturally thought it was a great sport to tease and abuse these strange people, at times going PAGE 36 far beyond the limits of innocent fun. A common prank was yanking a man's beard and running away. The Spiritual Christians Molokans endured this as long as they could after which the hot-blooded younger men took forceful measures of retaliation. This had the desired effect and they were thereafter left alone.

Fortunately, however, not many people in Los Angeles were of that ilk. The great majority of Americans of that time were kindly, hospitable, church-going, religious people. The principal and the teachers of the neighborhood school in particular, were understanding and sympathetic when their primary grades were filled to capacity with children in peasant clothes and knowing not a word of English. Their problems were aggravated by the fact that their classes were composed of children whose ages varied from 7 to 13 and 14 years. 

Of course the older children, those 12 and 13 years of age soon reached the permissible age of 14 to quit school and went to work to help the family bread winner. The remainder were advanced rapidly until they caught up with other children of their age. It must be remembered that the peak year of Spiritual Christians' Molokan immigration —1907 — was a year of severe unemployment. Work, especially for men, was impossible to find. It was a little easier for the women to find work, usually in laundries at $5.00 and $6.00 per 60 hour week. [Sokoloff, page 5] Others found work doing housework in private homes at 25 cents an hour. Helped out by older school boys who sold newspapers on the down town streets, the women were the sole means of support for many families until the employment for men picked up in the lumber yards as the building boom slowly regained momentum.

Lumber_small.JPG (25579 bytes)

Lumber yard in Wilmington Port of Los Angeles showing many Spiritual Christian Molokan men among other unloading lumber-carrying ships in 1914. Photo Courtesy of James A. Samarin.  Click to Enlarge


4. Mystery Woman, Land Donor Insulted

There was yet another person attracted to the Spiritual Christians from Russia Molokans and whose appearance among them has since become a fascinating mystery almost reaching the proportions of a legend discussed among the older Dukh-i-zhizniki Molokans to this day, being even honored by a paragraph in one of their more popular songs (song 446, fifth stanza, second verse.)

   
 Song 466
 		   
Песнь 446

This is the place we all know is a peaceful region,
Это место всем известно, оно есть мирный край;

the Holy Spirit expected us here many years ago.
здесь Святой Дух нас ожидал, много лет тому назад.

PAGE 37 On a summer Sunday morning in 1904, 3 years before Berokoff arrived from Russia, when there were yet only a few [6?] Prygun Molokan families in Los Angeles, they were gathered together in the house of one of the elders for worship [led by V. G. Pivovaroff ?], when there came to them an elderly American woman of commanding appearance and accompanied by another woman who spoke Russian and through whom the elderly woman proceeded to inform them that she was there to ascertain for herself whether or not they were the people she saw in a vision forty years previously [~1864?], and who were to be welcomed by her to America with a gift of land in the vicinity of Los Angeles.

She told them further that she journeyed to Canada to see the Doukhobors when they first came there but that they were not the people she was expecting. However, she was now convinced that the Spiritual Christians Molokans were indeed the people of her vision but she wondered why did it take them so long to get here. Furthermore, the people of her vision were exactly like them in appearance and she pleaded with them not to change their religion nor their appearance in any manner else the grace of God and His mercy will no longer be with them.

The zealots in the congregation Molokans, wrongly suspecting ulterior motives behind such fantastic story, did not respond with tact or gratitude nor asked for time to consider the matter but were rather careless in their remarks among themselves, one member saying in Russian: "Who is this pork-eater that we should pay attention to her?" When this remark was translated to her, she, being a vegetarian, was extremely hurt and terminated the conversation and left without leaving her name or address or the location of the land she proposed to donate.

Although the whole story sounds unreal, the fact remains that there are people alive today who witnessed the whole proceedings but who were too young at the time to be duly concerned; therefore they could not provide the necessary details that the story deserves. Nevertheless, the story could not be PAGE 38 dismissed, as fiction but will probably remain a fascinating mystery and a subject of conversation for a long time to come.

——————————
 
In Chapter 9: Conclusion, page 154, Berokoff laments:
It is indeed regrettable that God in His wisdom did not lead our forefathers to California* when the woman of mystery first saw her vision sometime in the 1860's for then they surely would have settled in some available agricultural area which was at that time so easy to find and, perhaps, would not have later succumbed to the lure of city life.

* Here Berokoff states the "refuge" of Klubnikin's prophesy and Berokoff's faith, is within the state of California. But, California was chosen for these non-Dukhobor Spiritual Christian immigrants by Demens in 1900.

This "Mystery woman ... legend" is very intriguing. For more than 10 years I have extensively searched newspapers and other reports of the time to find clues that might support any of the few alleged facts presented by Berokoff, with no success. I often wondered what parts of this story are more or less accurate, especially when I know how sketchy and inaccurate his report about bride-selling is, which occurred when he was in Los Angeles 1912-1915 and a teenager, 14 to 17 years old.

My ol'e friend MikeTickenoff, who moved to Oregon to join a branch of Dukh-i-zhizniki that divided from Berokoff's congregation in Los Angeles, had his own theories. Mike wrote a series of essays, copies of which were shared with like-minded Dukh-i-zhizniki. I saw a copy once, but never had one to cite. One of Mike's essays addressed the mystery woman legend. I know he speculating that the land offered could have been Signal Hill, Long Beach, California, which would have made all very rich, due to the oil discovered there in the 1920s. Mike also claimed to have learned the name of the man who 

If the date

https://www.molokane.org/places/USA/California/Los_Angeles/Hearld/1904_July_Brotherhood_of_Spiritual_Christians_arrives_in_Los_Angeles.html
  1. How accurate is this legend?. The story date and facts may be as wrong as his facts for below. Which facts are accurate and which have changed over time?

The sketchy facts Berokoff cites about the mystery elderly vegetarian woman (lacking date, age, 40-year vision) and those who witnessed her offer (lacking names, ages, date, location, accusers) may be as incorrect as his .

What survived are the date (1904), quote about "pork-eater",  survived in this tale while all other facts are vague. Today it is difficult to speculate what is right or wrong about his oral history. We know that several wealthy land-owning families who needed labor tried to help these immigrants. Why didn't Berokoff further research this "fantastic story?"

I speculate that the woman may have been a matron of one of the tycoon families who developed Southern California (Bixby, Clark, Hellman, Huntington), some of whom offered land to settlers; or from one of the emerging communal settlements; and the translator could have been Madame Verra de Blumenthal, Madame Demens, or any of a dozen Russian-speakers associated with the Bethlehem mission. If anyone can add to this or add to any other story, please do.

Imagine if the Spiritual Christians got "free land". The most zealous peasants would have immediately argued, the faith groups split, and a majority preferring the city, many in anticipation of rushing back to Mt. Ararat. In the city they did not manage their own co-op R.E.A.C. store, meet or live together, and for generations sabotaged the supposedly common U.M.C.A.

———
5. Bride-Selling Scandal  —  Also see 9. Weddings below.

In addition to their struggle to exist in a strange land, the Spiritual Christians Molokans very early in their life in North America were faced with a problem that has plagued them for many years, even to this day, one which God alone could resolve. The same type of problem had to be faced by all nationalities that emigrated to America but notably by the Jews,* who also had to struggle with it unsuccessfully for many years who, in the end had to learn to live with it. This problem was intermarriage or assimilation with the local population.
* Upon arriving in Los Angeles, the author's Berokoff family first settled in the Bethlehem District near 2 Jewish organizations, a B'nai B'rith and a shul, and he saw Jews in school and in public.  He appears to think that his people are similar to Jews and may not have understood that interfaith marriage and inter-ethnic assimilation occurs in pluralistic societies among Muslims, Catholics, Natives (First Nations), Asians, Hispanics, Mormons, etc. The literature about interfaith marriage is extensive.
It was 1909 that an event occurred that was so portentous [alarming] in its implications, for it brought the most zealous families of the Brotherhood of Spiritual Christians from Russia Molokans for the first time face to face with the problem of intermarriage. A young Prygun Molokan girl of about 17 fell in love with an American youth and, without informing her parents eloped with him and married him.

Learning of this, the parents of the girl, helpless in their grief and ignorant of the ways of the new country [pluralism?] enlisted the aid of the leading elders and retained a Russian speaking attorney (Mark Lev, or Constantine M. Mooslin?) to have the marriage annulled.* But of course the sympathies of the public, the police and the courts** were with the young couple, especially after the girl informed the court that she fled her home to evade being sold in marriage to a Prygun Molokan boy she did not love.
*   There was no legal registered marriage to "annul" (cancel).
**  Berokoff injects "police and the courts" with no context, which I try to provide below.
The parents, in answer to that charge* [in court], explained that it was a custom among their people to arrange marriage for their children as in the old country, and as there were more Prygun Molokan boys of marriageable age in the Prygun Molokan community than girls, there was much competition for available girls, and since their daughter was in such a demand, the parents of one suitor offered to reimburse the amount of the girl's passage to America if their son was accepted as a suitor, further explaining that PAGE 39 the negotiations were still in the preliminary stage and that there was no intention to force the girl into marriage against her will.

Although the elders and friends supported the testimony of the parents, the court was not convinced and the marriage was allowed to stand.

The newspapers, as usual, made a sensation of the case, playing it up in headlines for about 4 years (1909, 1912-1915) about a week before dropping it for other sensations, and after the judge, Curtis Wilbur, offered to redo all illegal marriages for no charge.

Berokoff accused the newspapers of making a "sensation" and "playing it up" for a short time "about a week". Newspaper reports about kids rebelling against their arranged marriages began in 1909 and continued for 6 years.  

The postscript to the story is typical of the many others of similar nature. The parents held back their forgiveness for a long time but eventually relented, but in any case the marriage eventually broke up and the woman returned to the Prygun Molokan community and died soon after and was buried without being accorded the full Prygun Molokan rites.

Berokoff avoided reporting details: names, ages, case numbers, plaintiffs, defendants, dates, charges, or congregations. We know Berokoff and others proofread and edited Young's The Pilgrims of Russian-town (1932), which also avoided these facts. Compare Berokoff above to Young's sparser history, page 108:
"The selection of a partner by the parents is rooted in familial organization. All members of the older generation were "given away" by their parents, and frequently without much previous intimation as to the prospective mates, who accepted the parents' choice without much reflection. The Pryguny Molokans tell of only two cases of suicide because of dissatisfaction with parents' decision regarding the prospective mate. In America, however, the children are allowed to choose for themselves ....

"There are hardly any marriages for money ... social and economic organizations make such marriages almost an impossibility."
Berokoff refers to "an event" in 1909 which was in the news for "about a week." Young reported "two cases of suicide" and arranged marriages are "In America ... almost an impossibility" . In contrast, the many news reports up to the 1920s suggest that both Berokoff and Young denied, negated and/or revised history. The "1909 ... event" reported by Berokoff cannot yet be correlated with a single incident reported in the Los Angeles news, which suggests he is reporting an event not covered in the news, or he scrambled his oral history timeline again.

 Newspapers reported many cases of child abuse and forced, arranged and unregistered marriages from 1909 through 1915 in Los Angeles county, among all peoples including Spiritual Christians from Russia, and from 1911 through 1920 in Arizona, among Pryguny and Maksimisty. For a century, into the 2000s, oral history reports zealous traditional control of dating, marriage and divorce, with hundreds, probably over a thousand, banned and bullied from their heritage Dukh-i-zhiznik faiths. The total number of cases, types, the defendants identities and outcomes is vast and affected nearly every family. My parents had fits of anger who I dated in California, and my mother chased one girl away from me shouting and running after her to keep away. Here I summarize cases from a few public records. Names are spelled as published. To not offend the most zealous elders, the American-born youth of Spiritual Christians from Russia learned to first get their civil marriage license at the courthouse, before they did their "church wedding." For expedience many drove to Las Vegas, Nevada, or Yuma, Arizona, to get married and return, perhaps because no blood test or birth certificate was needed then. (If anyone knows, please reply — administrator (at) molokane.org.) By the 1950s a few bolder presbyters learned they could sign the marriage document and gladly did at the end of the full wedding day; but the more zealous presbyters refused to sign any government (Caesar's) paper, which forced engaged couples to comply with different laws "inside" and "outside" of their congregation.
Definitions — What are we talking about?

 During the Los Angeles court hearings, non-Spiritual Christian witnesses who spoke Russian (Orthodox, Jewish) testified that what the journalists called "bride selling" has been a tradition in Euro-Asian countries for centuries where a child's destiny is assigned by parents — matchmaking.

In the early 1900s the practice of buying a wife was strange and/or unfamiliar for Americans in government positions who were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs, Northern European immigrants), many who knew of their traditional Protestant dowry, and maybe wreath money. The "bride selling" custom from Russia (Eastern Europe) seemed illegal to those whose ancestors gave gifts to newly weds after a wedding (as a gift), but not to the family before a wedding (like a bribe or a fee).

In contrast to Northern European customs, the Eastern European Spiritual Christian immigrants from Russia were practicing an Old World custom variously translated today as bride-price, bride-wealth, bride ransom, wedding ransom, and bride buying (payment for the bride to her family). The common terms in Russian are kalym (калым), kladka (кладка), vykup nevesty (выкуп невесты) and svadebnyi vykup (свадебный выкуп).  A common Russian term for a girl getting married is "to leave [the family home] for the husband" (выйти замуж : vyiti zamuzh), to probably live and work in her husband's extended family rural village. Though these terms do not appear in the Russian Synodal Bible used by the accused, defendants, they were familiar with the customs and labels.

In the Russian Old Testament (RUSV), the Hebrew Bible emphasized by Subbotniki, Pryguny, Maksimisty, Klubnikinisty, etc., a different term appears once in Genesis and twice in Exodus — veno (вено). The term veno becomes clear in modern Russian Bibles (SZ, NRT), and in some English translations. 

Russian Synodal Version (RUSV) Slovo Zhizny (SZ, NRT)
 English Standard Version (ESV)
Бытие 34
(12) назначьте самое большое вено и дары; я дам, что ни скажете мне, только отдайте мне девицу в жену.
 Бытие 34
Назначьте за невесту любой выкуп и подарки, и я заплачу, только отдайте мне ее в жены.
 Genesis 34
(12) Ask me for as great a bride-price [engagement present] and gift as you will, and I will give whatever you say to me. Only give me the young woman to be my wife.
Исход 22
(16) Если обольстит кто девицу необрученную и переспит с нею, пусть даст ей вено [и возьмет ее] себе в жену;
(17) а если отец не согласится выдать ее за него, пусть заплатит [столько] серебра, сколько [полагается] на вено девицам.		 Исход 22
(16) Если человек соблазнит девушку, которая не давала обещания выйти замуж, и переспит с ней, он должен заплатить свадебный выкуп, и она станет его женой.
(17) Если отец откажется отдать ее ему, он все равно должен заплатить выкуп, какой полагается за девушку.		 Exodus 22
(16) If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife.
(17) If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the [higher] bride-price for virgins.  

A misunderstanding can easily occur if the reader only consults the King James Version which uses the Northern European terms "dowry" and "endow her," which has a different meaning. Compare many English parallel renderings of Exodus 22:16 to see that 12 Bible translations chose the English term "dowry" and 13 chose "bride price", about even.

In 2011, I was invited to witness and document a kalym performed east of Seattle, Washington, during a wedding of young Adventists from Russia, who are descendants of Molokane. About 200 immigrated in early the 2000s, most from Krasnodar province, Northern Caucasus, Russia. Years later, via DNA analysis, I learned I was distant cousins with the groom's family. For interested readers, a sample of kalym appears on a video of a Doukhobor wedding recorded in south Georgia S.S.R., in 1987, and can be seen on the Internet. Both of these groups from Russia may have modified their traditions during Soviet times. In the Doukhobor community in Georgia S.S.R., the groom had to pay ransom (vykup : выкуп) for his bride's stolen/missing shoe. In Washington state in 2011, the Adventist groom from Russia gave a gift credit card to enter the bride's house. In both cases the boys had a lot of fun negotiating with loud laughing persistent bridesmaids who ganged up to block the entry door, acting as agents for their bride and demanding the highest price possible. See the first 11 minutes of The Doukhobors, Episode 7. (The entire documentary film is nearly 4 hours, with approximate English subtitles.)

For many faiths rooted in Old Russia, kalym is part of their traditional wedding ceremony. Unfortunately, the custom of the "brides house" (devichnik : девичник), uzel (bundle of tableware gifts), and other folk customs and foods have faded from use among the diaspora Spiritual Christians, often replaced with "American" forms, which are less embarrassing, less effort, and/or easier to buy than make.

The most zealous Spiritual Christians that immigrated to Southern California apparently practiced a variation of kalym in which the parents negotiated and collected the bride price in advance, then told their kids who to marry. Some promised, or betrothed, their kids as young as babies by "notching the cradle," common among Spiritual Christians isolated up to the mid-1900s in Mexico and Iran (Persia).

Though the court cases in Southern California (1911-1915) and Arizona (1920) may have stopped illegal "bride-selling," it did not deter zealous parents from imposing other controls on children who were rewarded with wealth (houses, land, rubbish trucks, money, inheritance, etc.) for marrying "right", or disinherited and/or banished for marrying "wrong." Many young marrieds have been lavished with gifts for obeying family, and many have been ostracized for not obeying.

In 1984, Susan Leo Tolmachoff killed herself in Arizona with a hand-gun after her irate delusional father and his relatives forbade her to marry a divorced fellow in Kerman, California — Bill Pete ("Bosco") Nazaroff. Within a few years, her mother Jean M. Dobrinin-Tolmachoff, divorced her abusive husband. Many tragic cases exist of dominant parental control regarding marriage. I know of banishment, no inheritance, cases that occurred in the 2000s.

In contrast to continual zealous parental control to marry into an acceptable, spiritually clean, Dukh-i-zhiznik family, the assimilated families often advise, and some demand, that their children marry out of the Spiritual Christian faiths so they can invite their American (or Australian) friends to an American (or Australian) church wedding and reception, and will not have to perform a long traditional costumed Spiritual Christian ceremony in Russian, kiss the same sex and old people, and be obligated to attend in-law (svakh : свах) family services for the rest of their life.

Though "bridewealth" was proposed in 1931 as ms to me to be a more accurate term, "bride-price" appears in recent news online:
The last article above by Dr. Dalton explains that, in English, "bridewealth" is a better fitted scientific term than "brideprice". He argued: "To use the term "brideprice" is to im
ply that payment at marriage is a market or commercial transaction and therefore that marriage entails a commercial purchase of rights or services."
 
A rough search of online databases found these results on November 23, 2023.

Database
 Brideprice
  %  Bridewealth
  %
Google
 4,620,000
 92.6%
 368,000 7.4%
Bing/Yahoo
 9,030,000 99.7%
 30,600 0.3%
ESBSCO 1,386 23.8%
 4,439
76.2%
JSTOR
 2,102
22.4% 7,260
 77.5%

  

Many such incidents This unfortunate incident caused some Spiritual Christians from Russia the Molokans to have grave misgivings about their decision to live in the city. But even before these this incidents the leaders and some of the people in general realized that a permanent settlement in a city should not be considered. It was bearable as a stop-gap, a place to recuperate, to replenish the pocket book, but under no circumstances as a place of permanent settlement for simple, religious peasants.

Why did most stay in the metropolis, divided into separate tribes? Berokoff does not explain why most stayed in their kingdoms in the city, including himself. See: Conclusion, last page 155.

Though many Spiritual Christians from Russia, led by the most zealous, fled from Los Angeles to rural colonies, and a few back to Russia, claiming they were being persecuted by American laws allowing girls marry whom they want, mandatory marriage registration, foreign dress and education. Those in San Francisco and northern California, had fewer legal problems mainly because the all the zealous tribal faiths were clustered in Southern California. In San Francisco the Spiritual Christian Molokane met Spiritual Christian Baptists from Russia immediately attended school, marriages were registered, many parents allowed interfaith marriages. However, problems with youth delinquency and elder resistance to naturalization was about the same in Los Angeles and San Francisco due to the clash of their foreign rural peasant culture with metropolitan life, and high density population with other immigrants, nationalities and faiths.

In Canada, arranged marriages with a "customary payment [by the groom] for the bride" was a tradition among Mordovian Doukhobors, who retained this tradition after joining the "spirit-wrestlers." In Central Russia, Spiritual Christians, including ancestors of Doukhobors, lived among Mordvins, promoted intermarriages, learned Mordovian languages and songs. A Moksha-Mordovian-language wedding song was also preserved in Canada.* Mordvins joined Doukhobors in 1802, when Doukhobors were permitted (by order, ukaz) to settle in Tavria (Milky River area, New Russia); and they were also granted religious freedom, 5-year tax exemptions, 10-year interest free loans, free transportation, and 40 acres of land to each settler along the west bank of the Molochna River.** Many Mordovians evidently liked the deal and joined the migration as new Doukhobors. In 1805, 3 years later, Molokane were similarly given religious freedom and permitted to migrate to the east side of the river, south of the extensive German Mennonite Molochna Colony. More Mordovians may have arrived to join the legal Molokan migration. In Novorossiya (New Russia), during the 1832-1834 famine and "great outpouring of the holy Spirit" recorded in Dukh-i-zhiznik oral histories, the origins of what would become Pryguny/ Sopuny/ Skakuny /Shalatupy occurred among the these mixed populations, probably because piest Harmony Societies from Germany (Harmonies) traveling from Württemberg (home of Martin Luther and territory of the Protestant Reformation), to Palestine (or Mount Ararat) beginning in 1817, enticed those who were most susceptible to zealous religious ecstasy and awakenings, and apocalyptic prophecies to witness the second coming of Christ in 1836.*** Some of the ethnic Mordovians joined the zealots, and migrated with them in the 1840s to the Southern Caucasus, where a clan settled in Shorzha village, on the mid-east bank of Lake Sevan, now in Armenia.
* Sushkova, Yulia N. "Anthropology of migration: the experiences of the Doukhobors in Canada", Journal of the Geographical Institute “Jovan Cvijić”, 65(3), pages 436-437.
** Kalmakoff, Jonathan J. Resettlement to Molochnaya, page 5 of: "An Overview of Doukhobor Settlement and Migration", Doukhobor Genealogy Website, June 24, 2012.
*** Gestrich (Trier), Andreas. Chitiastic Pietists, "German Religious Emigration to Russia in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centures: Three Case Studies", in Lehmann, Hartmut and Hermann Wellenreuther, editors, In Search of Peace and Prosperity: New German Settlements in Eighteenth-Century Europe and America, Penn State University Press, 2010, pages 92-98.)
In Russia they Spiritual Christians were accustomed to independent life of a villager who tilled his land, planted his buckwheat, rye and wheat, raised enough potatoes, cabbages, carrots, dill, sun flowers, cucumbers and other vegetables for his own use. There he could take time off for his annual holidays and when winter snow came, he rested for five or more months until the next spring whereas here, he, as well as his wife and the older children were in a set routine of nine and ten hours at work under the stern and watchful eye of the foreman six days a week, month after month and year after year, begging the foreman for time off for the annual holidays and, more often than not, losing his job for the devotion to his faith. But worst of all, there was no prospect of improvement in the routine.

PAGE 40 Some families, especially those who were comparatively well off in Russia, were soon disillusioned with America and returned to their village homes in Russia but, with exception of these few and despite the hardships, the great majority of those already in the U.S. heeded the advice of Klubnikin [Klubnikinisty],* and being encouraged by elders who were steadfast (postoyannie)** in the belief of Klubnikin's prophesy, refused to consider the idea of return but began to look around for other means to escape the drudgery of city life, particularly to found a farming community somewhere, a desire that henceforth was never out of their minds.
* Berokoff falsely states "the great majority heeded the advice of Klubnikin" probably to promote his branch of his Dukh-i-zhiznik faith. He does not attempt to acknowledge the broad spectrum of many reasons Spiritual Christians did not return to Russia, nor that the majority were not Klubnikinisty like him.
** "Steadfast" is translated here into Russian to show the reader how the word is used positively by Dukh-i-zhizniki in context when describing their faith movement, but negatively about Molokane. When describing Molokane, postoyannie is an insult; but when describing Klubnikinisty, postoyannie (steadfast) is a virtue.
The above paragraph suggests that Klubnikin did not believe Rudomyotkin would return nor that all must soon return to Russia to meet him and Christ on Mt. Ararat. This indicates that Maksimisty have different beliefs than Klubnikinisty who remained in their foreign metropolis abundant with free social services, low cost transportation, food and housing with plumbing and electricity.


6. Mexico Colonies

"During the long reign of [Mexico President] Porfirio Diaz ... (1877-1910), the Mexican government encouraged the establishment of communal settlements for natives and immigrants. Some 60 colonies were started, 44 by private initiative and 16 by the government. Settlements from the United States formed 21 communities, the 10 listed* and the 11 by Mormon schismatics." (Pitzer, Donald E., ed. America's Communal Utopias, University of North Carolina Press, 1997, page 475)
*  Pitzer's list does not show the Guadalupe colony, perhaps because it was not a true commune, perhaps missed, though on the following page 476 is listed "Molokan Community (1911-?); Glendale, Arizona," which was 3 miles west of Glendale. Anyway, note that about "60 colonies were started" of which Pryguny were at least one.
Before such a colony was established in the United States, agents for a large tract of land in Lower California, Mexico, learning of the immigrants' Molokan desire to establish a farming community, contacted them early in 1905 1906 with a proposition to sell them the tract which was called Ex-mision Rancho Guadalupe and on terms within reach of people who were still impoverished from their emigration from Russia.

Plans for Spiritual Christian colonies in Mexico were first considered about 1900 due to inquiries by mail and scouts. A personal history, with many errors and omissions, appears in Mohoff, George. The Russian Colony of Guadalupe: Molokans in Mexico, self-published, 1995. Mohoff's book will be corrected later. Mainly Pryguny colonized Mexico. More information with maps. Below I refer to Mohoff's book as "Mohoff."

This tract of land consisting of 13,000 acres [20.3 square miles] was located 60 miles south of the United States-Mexico border, in a pretty valley through which flowed a small stream but which turned into a torrent after a rain storm. The dry-farmed land was capable of producing a good crop of wheat in a rainy year but was also subjected to cycles of dry years in the same manner as other sections of California.

In any case, 50 families were attracted to the proposition to purchase the tract. Led by Vasili Gavrilitch Pivovaroff and Ivan G. Samarin the land was bought for the sum of $48,000 $40,000 (Mohoff, page 12) and a site was selected for a village in the style of their native Russia, except that, for lack of logs, the houses of Russian design and plot layout were built of adobe in the style of Mexico. Adobe, mud-bricks, are also common in Russia. I.G. Samarin and C.P. de Blumenthal signed the contract as agents for the "Russian colony."

Mohoff (page 15) reports: "The land was leased in November 1905 and ultimately purchased from Donald Barker on Feb. 27, 1907." I believe (with no direct proof yet) that Los Angeles attorney and investor Donald Barker acted as a broker, not a "seller," and offered a deal that the immigrants could not refuse. He got them onto land with supplies for no, or little, up front cost, and they would pay him back with wheat, not cash. The land was owned by the Mexico government and sold as "public land" at $2/acre to foreign investors.

The price for Baja public land sold to foreign colonists was set by the Mexican government at $2/acre, but these colonists from Russia paid 85% more — $48,000/ 13,000 acres = $3.69/acre. Why? Because they asked for supplies (wagons, animals, building materials, food, etc), the bank has loan fees, and Barker probably added his fee/commission, which added $22,000 to the land price.

Because Barker worked with several banks in Los Angeles and had investments in Mexico, he probably created a business entity which he owned, or was a primary owner and represented, and arranged the loan for the purchase through a bank in Los Angeles. The "down payment of $5,700" (Mohoff, page 12) could have been (a) earnest money he collected in cash, or (b) a paper amount wrapped into the loan used for bank fees and/or commissions. I favor (b) because $57,000/ 104 families = $54.80/ family for the down payment, which, at a dollar a day wages in Los Angeles, was nearly impossible to pay, and the goal was to get these immigrants out of Los Angeles as soon as possible before the next immigrant wave came in, as reported in the press.

To collect the loan payments, Barker arranged for the new Pacifico flour mill to be built in Ensenada where each immigrant farmer, land purchaser, paid for his share as shown in Mohoff, pages 14-15. Why a flour mill? Probably because a similar colony in the San Quintín valley, about 120 miles south of Ensenada had a flour mill .... 

[ADD MORE]

Barker's law partner was Senator Finch. Barker appears on many new corporation board of directors, including a Los Angeles bank and and a land investment company in Mexico.

Mohoff is wrong
page 9, page 15 — land bought from Donald Barker Feb 20, 1907
More likely Barker's bank loaned money and he brokered the sale of land owned by Mexican government to colonists, as done for many other settlements.


Soon a colony was established which was to exist until well into the middle of the century, becoming in time a tourist attraction because of its quaint, old country appearance and atmosphere.

PAGE 41 But in founding the new community, they adhered strictly to the age-old method inherited from their forefathers. Thus, instead of each family building a homestead on his own farm for more efficient operation as is the custom in America and other countries, a central site was chosen for the entire community where a village was established.

Each individual was therefore compelled by necessity to transport his implements to his farm periodically to plow and cultivate it and harvest his crops in the summer, camping there for days at a time, coming home on weekends for a visit with his family.

A writer who visited the colony in 1928 had this to say of their farming methods: "The founding of a large village in Guadalupe Valley is indeed contrary to any practical consideration and is to be explained only by the existence of an old inherited juristic notion, too deeply rooted in the minds of those peasants to yield before any environmental influence. Distance from the fields were largely such that men were unable to return to their homes in the evenings but often camped on their lots for weeks. Inconvenient conditions such as are typical for Southern Russia are thus repeated where they could be easily avoided. [Footnote: Oscar [Oskar] Schmieder* in "The Russian Colony of Guadalupe Valley" as quoted from the "Pilgrims of Russian-town," page 253.]
* German geographer and expert in the regional geography of Latin America.... University of California at Berkeley, ... Associate Professor from 1926 to 1930. Wrote: "The Russian colony of Guadalupe Valley," Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press, 1928.
It is true that the method was inconvenient and inefficient, but the writer failed to perceive that it satisfied the colonist's hunger for companionship and spiritual sustenance in a strange land amid surroundings inimical to preservation of the brotherhood. It is to be noted that in 1911, when a Maksimist Molokan colony was founded near Glendale, Arizona, the same method was followed.

There were other examples of extreme allegiance to the methods of the forefathers which are rather astounding from the American perspective: PAGE 42
  1. The title to the whole tract of land was vested in the names of three trustees.
  2. No grant deeds or other evidence of ownership were issued to the individual owners. The names of individual owners were simply recorded in a community book, which was entrusted to a person elected for that purpose.
  3. A government surveyor never officially surveyed the land nor was the subdivision recorded in government archives. Apparently, to save the cost of a qualified surveyor, they chose the method that was used by their fathers and forefathers in Russia. Measuring off a length of rope and using natural and artificial markers, such as large embedded rocks or trees, they did the job in their own crude manner and proceeded to allot the land to the individual owners.
The allotment of individual parcels was likewise conducted in a very ingenious and typical Russian peasant Molokan manner. To begin with the whole colony of 50 families were divided into 10 family units of five families to a unit. The whole tract of land was then divided into several sections, each section suitable for a certain crop. Thus there was a section of river bottom land; another section at higher level and suitable for raising grain, a hill-side section for raising hay and a section of untillable mountainous land which was left undivided for community use as cattle pasture.

Each section of tillable land was then subdivided into ten parcels for which the ten family units proceeded to draw lots for their share of each category. The family units then drew lots for ownership of their individual parcels according to the need of each family. Some were dissatisfied with the quality of the land they randomly got and left.

This method was ingenious but crude, yet the amazing fact remains that, although forms changed ownership through sale and/or inheritance, the markers remained inviolate and despite the absence of deeds and of embedded surveyor's markers, never in the history of the colony were there any litigation to decide tide to a property notwithstanding the fact that there were PAGE 43 abundant seed for sowing not only law suits but bloodshed as well. One must marvel at the innate honesty of those illiterate peasants that knew God.

However, the passing of a half a century showed that this method was not only naive but careless as well as dangerous, causing much anguish and worry to the heirs of the original colonists, for their sons and grandsons eventually had to struggle to prove ownership of the land when in 1952 squatters from the city of Mexicali, discovering that no deeds were recorded to some of the colonist's land, forcibly settled upon the land and despite the intervention of Federal, troops, at times successfully claimed ownership thereto through squatters rights.
 
This proved to be the straw that broke the back of the first and most successful Spiritual Christian Molokan attempt at farm colonization in America. After these raids of squatters (Spanish: paracadistas) all but a very few families emigrated to the United States, and the colony as such ceased to exist.

Economics was much more significant than squatters. These Russian colonists either sold their land cheap or voluntarily abandoned land they legally owned to move to California. Ironically, many of these Spiritual Christians left Russia to avoid war taxes and a revolutionary recession, and moved to Mexico to another civil war with taxes. While these Russians got settled in Mexico, those remaining in Russia got religious freedom and less taxes, which lessened their desire to flee from Russia. The Mexican Revolution began in 1910, and war taxes were levied which raised costs for importing farm equipment and exporting wheat.

In January 1916, a group of 120 people, most from Tyukma village, Kars oblast, were the first to leave Mexico as a group. They were directed, perhaps by tycoons in Southern California, to farm 3000 acres near Jerome Junction, Chino Valley, Yavapai County, Arizona. In Mexico they were the Tyukma congregation, but in America they were called Dzheromskyi. (Jeromskyi) Within 8 months they did not get irrigation water as promised and abandoned Yavapai County. All sued the land company. Some went back to Mexico, a few to Los Angeles. The majority resettled at the north end of 3 other Spiritual Christian colonies, 2 miles west of the town of Glendale, Arizona, 13 miles north-west of Phoenix. Within 5 years most left Arizona in the 1920s to California.

In 1938, a smaller group began moving from Mexico to Ramona, north San Diego county. The bigger exodus to the U.S. began after WWII when the Prygun youth in Mexico realized that wages were much higher in the U.S. George Mohoff explained that a friend, who moved to Los Angeles a year earlier, drove back to to visit Guadalupe in his own car. When he told his buddies that the car was his, no one believed him. In the 1990s, Mohoff exclaimed something like: "None of us could ever earn that much money in our lifetime working in Mexico! That's why I think most really left for L.A. It was not because of the squatters, it was for the dollar!"
————

7. Hawaii Colony
 
Another most interesting episode in the Spiritual Christian Molokan quest for land occurred 10 days after at about the same time as the purchase of the Rancho Guadalupe. It seems that an agent for a sugar plantation on the Hawaiian Islands appeared among them with proposition to sell them land on the island of Kauai Kuwai, northwest of Honolulu. Probably J. B. Castle who had an office in Los Angeles.

Captain P. A. Demens with his daughter took an exploratory fact finding trip in September 1905 to Hawaii. He examined 3 islands, one with a Russian settlement. The press announced he was there "To Encourage Russian Small Farmers ... on a mission from President Roosevelt..." to potentially resettle up to 20,000 "Molokani or Doucaubori" from the United States and Canada. He returned to Los Angeles with a positive report.

The proposition was sufficiently attractive for the people to send a second delegation to explore the possibility of establishing a colony. Upon their return, however, the delegation, composed of  Captain P.A. Demens, Philip M. Shubin and Mihail Step. Slivkoff, was in complete disagreement, Shubin strongly opposed the proposition while Slivkoff urged a favorable response.

After signing the contract in Hawaii, Shubin stayed state-side to survey land in Texas, which he rejected. For the next 5 years he and others extensively toured the U.S. and Mexico at the expense of the railroads, looking for a better deal than the slums of Los Angeles, most returning to their "kingdom in the city."

Demens was an excellent salesman. In November 1905, he submitted a long (3 column, half page) article to Hawaiian newspapers sugar-coating them as the “cream of Russia’s population — a desirable class of White residents.” (See: Demens Introduces “Molokans” to Hawaii)

The upshot of it all was that 20 families and ten men whose families were still in Russia, 110 people, including about 34 Molokane, agreed to the terms and sailed for these islands with high hopes. John Kurbatoff, an educated, well-dressed Molokan from Harbin, China (known by Pete W. Loskutoff, San Francisco), was to manage the Molokan Settlement Association. At this point in the episode there are different versions from different people. Some insist PAGE 44 that the would-be colonists were deceived into thinking that they were signing a contract to purchase land when, in fact they were signing a contract to work for the plantation for a number of years.

The following account is paraphrased from an article written in 1955 by Yacov Fetisoff and published in San Francisco in the same year by the Molokan Postoyannaye Community. [Footnote: The account of 50th Anniversary of The Molokan Postoyannaye Life In America, page 167.*] Being one of the would-be colonists, he relates that, among other terms, the company agreed to provide the fare from Russia to the Islands for the families of those ten whose families were still in Russia and to bring them to the Islands not later than June 1, 1906. In addition to the ten families, the company agreed to bring in 100 other families from Russia by that date and at no cost to the immigrants. The names and addresses of these potential immigrants were given to the company and the prospective colonists were notified by their friends on the island to be prepared to join them by June 1, 1906.
  * Citation: "Когда и как поселились в Сан-Франсиско, Калиф., духовные христиане-молокане," Отчет духовных христиан молокан (постоянных) по поводу 150-ти летнего юбилея самостоятельного их религиозного существования со дня опубликования Высочайшего указа Государя Российского престола Александра Павловича от 22-го июля 1805 года и 50-летнего юбилея со дня переселения наших духовных христиан молокан постоянных из России в Соед. Штаты Америки, состоявшегося 22-23 и 24-го июля 1955 года в городе Сан-Франциско, Калифорния. c. 167. ("When and how Spiritual Christian Molokans settled in San Francisco," Report of Spiritual Christian Molokans (constants) over the 150th year anniversary of their independent religious existence from the date of publication of the decree of the Supreme Sovereign of the Russian tsar Alexander Pavlovich from 22th July 1805 and the 50th Anniversary of the relocation of our Spiritual Christian Molokans constants from Russia in the United States, held on 22-24 July, 1955 in San Francisco, California. Page 167)
But the company stalled and by various means delayed sending the passage tickets to those families until the agreed date. They then notified the would-be colonists that they failed to live up to the agreement, and that the agreement to bring the other 100 families is null and void but they could remain there as laborers if they wanted to.

The colonists would not agree to this and gradually, as finances permitted, they sailed back to the mainland in small groups at no cost, the last group arriving in San Francisco late in August October of 1906 when that city was still in ruins from the terrible earthquake of April 26, 1906.

Thus, to their sorrow and expense, the Molokans experienced for the first time the sharp practices of American land sharks.
 
News reports state that the Spiritual Christians were treated fair and honest by the government and plantation owners of Hawaii. Had they stayed in Hawaii and waited a year for their homesteads, they would have lived in rural isolation and today the ocean-view land of each family would be worth many millions of dollars. During their short stay, 3 leaders opposed each other, their congregants became impatient, and many preferred the easier life they had in the slums of Los Angeles.

The following forgotten oral history is summarized from 100s of news and other documents. Unfortunately, the Garden Isle newspaper, Kauai, for this time was destroyed in a tsunami in April 1946, and only a few of their first-hand reports were republished on other islands. 

When sugar prices increased more than five-fold (500%) during the American Civil War, Hawaiian plantation tycoons searched the world for cheap labor to profit from the lucrative demand. Before 1900, one tycoon went to Russia to personally petition Tolstoy to send all the Dukhobortsy to Hawaii, but their arrangements for Canada had been finalized by the Friends Service Committee, London. Though Dr. T. Kryshtofovich, a Russian agricultural professor and neighbor to Demens, had already advised Tolstoy that Hawaii would be too tropical for Russian peasants, the tycoons in Hawaii with offices in California, knew that more peasants in Russia may come to California.

Before I. G. Samarin and de Blumenthal signed a land contract in Mexico on September 2, 1905, Spiritual Christians in Los Angeles were already solicited to move to Hawaii along with all wanting to come from the Southern Caucasus. This would solve two problems: (1) remove a huge burden from Los Angeles city services, (2) redirect all incoming Spiritual Christian to Hawaii (not Los Angeles), and (2) provide much needed homesteads and cheap white labor in Hawaii.

On  September 12, 1905, Captain P.A. Demens left for Hawaii to scout for these Spiritual Christians anxious to get their own farm colony. Demens' report in Los Angeles resulted in a list of 124 (65 families) households (496 people) willing to colonize in Hawaii, more than those planing to live in Mexico.

In November 1905, Demens returned to Hawaii with F. M. Shubin and M. Slivkoff for a week of negotiating with the governor for clusters of homestead farms. The two Prygun representatives wanted land for 5000 settlers, most to come directly from the Southern Caucasus. They returned to Los Angeles and after weeks of discussions, signed a contract in January 1906. Within a month, 110 Spiritual Christians boarded a boat, less than a fourth who signed up, for a free ride to their new home. No reason is know why the majority who signed up, did not go at the last minute, because an entire ship was about to be rented for all who signed up. 1,500 were at the dock to see them leave. If they did not like it, they could come back at no cost. The Molokan congregation was led by John Kurbatoff, who had a camera and 2 photos of his group showing of about 34 members have been found. The Prygun groups were led by Mike Slivkoff, who was often opposed by at least one other man, of which no group photo has been found. F.M. Shubin stayed in Los Angeles.

During the trip, a child died (no name found) and was buried at sea. In the late afternoon of February 19, 1906, they arrived in Honolulu where local evangelic churches arranged a large dinner reception and guest seats at the annual Honolulu Rose Festival parade, but they would did not leave the ship. The governor boarded the ship with 2 government Russian-speakers to greet them and wish them well. One translator was assigned to accompany them during their first week. They proceeded directly to the northeast coast of Kauai by evening, got a welcoming dinner and a train ride south to the Makee Sugar Plantation, north of Kapaa at Kealia Beach. Wagons took them to their own isolated work camp of shacks, uphill from central Kapaa. Upon arriving, their hosts found their shacks were vandalized by the vacated Japanese workers who protested their own eviction and forced job changes. (Exact location to be determined.)

The colonists immediately demanded and got many supplies, food, bricks for ovens; divided into at least 2 religions, and the Pryguny had 2 conflicting leaders. The parents of the lost child wanted to go back. Upon learning they were expected to cut sugar cane their first year, most refused to work for $29 per month ($2 more than identical jobs at the time). One man demanded $3.50 per day, the same wage he got in California doing skilled factory work. On April 18, 1906, the San Francisco earthquake occurred, one month after their arrival.

Their homestead land and papers were approved in Washington, DC, could not be prepared for months, per U.S. regulations, and most wanted to buy communal land cheap rather than wait for free homesteads. The land needed to be surveyed, parcels marked and each homestead placed for access to water flowing from the mountain. All did not want to live together and seemed to have divided into 3 congregations. Different plantations were scouted. The tropical weather and insects were uncomfortable. Soon most wanted to return to Los Angeles. Some were given jobs in Honolulu loading ships, others got work on other plantations, on other islands, or building a dam on Oahu. Within 5 months most had abandoned Hawaii. Slivkoff was the most persistent and disappointed, and the last one to leave on August 1, 1906, about 5½ months after he arrived.

On the way back by boat to San Francisco then by train to Los Angeles, most Molokane and some Pryguny chose to stay in San Francisco. The first to arrive were taken by wagon from the docks directly to the eastern side of Potrero Hill to a refugee camp, one of about 26 official refugee camps. Men got jobs from the steamship company that brought them from Hawaii, found work repairing earthquake damage, and jobs at the nearby factories. Most Molokane in Los Angeles joined relatives and friends in San Francisco and Northern California. Some moved to farms 25-50 miles eastward through the delta, close enough to bus in to San Francisco to attend a special sobraniya over a weekend, while many met house to house.

Many who remained in "The City" built or bought homes on "The Hill" and by 1928 several separate Molokan congregations united to build a large meeting hall, the same year that the non-Molokan, non-Dukhobor Spiritual Christians in Los Angeles published the final version of their new Holy Book, Kniga solntse, dukh i zhizn', and began to convert all in Southern California to their new Dukh-i-zhiznik faiths.

The main Molokan prayer hall in America was built on Carolina Street, San Francisco, near the top of Potrero Hill in 1928, with a friendly Prygun congregation one block away. 50 miles NE, rural Molokane met house-to-house near Vacaville where they used the Vacaville-El Mira Cemetery. Later, a second Molokan prayer hall was built east of Sheridan (120 miles NE from San Francisco, 40 miles north of Sacramento). Due to the large number of immigrants on Potrero Hill, a local Presbyterian Christian women's club built a settlement house on top of the hill in the midst of prayer halls of 4 non-Orthodox (Spiritual Christian) faiths from Russia (Baptist, Evangelic, Molokan, Prygun). Later a Russian Adventist congregation arrived. 

To aid local immigrants, the Pastor of Olivet Presbyterian Church at the NE edge of the hill (400 Missouri Street at 19th), opened his home and began offering English classes for men in 1908. His work was similar to that of Dr. Rev. Barlett in Los Angeles, though initially on a smaller scale, but with better management the project grew and continues today. More classes were formed for women and youth of all nationalities. In 1918, it was incorporated as the "Neighborhood House" under the California Synodical Society of Home Missions, an organization of Presbyterian Church women. In 1919, renowned architect Julia Morgan designed a permanent neighborhood house at 953 De Haro Street. On June 11, 1922, the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House was completed, mantled in beautiful wood shingle and brick, with many broad windows and balconies providing a panoramic view of San Francisco. A gymnasium was added soon thereafter where Molokane and Pryguny hosted basketball games with Dukh-i-zhizniki from Los Angles in the 1950s.

In contrast to Spiritual Christians from Russia in Los Angeles who lost their Bethlehem Institutes in 1914 and were forced to move from The Flats(s) by urban renewal and highway building, many families on Potrero Hill remained in place much longer. The Molokan prayer hall never moved, but the Prygun meeting house closed in the early 1960s when the man who loaned the house died and the house was sold for $1000 at auction for unpaid taxes.

Much more history to be posted about the actual, authentic, real "Molokans in America."

8. Folk Medicine

PAGE 45 But while these attempts at colonization were occupying the minds of the elders, the people in general were busy with their problems of making a living, of bearing of children, arranging marriages, healing the sick and burying the dead.

The age-old habit of healing the sick without the services of a doctor continued in the midst of an abundance of doctors. The services of their own "lekar" [doctor : лекарь], that it, old man or woman skilled in reciting appropriate prayers for any given disease, were thought to be sufficient for any occasion. Doctors were called only in the last extremity. It was not until the second generation Spiritual Christians Molokans had their own families, that the services of doctors became general.

In the matter of births too, it was thought that the services of a doctor was needless and "high falutin' ". As long as several well-known and experienced midwives were available just a short block away, why not use them? It was a financial saving too.

The use of these "babkas" (elderly women) in place of doctors was not entirely abandoned until the 1920's when the city health authorities insisted that the midwives be licensed to practice, and that they learn to write in order to be able to sign the birth certificates as required by law. Being too old to learn to write, they had to give up the practice but as long as they were able to do so they unselfishly performed their functions at all hours of the day and night, more often than not, without remuneration [payment].

In 1907, the same year that Berokoffs immigrated to Los Angeles, a charity maternity clinic was opened at the corner of 1st and Rio streets in the Flat(s), then moved and expanded as the "Maternity Cottage" to the corner of 1st and Utah street, across from the future U.M.C.A. and molodoi sobranie. The Maternity Cottage was funded by several women's clubs, a business association, and an internal second-hand baby-care store. The Cottage handled more than 100 cases a year. School kids got free dental and medical care from local hospitals. (Women Appeal To Citizens To Raise $3000 Mortgage on P.-T. A. Hospital, Parent-Teacher Edition, Los Angeles Herald, May 21, 1912, page 14)

From 1915 to 1918, Home Teacher Lillian Sokoloff taught immigrant mothers homemaker skills, nutrition, medical-aid for children, how to count and budget money — whatever was needed to navigate and survive in the city.

Previous to this insistence of registering births, none were registered; causing many persons thus unregistered needless complications in securing their birth certificates when the need for them became a necessity to get a job during the Second World War. All born in the Maternity Cottage on Utah Street across from the U.M.C.A. were registered.

This disregard or ignorance of the city and state laws in the matter of vital statistics existed also in performing marriages. It was not until ten years or more after coming to America that PAGE 46 the required marriage licenses became general at Prygun Molokan weddings after the bride selling scandal (1912-1915), arrests and fines in Arizona in 1920, and several court orders. During this same time period various factions of Spiritual Christian Dukhobortsy in Canada resisted registration of births, marriages, deaths, and English schooling. (CITE)

An extensive list of folk medicine was complied for Spiritual Christian Dukhobortsy by Dr. Svetlana Inikova, with Koozma J. Tarasoff:  Volume II. Doukhobor Incantations Through the Centuries. (Ottawa: Legas Publishing & Spirit Wrestlers Associates, 1999, 137 pp.) See a short promotional video by Tarasoff  (1.5 min). 


9. Weddings   —    Also see: 5. Bride-Selling Scandal above

But, the weddings themselves were very joyful occasions. After all the arrangements were made (at this time-1912—the boy and the girt had a lot more to say about their future mates than when they first came here) the trousseau prepared and guests invited, came the day of the wedding. To begin the ceremony the whole congregation as well as the relatives and friends of the groom marched, singing in a procession in the middle of the street from the groom's house to the home of the bride where part of the ceremony was performed. After this the whole congregation, augmented now by the relatives of the bride, reformed the procession for the return march to the place where the ceremony was to be completed. Since no meeting church building of that time was large enough to accommodate such a large gathering, it was frequently held in a tent temporarily erected on the back yard of the groom's father or on the lot of a friend or neighbor whose lot was roomy enough. Tents are still used by Spiritual Christians in many villages in the former Soviet Union.

After the ceremony was completed the newlyweds, together with their invited friends, were seated in some large room adjacent to the tent but separated from the congregation. There they enjoyed their wedding dinner together with their invited boy and girl friends, singing songs of their own choosing and enjoying themselves in the traditional manner of young people, while the congregation was enjoying their own dinner in the tent.

The practice of marching in procession back and forth, sometimes as far away as the Vignes Street area in Bethlehem across the Los Angeles River First Street bridge to Utah Street area in the Flats, continued until the police authorities decided that, because of increasing street traffic, it was becoming dangerous. They therefore requested the elders to discontinue the practice and some time around 1915 the wedding processions were abandoned except for the necessary relatives and friends who henceforth accompanied the groom to the bride's PAGE 47 house and from the bride's house directly to the site of the marriage ceremony. Berokoff indicates that many still lived in the Bethlehem district past 1915.

Of course the use of the automobiles did not become general until the middle of the 1920's when the Spiritual Christian Molokan population scattered from the Flats to the various parts of east and south Los Angeles.

10. Funerals  Also see Cemetery, Chapter 7

The funerals on the other hand, presented their own problems. These were solved in the characteristic old Russia Molokan fashion. Unlike present day funerals when all arrangements are left to the undertakers, all work was done and all arrangements were made by the family or by their relatives and friends as they did in Russia.

Immediately upon the death of a person, the members of the family bathed the body. If the deceased had been sick for a while before death, all necessary clothing would have been prepared before hand and the body would be dressed there and then in the new apparel and laid out on benches in the front room of the deceased's home. Meanwhile, friends and relatives of the family skilled at carpentry would build a plain, unadorned, redwood casket. A grave marker of 3x8 red wood plank 8-ft. long would also be prepared. This would be hand-carved with the necessary data prescribed by old Russia Molokan customs  A carryover tradition from their status as heretics in Russia persists with their grave markers which were forbidden to be in the shape of any cross, nor show any Christian cross symbols.

Other friends would see to securing a burial permit and to ordering a funeral car from the local streetcar company. They would also order two or three regular streetcars to accommodate the people for the trip to the cemetery. 

But if the death was sudden, women friends would drop their daily chores to sew the needed garments so that the body could be bathed and dressed as soon as possible and placed in the front room to be viewed and wept over. On the morning of the funeral the body would be placed in the casket and everything was ready for the funeral. 

When the moment arrived for the funeral, the body was carried out to the middle of the street where a rug was spread out. A cloth-covered table was placed in the proper position PAGE 48 and the casket was placed on benches near the foot of the table while the proper hymn was sung for the rise and resurrection of the deceased. After the usual prayers were recited, the body accompanied by the singing congregation and the weeping relatives and friends, was carried to the nearest streetcar stop. 

The casket would then be placed in the funeral car which would also have room for the relatives while the rest of the people would crowd into the specially ordered cars and, following the hearse, would proceed to the place of interment. 

During the first five years in Los Angeles the interment took place in the Los Angeles County cemetery-for-the-indigent [called "Potters field"] which was located (and still is*) adjacent to the Evergreen Cemetery on East First St. But by 1909 the  Molokan population increased to such an extent that there was much grumbling among the younger Maksimisty-Pryguny people that our dead deserved a better fate than to be buried among the county's indigent and undesirable elements** and that the Spiritual Christians from Russia Molokans were now numerous enough to afford a cemetery of their own. Consequently they began to agitate for the purchase of a site for a private cemetery.

* In 1964, five years before Berokoff published his book, the County sold 6 of its 10 acres to Evergreen Cemetery and maintained about 4 acres with the crematorium.

** Most likely because they were being buried among pork-eaters and pondering this Bible passage from Matthew 27:7-10: "And after they had consulted together, they bought with them the potter's field [Russian: землею горшечника], to be a burying place for strangers. ... And they gave them unto the potter's field [Russian: землю крови : field of blood], as the Lord appointed to me." (Douay-Rheims Bible: Matthew 27:7-10)

But the urge to leave the city was so great that there was a strong opposition on the part of the older generation who argued that the Maksimisty Molokans were not going to remain in the city very long,* therefore a private cemetery was not needed. Despite this opposition a half-acre site was purchased in 1909 on East Second St. near Eastern Ave. This part of the city was then an unpopulated barley field nearly a mile from the nearest streetcar line. It was at the terminus of the Whittier Blvd. car line near the intersection of Eastern Ave and up a steep unpaved road, which was often muddy.

* 1907 prophesy that Maksim Rudoyotkin will soon descend on Mt. Ararat with Jesus Christ. ("Modern Ways Leave No Mark on Pryguny Molokanes, Los Angeles  Herald, April 21, 1907, page 3, column 3) 

In 1909 Orthodox Serbian immigrants had bought a large tract of land east of Los Angeles for their Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church of Los Angeles (S.S.S.O.C.) and cemetery. Many of the younger Serbs thought they had too much land and offered some to their Russian Spiritual Christian acquaintances for their own cemetery. The Slavs and Russians were often confused by outsiders, and the press. They all spoke Slavic languages, were classmates (English, citizenship, sloyd), neighbors and worked together (factories, lumber, railway). By the 1950s, the Church members wished they did not sell because they needed a larger church which they built in San Gabriel in the early 1960s on donated land, maintaining the old Church for smaller gatherings.

About the year 2000 the leaders of S.S.S.O.C. proposed to their Dukh-i-zhiznik neighbors to close off and annex the adjacent streets for a larger parking area which both could use, which the Dukh-i-zhizniki rejected. The unspoken likely reason for their rejection is not that it was not a good idea which could benefit both neighbors, but that the most zealous Dukh-i-zhizniki believe they all will become Spiritually ne chistyi (не чистый : unclean) because it is pohanyi (poganyi : поганый : filthy) to have contact with pravoslavnye (православные : Orthodox).

It's ironic that these Spiritual Christians who complained of persecution by the Orthodox Church in Russia and won't meet their neighbors half-way today, accepted the generous offer 100 years ago from friendly Orthodox Christians in the U.S. But, not all American Maksimisty supported those in L.A. being buried in land consecrated by a priest, adjacent to and Orthodox church and cemetery, especially with bodies traditionally buried facing East, facing directly at an Orthodox cross on top of the church. It is also a shame that they would not cooperate like Christians with the mutually beneficial parking lot proposal.

As soon as the site was purchased and fenced, permission was secured from the County to remove all those bodies that were buried in the County cemetery to the new location. In January and February 1910, 85 of 150 Russian Spiritual Christian graves (57%)  Approximately twenty or thirty bodies were disinterred and PAGE 49 moved to the new site within a week with all due religious ceremony and emotional expression from the bereaved families who took advantage of the occasion to view their loved ones for another and the last time.


For over a century, 65 Spiritual Christians, born in Russia and babies just-born in the US, remain buried in unmarked graves along Lorena street under the east end of Evergreen Cemetery. In 1910 they were left behind in the former hillside "Potters Field," the Historic Los Angeles Cemetery. In 1964, Evergreen Cemetery bought most of this sloped land to expand, which was leveled with fill dirt to sell graves on top of those buried 50+ years earlier. A common grave marker for these forgotten souls from Russia should be properly placed there as the Chinese did for their people in 2010,but it is nearly impossible to get local Dukh-i-zhizniki to cooperate.

Although the distance from the end of the street car line to the new cemetery was very long and up a steep unpaved road, it did not deter the Spiritual Christians Molokans from performing the full rites for the deceased as well as to pay their last respects to them. The body was always carried the full distance by relays of pallbearers, followed by the full congregation singing the appropriate hymn the meanwhile. This custom prevailed for a period of 12 years or until the early 1920's when the motor driven hearse replaced the streetcar and was able to deliver the casket to the gates of the cemetery.

Henceforth every Spiritual Christian Molokan was assured of a burial plot. The Armenian Pryguny Molokans too, were participants in the undertaking and quite a number of their people were buried there. Beginning in 1908, the Subbotniki choose plots in the Jewish Home of Peace Memorial Park on Whittier Blvd. Some who intermarried with Pryguny and Dukh-i-zhizniki were buried in the new Slauson Ave cemetery.

But the half-hazard methods that prevailed in the purchase and subdivision of the Guadalupe Valley Colony* and n Arizona were employed here likewise. The plots were neither surveyed nor numbered. No custodian was employed until 15 years after the purchase and the nearest thing to a manager was the keeper of the keys to the gate. Both Arizona and Mexico were the only cemeteries which continued the old Russian tradition of dirt mounds, though Arizona adopted the concrete shell which defeated the need for a mound.

* Berekoff did not know that there were three cemeteries in Mexico, also omitted in George Mohoff's book, The Russian Colony of Guadalupe Pryguny Molokans in Mexico, 1995

Whenever a death occurred in the community, the family asked for a half a dozen volunteers to dig the grave. These volunteers would ask their foreman for two days off from work, pick up the keys from the keeper and proceed to the cemetery early in the morning by street car and set to work, first selecting a plot that, in their opinion was appropriate. The ground was so hard that with a pick and shovel it took the half dozen men a day and a half to do the job. In recent decades an air-powered jack-hammer chisel is used with air from a gasoline powered air-compressor. In contrast the Slauson Ave cemetery purchased in 1939 is on soft alluvial river silt.

It was a custom at the time to dig out a niche in the side of the grave at its bottom, to protect the casket from the weight PAGE 50 of the earth, and also, if the deceased had a surviving spouse, to provide a space easy to dig up for the survivor upon his or her demise. This custom is still practiced in many cemeteries in the Former Soviet Union, and the entire hole is sometimes sprinkled with white lime powder, if available, for appearance and to disinfect the soil.

This half-hazard method of selecting a plot later caused some unpleasant complications. In time the cemetery became over crowded and the diggers, acceding to the wishes of the bereaved family, started to dig out the niche unaware that there was already a niche from the neighboring grave containing a casket. Of course they would immediately abandon the attempt; nevertheless, the relatives of the person whose grave had thus been disturbed, were sometimes bitter in their complaints. Initially there was no system for surveying, measuring and numbering grave plots, until required by law. Burial permits must specify the exact location of burial.

After WW2, Dukh-i-zhizniki in Southern California performed a modernized traditional old-world Russian funeral with an open casket. Depending on the family, congregation and type of death, the body may still be prepared and dressed at home not embalmed, but as with home births, more people gave into the funeral industry and paid for chose not to do the gruesome task likely embalmed at a mortuary.

The most zealous were against embalming because they believed one could not resurrect from the dead and ascend to heaven if any essential body parts were missing. Some allowed embalming if all the blood drained was saved in jars to be placed in the casket during burial, not knowing that families were given only a few quarts of the several gallons of total embalming wash used. In Arizona, the elder immigrant John "cheese" Tolmachoff had diabetes, and his gangrene leg was amputated. The family kept the leg in their home freezer and placed it in the casket before burial.

When the body is placed in the casket a prayer is recited, usually by the presbyter or lead elder of the congregation that will host the funeral, and the casket is transported to a viewing location in a rented hearse, or private van. In Russia the casket was carried to the village cemetery, in America they began to use vehicles.

Depending on the congregation and family, the open casket may be viewed at a mortuary, private home, or congregation meeting hall. Wreaths of flowers may be donated and placed in the room. Russian songs of mourning are sung, for hours, and longer depending on the stature of the deceased person and number of people attending. Some songs may be loud, with jumping, raising of hands, and shouts in Russian. Prophesies may be delivered. Several congregations believe by tradition that a casket is "unclean" and do not allow it to be viewed in their main meeting hall, so some have a side building used for funerals. The casket is viewed by family and guests during an evening service, and (depending on the family) the open casket may be watched all night, or closed until morning. Food is provided in the meeting hall kitchen particularly for out of town guests.

On burial day, after evening viewing, everyone arrives for a morning service, which ends to allow time to move the casket to the cemetery for a prearranged announced burial time. Before the casket is moved from the viewing location ritual prayers are recited and songs sung as family and friends are invited to kneel before the casket. Dukh-i-zhizniki have specific prayers and songs used by no other family of faiths, some of which vary depending on how esteemed and holy the deceased was to those gathered. Then the open casket can be move out of the building onto the street to a vehicle by pall-bearers. On the street another ritual prayer with song is performed before the open casket is closed and transported to the cemetery, sometimes with wreaths of flowers on top.

At the cemetery, the casket is opened upon removal from the vehicle and carried or rolled by cart to the grave site with any flowers accompanied by singing. Depending on the space available and weather, people typically line up in formation with men and women separated, in rows, face-to-face, or as they arrange for Sunday service with women at one end perpendicular to two rows of men facing each other. The deceased family is on one side of the grave, and the presbyter and attendees on the other side. The casket is placed on support boards over the grave, and remains open for a final prayer. Singing continues as volunteers place the lid on the casket. Two straps are placed under the casket and 4 men raise it so the support boards can be removed, and slowly lower the casket to the bottom. The straps are removed, and cement protection blocks are placed over the casket. Fresh dirt on a shovel is passed around for those who wish to throw a handful into the grave. No flowers are tossed into the grave.

Singing continues as volunteers take turns shoveling dirt into the grave, until full. In recent decades, depending on the cemetery, they fill the grave half full, to be later compacted, filled, and compacted again.

After burial, singing stops and a male representative of the deceased family moves to the center of the gathering to announce in Russian. All are thanked for coming and invited to the hosting meeting hall, or other place, for a short service and meal to begin in a few hours and last 2 to 4 hours. This give all a chance to go home, to their hotel, bathe, rest and change clothes. The change of clothes is important for Dukh-i-zhizniki who believe that a dead body is unclean and so are they for being in the same room with the casket.

If the deceased is a long term high ranking member of the congregation, preparations for the meal began at death and a small team of cooks ordered and prepared a 4-course feast, typical for Spiritual Christian funerals. The cooks will start early in the morning many missing the burial. Divorced people, or assimilated families whose members rarely attended service will avoid a large traditional feast and its expense by inviting people to their house, and in some cases to a rented catering hall. In any case, having a meal gathering after a funeral is tradition. Some dysfunctional families refuse to cooperate and avoid a meal.

[map and list of cemeteries]

 <Chapter 1 — Contents — Chapter 3>

Spiritual Christian History
Spiritual Christians Around the World