CLICK to ENLARGE


Cornell University Press
  • Available June 2005
  • 376 pages
  • 5 maps
  • 18 halftones (photos)
  • Cloth cover
  • ISBN 0-8014-4242-7
  • $49.95 retail
  • $34.95 discounted

Nicholas B. Breyfogle
is Associate Professor of  History
at The Ohio State University. He
did his Ph.D. while at the
University of Pennsylvania.
He is Canadian-born and never
met Molokans or Doukhobors
until after his thesis. His research
interests include Russian
colonialism, inter-ethnic contact,
peasant studies, religious belief
and policy, environmental
history, and the history and
culture of Armenia, Azerbaijan,
and Georgia. See 2 more  photos
at the Doukhobor Centenary
in Canada Conference, 1999.

Heretics and Colonizers:

Forging Russia's Empire in the South Caucasus

by Nicholas Brenton Breyfogle,  Ph.D. (history)

Winner of the Outstanding Publication Award 2006, Ohio Academy of History

Dr. Breyfogle spoke to Molokans, Jumpers and Subbotniki in Los Angeles about his thesis, book, and new research Saturday July 23, 2005 — 12 pm. Noon at the new Molokan Cemetery chesovnia (chapel), 7201 E Slauson Ave (east of Garfield Ave), City of Commerce

This new book is based on his 1998 Ph.D. thesis: Heretics and Colonizers: Religious dissent and Russian colonization of Transcausasia, 1830-1890 (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia), 387 pages. Abstract and Introduction. Download the original 1998 Ph.D. thesis in .PDF format. It's very large = 18,423 KB. You need Acrobat Reader. [Never having met a sectarian (Molokan, Doukhobor, Sabbatarian), Breyfogle spent 2 years in Russian archives investigating how they were moved into the Caucasus and gathering facts which further proves that these peasants significantly changed Russian history. In 1800 they were feared as the "most infectious heresy", but at the end of the century were praised as "ideal colonists" — patriots and model citizens for the 1900s. In the 1800s, these sects were often protected by Lev Tolstoy who recognized their value. Livanov and Bonch-Bruevich documented them with some analysis. In the 1900s, Soviet leaders called them role models, A.I. Klibanov began to analyze their historical contribution, and Stephan P. Dunn and Ethel Dunn translated many papers from Russian to inform western scholars of the unrecognized significance of these peasants in the Russian Empire. Independantly in the 1990s, Breyfogle dug into the archives and revealed new information illustrating the complex social impact of these sects and why 25% of Molokans and nearly all Doukhobors were "quarantined" in the Caucasus. NOTE: In Old Russia, "sect" refers to Russians who rejected their Orthodox faith, also called "heretics" and "dissenters". By law all Russians must obey the Orthodox Church, which meant that sectarians were criminals.]  [Click on pictures below to ENLARGE.] 

CLICK to ENLARGE"In Heretics and Colonizers, Dr. Breyfogle explores the dynamic intersection of Russian borderland colonization and popular religious culture. He reconstructs the story of the religious sectarians (Dukhobors, Molokans, and Subbotniks) who settled, either voluntarily or by force, in the newly conquered lands of Transcaucasia in the nineteenth century. By ordering this migration in 1830, Nicholas I attempted at once to cleanse Russian Orthodoxy of heresies and to populate the newly annexed lands with ethnic Slavs who would shoulder the burden of imperial construction.

CLICK to ENLARGE"Breyfogle focuses throughout on the lives of the peasant settlers, their interactions with the peoples and environment of the South Caucasus, and their evolving relations with Russian state power. Breyfogle draws on a wide variety of archival sources, including a large collection of previously unexamined letters, memoirs, and other documents produced by the sectarians that allow him unprecedented insight into the experiences of colonization and religious life. Although the settlers suffered greatly in their early years in hostile surroundings, they in time proved to be not only model Russian colonists but also among the most prosperous of the Empire’s peasants. Banished to the empire’s periphery, the sectarians ironically came to play indispensable roles in the tsarist imperial agenda.

"The book culminates with the dramatic events of the Dukhobor pacifist rebellion, a movement that shocked the tsarist government and received international attention. In the early twentieth century, as the Russian state sought to replace the sectarians with Orthodox settlers, thousands of Molokans and Dukhobors immigrated to North America, where their descendants remain to this day."

30 Molokans are named in his thesis, some with extensive reports explaining how they changed our history.

See table of Contents of new book. 

In the late 1990s Breyfogle spent at least 2 years researching Russian history archives, including Canada, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and the Caucasus. Then he returned in the early 2000s. His expenses were covered by at least 4 grants — a 1997 "short-term grant" from the Kennan Institute, a $24,000 fellowship grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for university teachers awarded September 1999 (also in the NEH 2000 Annual Report), $3,075 IREX Travel Grant for research in Georgia and Azerbaijan, and a short-term grant from the NEH awarded April 2000.

Book promotion and purchasing:
Q & A   (January 2005 answers to questions sent in August 2004):

S novym godom! My apologies for the slow reply to all of your questions.

When is your book coming out? Can you get discounted copies? Will it get published in paperback?
The book should be out in the next couple of months. [June] Thanks to you and others who have purchased copies already. I'm sorry for the very high price [$50] — obviously not my choice at all. The publisher will wait to see how many hard-copies are sold before deciding on whether to publish a paperback.   Thank you very much for spreading the news about the book. I'm of course delighted that Molokans and Dukhobors will read it and I look forward to hearing the community's thoughts and responses. E-mail Dr. Breyfogle.

How much is different from the thesis? Did you add sections about the Crimean War, Russo-Turkish War, and Church building?
The book includes some revised chapters from the dissertation as well as four completely new chapters which deal with things like economic life in Transcaucasia, the Dukhobors' pacifist movement, and Molokan and Dukhobor emigration. It also includes all sort of new information based on my archival research in Tbilisi that was not in the dissertation. Information from my article on the Crimean and Russo-Turkish Wars is included (although not all since it is already published in Kritika [on list below]) but the information from the Church-Building article is not. It will be published next year as a separate article in an edited volume of essays on Russian religious history (more on this later).  The book also includes 5 maps (one of the South Caucasus, and one each of Molokan and Dukhobor villages in Tilfis, Erivan, Elisavetpol and Baku provinces). I was sorry not to be able to use the maps you have, but for a variety of reasons the maps I have here were the only option. There are also 19 images in the book. 6 of which are of Molokans. There are so many excellent Dukhobor photos easily available in the British Columbia Archives that we went with many of those.

In comparison, Molokan photos are rarer?
There are so many excellent Dukhobor photos easily available in the British Columbia Archives that we went with many of those. Molokan photos are not so much rarer — although there are fewer Molokan photos from pre-1900 than Dukhobors, at least that I've been able to see — but less accessible. As you know, Koozma Tarassof donated thousands of Dukhobor photos to the BC archives for preservation. Since they are now in a public place, they are easily accessible for researchers like me. I gather that there are photographs of Molokans and Molokan villages in Russia pre-emigration but they are hard to find since they are held by individual families and the Heritage Center [at the LA-UMCA].

Will you be coming to LA? Several presbyters would like to arrange a larger meeting with you.
I have no plans at the moment to come to LA, but I'd certainly be happy to meet with the Molokan community there again. I was very impressed and energized by my first visit (can it already be 4 years ago??).

[Updated June 7, July 12 — Dr. Breyfogle has accepted an invitation to speak on Saturday July 23 at noon at the new LA Cemetery chesovnia (chapel), 7201 E Slauson Ave (east of Garfield Ave), City of Commerce. He will talk about about how Molokans got religious freedom 200 years ago and why a fourth of all Molokans moved to the Caucasus, the subject of his PhD thesis and book (above); and his recent research about Molokan Church Building (below). Keep looking for an outline of his talk and a pictoral report about his lecture afterward.]   Updated July 11

Correspondence continued June 17  
(My copy of Heretics and Colonizers arrived a few days ago, I pointed out an error — the old website address was published.)
Your Table of Contents seems brief, but great bibliography and index. Where's the detail map of Kars oblast?
... The table of contents is standard in format for this type of book. The bibliography is something I compiled, but shorter than I'd like. The Press only gave me a certain number of pages, so it is by no means complete and only represents about half of the books and articles I read during my research. The index was done by a professional indexer, so I had no part in it. Of course, the index is designed for a more general audience and obviously won't do all the things that you as a Molokan might want it to do. I'm unhappy not to have the Kars map, but again this was a decision of the publisher. Maps are expensive to publish and had they included a sixth map the book would have been even more expensive to buy. So, they decided in the interest of keeping the price below $50 (already very expensive, as you well know) to give me only 5 maps. No possibility of an error correction slip at this point. If the book is reprinted in paperback then I can make the change then. I'm really glad they included Jon's [Kalmakoff] comments. Again, this was something that the press did that I had no control over. Of course, your mention in the acknowledgements was my choice and I was glad to be able to thank you publicly for all your help over the years with the project.   Looking forward to seeing you in LA, Nick

More about Heretics and Colonizers later.....
Most of Breyfogle's works are listed here by date:
  • 1995 — "Building Doukhoboriia: Religious Culture, Social Identity and Russian Colonization in Transcaucasia, 1845-1895." Canadian Ethnic Studies XXVII: 3 (1995): 24-51. A historical study which examines the reasons why the Russian government sent the Doukhobors to Transcaucasia in the nineteenth century.
  • 1998 — Heretics and Colonizers, Abstract and Introduction from 1998 Ph.D. thesis.
  • 1999 — Heretics and Colonizers: Religious dissent and Russian colonization of Transcausasia, 1830-1890s.  Download the original 1998 Ph.D. thesis in .PDF format. It's very large = 18,423 KB. You need Acrobat Reader to open it. If your last name is on the list below. Breyfogle may have reported about your relative.
  • 1999 Oct — "Re-thinking the origins of the Doukhobor arms burning, 1886-1895". Presented at The Doukhobor Centenary in Canada, University of Ottawa, Canada , 22-24 October 1999.
  • 1999 Dec— "Religious Dissent and Russian Empire-Building in Transcaucasia, 1830-1900", a 2000 NEH fellowship grant announced November, 1999.
  • "The Ecology of Colonization: Russian Settlers and the Transcaucasian Environment in the Nineteenth Century",
  • 2000 Feb — "Empire and Identity: Ethnicity, Religious Affiliation and State Service Among Russian Settlers in Transcaucasia, 1830-1900" at the Advanced Study Center of the International Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich., Feb. 9, 2000.
  • 2000 Mar — "Colonial Contact as Creation: Relations between Russian Settlers and the Peoples of Transcaucasia, 1830-1900" Thursday, March 16, 2000, 7-9 pm.. Also announced in the CREES newsletter (Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto).
  • 2000 Mar — "Caught in the Crossfire: Russian Civilians in the Russo-Turkish Theater of War, 1853-56 and 1877-78" at the Maryland Workshop in Russian Studies, March 25, 2000.
  • 2000 Aug — "Molokan History in Russia", a lecture presented at the Molokan Cemetery Association, Los Angeles, Aug. 12, 2000. Listed in Recognitions: Presentations.
  • 2000 Sept — "Swords into Plowshares: Opposition to Military Service among Religious Sectarians, 1770s to 1874", an unpublished paper presented at the Davis Center of Russian Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 10, 2000. Listed in Recognitions: Presentations.
  • 2000 Oct — "Empire and Ecology: Russian Colonists and the South Caucasian Environment in the 19th Century", an unpublished paper presented at the Midwest Russian History Workshop, University of Chicago, Oct. 20, 2000. Listed in Recognitions: Presentations.
  • 2000 Oct — "At the Edge of Empire: The Terek Cossacks and the North Caucasus Frontier, 1700-1860" pp. 459. Author(s): Barrett, Thomas M; Breyfogle, Nicholas. The Russian Review, Volume 59, Issue 4, Page 677, October 2000.
  • 2000 Oct  — "Rethinking the Origins of the Doukhobor Arms Burning, 1887-1893" and "Exploring the Doukhobor Past in the New Millennium" at the Doukhobor Centenary: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective on their Unity and Diversity conference, University of Ottawa, Oct. 23, 2000.
  • 2000 Nov — "Sword into Plowshares: Religious Opposition to Military Service in 19th Century Russia" at the AAASS Conference, St. Louis, Nov. 19-21, 2000; and published in The Military and Society in Russian History.
  • 2000 Nov — “The Ecology of Colonization in the South Caucasus,” presented at the Midwest Russian History Workshop and the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, AAASS Conference, St. Louis, Nov. 19-21, 2000.
  • 2000 — “Switching Denominations in a Multi-Confessional Context: The Politics of Religious Affiliation in Nineteenth-Century
    Russia” presented at the annual meetings of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, Cambridge, England.
  • 2000 — “Empire and Identity: Religious Dissenters and Russian Colonization of the South Caucasus in the Nineteenth
    Century,” at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto.
  • 2001 — "OSU Historians Around the World", Photo: "Nicholas Breyfogle (left) researching in Tbilisi, the Republic of Georgia, with the Deputy Director of the National Archives, Rezo Khutsishvili, and his wife." Making History at The Ohio State Universtiy, No. 43, 2000-2001, page 12.
  • 2001 Jul — "The Historical Parameters of Russian Religious Toleration" — The National Council for Eurasian and East European Research,  July 27, 2001.
  • 2001 Fall— "Caught in the Crossfire? Russian Sectarians in the Caucasian Theater of War, 1853-56 and 1877-78".  Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. Volume 2, Number 4, Fall 2001, p. 713. ["Molokan" cited 48 times, "Dukhobor" 182 times, "Subbotniks" 17 times.]
  • 2001 Sept — Co-organized conference: "Peopling the 'Periphery': Russian Settlers in Eurasia". September 29-30, 2001. The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
  • 2001 Nov — "Russian Sectarian Antimilitarist Before the Introduction of Universal Military Service (1874)", presented at "2001: A Peace Odyssey", November 8-10, 2001, Hofstra Cultural Center, Hofstra University, Hempstead NY.
  • 2002 — Prayer and the Politics of Place: Molokan Church-Building, Tsarist Law, and the Quest for a Public Sphere in Late Imperial Russia Department of History, The Ohio State University. Paper Presented at the Conference: “Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russian Culture”, University of Illinois, February 23, 2002. (89 KB, .PDF file. Read with Acrobat Reader. Accompanying diagram of the 1886 Kolesnikov prayer house in Baku. 
    • "Prayer and the Politics of Place: Molokan church Building, Tsarist Law, and the Quest for a Public Sphere in Late Imperial Russia," Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russian Culture, Heather Coleman and Mark Steinberg, eds. 2004
  • 2002 Nov — “Miliutin and the Caucasus: Dmitrii Miliutin: Minister, General, Memoirist", unpublished paper presented at AAASS Conference (American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies), Pittsburgh, Nov. 22, 2002.
  • 2002 — "Kontakt kak sozidanie. Russkie sektanty i zhiteli Zakavkaz'ia v XIX v." ("Colonial Contact as Creation: Relations Between Russian Settlers and the Peoples of Transcaucasia, 1830-1900") in Diaspory: nezavisimyi nauchnyi zhurnal (Diasporas: An Independent Academic Journal), No. 4 (2002), pp. 154-198.
  • 2003 — Breyfogle, Nickoals B. "Colonization by Conract: Russian Settlers, South Caucasian Elites, and the Dynamics of Nineteenth-Century Tsarist Imperialism," Marsha Siefert, ed. Extending the borders of Russian history: essays in honor of Alfred J. Rieber. 2003, pages 143-166.
  • 2003 — "Baikal: the Great Lake and its People", 2003.
  • 2003 Mar —  Also see a paper which references "Heretices and Colonizers": "Rights, Courts, and Citizenship: Law and Belonging in the Russian Empire", by Jane Burbank, New York University. Prepared for Workshop “Citizenship, Nationality, and the State in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union”. Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University, March 27-28, 2003. (104 KB, PDF file. Read with Acrobat Reader.)
  • "Spiritual Fathers and Their Children in Orthodoxy and Old Belief" (panel chaired on December 5, 2004), and "Priestless Old Belief and the Power of the State: Historical and Comparative Perspectives" (panel chaired on December 6, 2004), American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) Annual Convention, The Boston Marriott Copley Place, Boston, Massachusetts. Reported in CSEES newsletter, Winter 2005.
  • 2005 March — "Rethinking Russian Historiagraphy after the Fall of Communism," Office of International Affairs, Center for Slavic and East European Studies, Ohio State University.
  • 2005 June  — Heritics and Colonizers published. See table of Contents below.
  • 2005 July 23 — Breyfogle presents new book to Jumpers-S&L-users in Los Angeles.
  • 2005 Nov  3-6 —  2 presentations at the 37th Annual Conference, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies - AAASS, November 3-6, Salt Lake City, Utah. See Preliminary Program (PDF):
    • Page 5, Secion 2-15. Thursday, 4:15 PM – 6:15 PM
      Imagining the Caucasus in Russian Empire and the Soviet Union: The Caucasus through Various Perspectives — Co-led discussion.
    • Page 14. Section 6-16. Friday, 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM
      Population Politics in Imperial Russia: “Population Politics and Russian Colonization in the South Caucasus”
  • 2006 — Online Bookreviews, by Louis M. Waddell — Intinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction
  • 2006 — "Caught in the Crossfire? Russian Sectarians in the Caucasian Theater of War, 1853-56 and 1877-78," republished in Orientalism and Empire in Russia (Bloomington, 2006).
  • 2006 — “Prayer and the Politics of Place: Molokan Church Building, Tsarist Law, and the Quest for a Public Sphere in Late Imperial Russia,” in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russian Culture, eds. Heather Coleman and Mark Steinberg (Indiana University Press, 2006).
  • 2006 — OSU History Professor Wins Coveted ACLS Award, Slavic & East European Newspetter, Ohio State University, Vol.33, Iss.3, Spring 2006, page 9. $75,000 American Council of Learned Societies Frederick Burhardt Residential Fellowship for Recently Tenured Scholars for "Baikal: The Great Lake and its People", and 2006 Outstanding Pubication Award, Ohio Academy of History for book Heretics and Colonizers.
  • 2007 — “Russian Colonizations: An Introduction.” Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History (Routledge, 2007, in the BASEES/Routledge Series in Russian and East European Studies).
  • 2007 — Editor: Russian Religious Sectarianism, a thematic issue of Russian Studies in History, vol. 46, no. 3 (Winter 2007-8)
  • 2008 — “Enduring Imperium: Russia/Soviet Union/Eurasia as Multiethnic, Multiconfessional Space,” Ab Imperio: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space (Winter 2008).

30 Molokans named in Breyfogle's Ph.D. Thesis

Pages in original thesis
  1.  Anfimov 95
  2.  Bezzubstov 130, 289
  3.  Dobrynin 153
  4.  Donetskova 290
  5.  Gorbachev 299, 328
  6.  Gus'kov 129
  7.  Ivanov, Nikitin 
99
  8.  Ivanov, Nazar 328, 329
  9.  Ivanov, V. 299, 324, 326, 330, 331, 341-44
10.  Kanygina 292
11.  Khoritonov 296, 297, 317, 318
12.  Konovalov 307, 308
13.  Kozlov 292
14.  Loktionov 321
15.  Mironov 304, 313, 315, 316
16.  Nikitin 300
17.  Orlov 304, 313, 315, 316
18.  Pavlov 299, 300, 324, 326, 327, 328, 331, 332, 333, 342-44
19.  Petrov 102
20.  Podkovyrov 85
21.  Rodionov 300, 331, 332, 333, 344
22.  Samarin 201
23.  Sherbakov 235
24.  Shubin 186
25.  Tolmosov 328
26.  Tregubov 178 Footnote 74
27.  Uidin 319
28.  Voronin 299, 300, 326, 330
29.  Zholnina, E. 291
30.  Zholnina, U. 311, 312


CONTENTS of new book
Acknowledgemnts
Note on Translation and Transliteration
Abbreviations
Maps
Introduction
     Part I.  The Road to Transcuacasia
  1. Toleration Through Isolation
    The Edict of 1830 and the Origins of Russian Colonization in Transcaucasia
  2. To a Land of Promise
    Sectarians and the Resettlement Experience
     Part II.  Life on the South Caucasian Frontier 
  1. "In the Bosom of an Alien Climate"
    Ecology, Economy, and Colonization
  2. Heretics into Colonizers
    Changing Roles and Transforming Identities in  the Imperial Periphery
  3. Frontier Encounters
    Conflict and Coexistence between Colonists and South Caucasians
     Part III.  The Dukhobor Movement
  1. From Colonial Settlers to Pacifist Insurgents
    The Origins of the Dukhobor Movement, 1887-1895
  2. Peasant Facifism and Imperial Insecurities
    The Burning of Weapons, 1895-1899
  3. The End of  an Era and It's Meanings
Selected Bibliography
Index


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