Molokan
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The Molokans are a "Biblically-centered" religious movement, among the Russian peasants, who broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1550s. Molokans denied the Tsar's divine right to rule and rejected the icons, Orthodox fasts, military service, the eating of unclean foods, and other practices, including water baptism. They also rejected the traditional beliefs (held by Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians) in the Trinity, the veneration of icons, worship in cathedrals, the adherence toward saintly holidays, and the decisions of Synods and Ecumenical Councils.
During the rein of Ivan the Terrible (1547-1584 A.D.), the first martyr of the Molokan faith, Matthew Simon Dalmatov, began to evangelize his family, his master, and local village members in and around the city of Tambov. Dalmatov carried this sectarian belief into Moscow, where a group of sojourners from northern Russia (near the Finnish border), called Mordovians, heard his message of spirit and truth and embraced it. Dalmatov was later martyred by Orthodox priests in a monastery prison by being placed upon a device in which two large wooden wheels with iron spikes would spin in opposite directions thereby pulling the individual’s body apart from the inside out.
The name "Molokan" was used for the first time in the 1670s, in reference to the people who ignored the 200 fasting days, drinking milk (moloko = "milk" in Russian). Molokans themselves did not completely reject the name—even adding words like "drinking of the spiritual milk of God" (according to I Peter 2:2, "Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation").
Heretics were inhumanely punished in Tsarist Russia. Beatings, torture, kidnapping, imprisonment, banishment, dismembering, killing, and other forms of cruel punishment were inflicted upon these Spiritual Christians. In the 1800s, the government's policy was to send the heretics away from the center of the country into Ukraine, central Asia, and Siberia. In 1833, there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon a number of Molokans in the Transcaucasus region. This created a schism between Constants and the newly evolved Jumpers and Leapers. With the addition of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, this new smaller sect began a revival with intense zeal and miracles rivaling that of Christ’s Apostles. Condemnation from the Constant sect lead to betrayals and imprisonment for many of the Jumpers and Leapers, now called New Israelites by their anointed leader Maxim G. Rudometkin. The famous writer Leo Tolstoy visited Russia's second most sacred religious site, Solovetski Monastery, (near the White Sea) in 1869 where he found the prison conditions to be repulsive. After having spoken to Rudometkin, Tolstoy found no basis for his 9+ year imprisonment, and so by favor of the Grand Duke, had him reassigned closer to his home at the Sudzal Monastery prison where he remained another 9 years. From then on, Tolstoy grew found of the Molokans and secretly conversed with many of them regarding Spiritual matters.
At the end of the 19th century, there were about 2,000,000 Molokans in Russia. Before World War 1 there was a well-known colony of Molokans that had been exiled to central Asia ( an area long within Russian hegemony) living closely with Armenians, Lebanese and others at the foot of Mt. Ararat in Kars,Anatolia. As a 12 year old boy, Efim G. Klubnikin became known as a "seer", or prophet, depending on ones viewpoint. As an adult he knew that the Ottoman Turks were heading for Armenia and Ararat, and was able to provide leadership in getting the Molokan community and others out of harms way. Only about 2,000 Molokans (mostly of the Jumpers and Leapers Sect) left for the United States and settled in the Los Angeles area and some other parts of the west Coast and Canada. The Klubnikins contiued to be involved in cattle and groceries, as they probably had done in the area of Tambov prior to exile. Others received a land grant from the Mexican government and settled in the Guadalupe Valley in Baja California, Mexico. An even smaller number of Constant Molokans fled Russia and settled mainly in the San Francisco and Sacramento areas of California. Presently there are about 20,000 people who "ethnically identify themselves as Molokans." There are also approximately 200 Molokan churches, 150 of them in Russia. Approximately 25,000 Molokans reside in the United States, of which only about 5,000 "ethnically identify themselves as Molokans;" most of which, reside in California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. Molokans can be found in Russia, Armenia, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Uruguay, Mongolia, Iran, Syria, and in the United States.
In 2000 Kheryn Klubnikin, a great grandaughter of Efim, was on a ferry in the Aegean Sea reading a new history of World War 1. The book mentioned Kars, Turkey, which she knew was where her great grandfather lived. Coincidentally, when she returned she was contacted by a vetenarian in New Zealand who happened to attend a pentecostal businessmen's seminar in Australia, led by the son of one of the Armenian families who left Kars under the advice of her great grandfather. Ms. Klubnikin herself has conducted work in the Altai Republic of Russia and in an odd symmatry was selected for a special program with the National Academy of Sciences to go to western Siberia. She is not Molokan, but has long been fascinated with the origins of her family. There are still active Molokan churches in Los Angeles, and not long ago the Smithsonian Folklife Festival featured Molokans as one of their peoples. Ms. Klubnikin currently works with indigenous peoples.
External links
- Molokan Home Page (http://molokane.org/molokan/Index.htm)
- Origin and Meaning of Molokan Surnames (http://www.doukhobor.org/Molokan.htm)
- Mexico's Russian Colony (http://www.folklorico.com/peoples/baja-norte/molokans.html)
- Russians in Mexico (http://www.usc.edu/dept/las/sll/russians_in_mexico.htm)
- Molokans Living in Flats (http://www.lalc.k12.ca.us/access/people/molokans/)
- Molokan Church Services (http://international.loc.gov/ammem/afccchtml/0028.html)de:Molokanen