Lowell Parker | |
Arizona Ended Russians' Long Search |
First of Three Parts
At the northeast corner
of 75th and Maryland avenues some distance southwest of
the city of Glendale is an inconspicuous little cemetery
often unnoticed by passing motorists. THIS IS the meeting
hall church of the Spiritual Christian Dukh-i-zhizniki*
Molokans
of Arizona, a structure outwardly unidentifiable as a
church because it bears no crosses or other evidence of
being a spiritual center. |
Behind
the meeting hall
church,
the cemetery and the Russian names lies the story of a
proud but recalcitrant people who endured the travail of
religious persecution and slow movement from one part of
the world to another. Finally, they found peace, freedom
and prosperity in Arizona just as this world of desert and
mountains was changing from territorial to statehood
status. Less than 1% of all Spiritual Christians in Russia came to America, about 3,000. Most live in Califonia. Nowadays in the Glendale and Phoenix area there are about 20 extended family units of them, but the family units are large with second and third generation children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Times have changed since the first of them arrived here in 1911, the children have changed and the grandchildren have scattered and changed even more. Most abandoned the faiths of their ancestors. But among even the youngest even those who became high school queens and football stars in the best traditions of America, there still is a feeling of roots that reaches back as far as their ancestors' native country. FOR ARIZONA it all began on a Wednesday afternoon, Aug.
30, 1911, when a Santa Fe train departed Los Angeles.
Aboard were 170 adults and progeny ranging from babes in
arms to a host of boy: and girl youngsters. About
30 families. |
They
were an unwanted people because desertion from the Russian
Orthodox Church sometimes was a capital offense, a felony.
They were strict but peaceful people who believed
primarily in brotherly love, constant Bible reading,
opposition to service in the Czar's army, taxes and
anything else that had to do with oppressive government. They were mainly an agricultural people who for generations had lived in little villages and tolled in nearby fields. By necessity they had flocked together in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles and San Francisco after reaching, one family after another, the United States of America, a land, that in 1904 1905 offered a freedom and ghetto poverty they had never known. THEIR MOVE to Arizona was prompted primarily by the
land development company of Greene and Griffin, an
adjunct of the Southwestern Sugar
and Land Company, a big, for those times,
corporation which in 1906 [started in 1903] built a large sugar
beet mill in Glendale. |
* In Russia most of the
congregations were varieties of dukhovnie krestiane
pryguny — Spiritual Christian Jumpers.
In 1927
two remaining of 4 congregations joined and
incorporated in 1036 as "Church of Spiritual Molokans
of Arizona, Inc." Membership was limited to
"Molokans Spiritual Christians of the Sect of Jumpers
religious faith." Neither congregation
practiced the Molokan faith, but used that
term to hide their actual secret
faiths. While one group
remained Prygun,
the first to resettle here transformed into the new Dukh-i-zhiznik faith. The word "Molokan" was
popularized by journalists and promoters to simplify
the process of selling them all as one group of cheap
white labor and ideal colonists. |
Spiritual Christians in Arizona — Spiritual Christians Around the World
Lowell Parker | |
Pryguny Molokans' Arizona Start Difficult |
Second of Three Parts
The party of 170 Russian Spiritual Christians Molokans
who detrained at Glendale early in the morning of Aug.
31, 1911 was said by newspapers of the day to be the
largest single group of settlers to arrive in the Salt
River Valley up to that time. IT WAS THOUGHT that the new comers would compete
unfairly with native labor when not engaged on their own
plots of newly-purchased ground. And, anyway, they were
a strange people speaking a strange tongue, a people
with dress, customs and a religion that did not conform.
|
The dissenters of
the official Church were similar to Protestants in
Europe. Many called themselves "Spiritual Christians."
In the 1800s they were tolerated by moving them to
borders of the Empire, south and east. Those who
migrated to Arizona were from the Russian border with
Turkey, a
war zone. There in an area not far south from the capital of Georgia in Kars and Erevan provinces, they lived in small, isolated villages while farming plots of AROUND 1905, singly and in small groups (largest 300),
the Spiritual
Christians, mostly Pryguny
with Molokans and other faiths, began
working their way toward America, journeying from first
one country to another as they worked and saved for the
final jump across the Atlantic and on westward. THE TENTS gave way to sturdy frame houses. The small
plots of land expanded into more acreage as a frugal,
hard-working, shrewd people gradually acquired more
ground and more know-how about American farming. Still
for most the meeting
hall (sobranie) church
continued to be the center of their lives, and the
elders of
the church ruled with an iron band. |
By 1920, four
adjacent Russian villages occupied 10+ square
miles, from Tolleson to Glendale, along 83rd and 75th avenues
from McDowell road to Northern avenue. Each
congregation was mostly from different villages in the
western Caucasus of different faiths, each with their
own presbyter, and 2 with stores. THEIRS WAS
a strict religion, but, as in all religions and
governments some took the rules and regulations more
seriously than others. Nevertheless, in those earlier
years of the settlement, few rebelled. |
Spiritual Christians in Arizona — Spiritual Christians Around the World
Lowell Parker | |
Dukh-i-zhizniki Molokans |
Last Of Three Parts
Russian Spiritual Christians Molokans,
were WHEREUPON the baffled governor left them to the mercy
of the courts. Federal court decreed that all should go
to jail for a year, and that they did, spending, in all,
10 months in the Yavapai County hoosegow which had been
designated a federal detention center just for them. |
It was a
heartbreaking scene, said the newspapers, when the 34 35
departed Phoenix for Prescott. Mothers wept, little
brothers and sisters looked on with chins quivering. The
prisoners sang songs but otherwise conducted themselves in
stoical fashion while hundreds of non-Molokan curious
thronged around the Santa Fe station. More than a score of older sect members were tossed brieny into the Maricopa County jail for inciting a riot. That was the only time the Spiritual Christians Molokans, because of their adherence to the faith, really crossed swords with the government or their new-found land of freedom. Their time, before and after War I, was spent mostly behind the plow or at religious church services and the various festivals that were a part of community church life. THOSE FESTIVALS were a great break from the hard,
boring routine of a life of toil. Women cooked tasty
Russian dishes in the kitchen at the rear of the meeting hall |
After years of
exposure to American ways even the older among the Spiritual Christians Molokans became
less clannish, and their native-born neighbors no longer
looked upon them with suspicion. In fact, you couldn't
tell a Spiritual
Christian Molokan from a Methodist, except
when a fight started in a bar. On those occasions. Russian-American Molokan
men, pacifists though they should be were, always gave a good account
of themselves. They still do. Mainly a few uneducated
brutes from the Glendale clans were known for drinking
and fighting.
MANY OF THE younger generation became class
valedictorians, athletes,*
beauty queens or otherwise distinguished themselves in
the Glendale school system. (Also in Maryvale,
Pendergast, Tolleson, Cashion, and Fowler schools.) Most
were highly popular with both teachers and fellow
students. Of those more than a few married outside the
church and quite a number made their mark in a variety
of professions in Arizona and elsewhere. * Nationally famous
athletes include Olympic diver Michael
Galitzen, his brother AAU diver Johhny Galitzen,
and baseball player Lou
Novikoff. ** The original wood
meeting hall burned in 1950, and was rebuilt in stucco. *** In 1977, there
were over 100 households in Arizona that descended
from these Spiritual Christians from Russia, and over
100 attended holiday services. By 2000, though about
150 descendant households existed, holiday attendance
dropped to less than 30 due to assimilation. |
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