History of Nikolaevsk

A Russian OLD BELIEVERS Community
in a Contemporary World
“Nikolaevsk is a very special place. Special and unique people make
Nikolaevsk a wonderful place to live and work. Colorful histories,
beliefs, and personalities combine in these peace-loving people to
create a delightful community. Working with and in Nikolaevsk for
twenty-three of its first years was not only an incredible privilege but
a distinct and unforgettable blessing.”
--Bob Moore, first teacher at the Nikolaevsk School, in his 1999 letter

Nikolaevsk is a small Russian village established on the former sparsely settled Kenai Peninsula amid rolling foothills surrounded by spruce and birch trees. This remote area was the final stop in an exodus of the Russian-speaking Old Believers that had taken them from their homes in the Soviet Union to Manchuria, then on to Hong Kong, Brazil, and Oregon. They have started a new life in Nikolaevsk by settling on this spectacular land and creating a unique Russian religious community, a community that is situated inland ten miles, as the moose wades, east of Anchor Point, Alaska.
The Old Believers’ quest for religious freedom began in the 1920s, after communism came to Russia, but in a broader historical context, it had begun more than 300 years ago, when their ancestors refused to accept the reform of the Russian Orthodox Church rites and were consequently excommunicated. These dissenters became known as the Old Believers, or sometimes known staroobryadtsy (literally Believers-in-the-Old-Rites), and many of them paid for their beliefs with their lives.
The Alaskan settlement is a tiny splinter of this defiant group, which does not form a single church or community, but consists of isolated communities, each with its own church. There may have been as many as three million Old Believers in the Soviet Union, despite the repressions by
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its communist regime. Small communities exist in Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Oregon, New Jersey, and elsewhere.
The most orthodox of the orthodox, wincing under the threat of cultural erosion resulting from the compromises necessary to co-exist with their host culture, the Old Believers preferred to exercise their ultimate strategy: an exodus to a more remote and isolated region. Eventually, five Old Believer families from Oregon purchased 640 acres of land in the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska and began building their community near Anchor Point in the summer of 1968. In the early 1970s, other families from Oregon came to form settlements in the northern regions of Canada, near Edmonton, Alberta, and on the Kenai Peninsula in the state of Alaska. The Alaskan communities have prospered and grown over the past 25-30 years from a few hundred to a population of about two thousand, and they constantly attract more families from Oregon and other regions.
HOW NIKOLAEVSK WAS ESTABLISHED
Initially, in 1967, four full-bearded Russian expatriates arrived on the Kenai Peninsula seeking land for their people and information on Alaskan conditions for homesteading. They had come from an Old Believers community in Oregon, looking for a way to escape the temptations and distractions of modern America, which had begun to infringe upon their lives there. The four inspected and bought a square mile of wilderness from the state and formed a village which they named Nikolaevsk, and which became the largest Old Believers settlement in Alaska. Later others were established elsewhere.
The first four houses in Nikolaevsk were built in 1968. They were lonely, raw cabins in a vast spruce forest. Electricity was brought in by the local cooperative, and more families began to arrive. When flying over the village, once could always tell when a new family had arrived, because there would be a pile of household goods on the ground nearby and another cabin under construction. In a true Alaskan tradition, the Old Believers have demonstrated how to tame the wilderness. The village now is home to some 350 people, though in June of 1998, it had a population of over 500 or some 80 families.
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The village has its own public schools managed by the State of Alaska and attended by Russian children from Nikolaevsk, although currently about 25% non-Russian children are also attending that school. There had been a decline in students in recent years due to various circumstances. In 1998, for example, there were approximately 161 students, but two years ago, in 2004, only some 90 students were enrolled.
An abundance of wildlife is to be seen in the village during different times of the year. Moose are quite numerous, especially during the winter months, but also during the spring break-up of ice and melting of snow. They stroll through the village and neighboring terrain, helping themselves to berry bushes and willow branches. Pheasants, lynx, black bear, wolves, foxes, and spruce grouse are at times to be seen in the vicinity. Bald and Golden Eagles soar high overhead. There are numerous hawks, owls, ravens, crows, and a variety of other birds. Among domestic animals cats are the preferred pets.
The men work in nearby communities and are primarily engaged in commercial fishing. During the short Alaskan summers the villagers do not farm for profit but some families have built greenhouses where they grow their own vegetables and a few have outdoor gardens. Each head of the household has built his home and is supporting his family, but in a true pioneering and religious spirit, all work together by helping each other and by trading work. Their church is a vivid example of their cooperative efforts.
In the summer of 1983, when the eminent scholar Alexander Dolitsky had visited Nikolaevsk for the first time, he noticed an emerging controversy in the village between two factions of its residents. The conflict centered on the differences in religious dogma. There were a number of Old Believers, led by Kondraty Fefelov, whose theological background was gained from studies at a monastery in Romania, who stated that their religion should not be corrupted by reform and who favored the ordination of priests. Other villagers, however, refused to accept Fefelov as a priest and rejected his ideas as a whole. During 1983-84, as a result of this schism, five priestess families left Nikolaevsk to establish a new Old Believers settlement called Beryozovka (Birch Tree) in a rural area of Alaska near the existing community of Willow. Somewhat later, under unknown
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circumstances, the praying house of the priestless grouping burned to the ground. The group adhering to their religion led by the priest, Kondraty Fefelov, built a new church according to the design and theological teachings of the Belokrenitsky tradition.
RELIGIOUS PRACTICES OF THE OLD BELIEVERS
The Old Believers can be broadly divided into two groups: those who recognize priests and those who do not. In Alaska, Canada, Australia, and Oregon, there the popovtsy churches with priests and headed by Archbishop Sofrony, who had painted all the icons in the churches in Nikolaevsk, Woodburn, Oregon, and in Australia. There are no priests among the bespopovtsy (lit. those without priests) and among the temnovertsy (lit. believers in the dark faith) lines of the Old Believers. Instead, these latter two branches have a nachetchik, nastavnik or nastoyatel’ (these are all laymen), who are elected as their spiritual leaders and head their communities. Such a layman substitutes for a priest by conducting services, baptisms, and marriage rites, and by teaching church principles to the village youth. Nikolaevsk, on the other hand, has two priests: Father Kondraty Fefelov, who had been ordained in Romania in 1983, and Father Nikola Yakunin, ordained into priesthood in Nikolaevsk by His Eminence Archbishop Sofrony in 1996. That same year, Josef Martushev was ordained as a deacon in Nikolaevsk as well.
The Old Believers’ church holidays follow the Julian calendar (Holy Days, Lent, etc.) Thus, for example, Christmas Day of December 25, falls on January 7th, which is a fortnight after the Gregorian calendar, which is adhered to by the majority of the world’s Christians. During Holy Week, which precedes Easter, the popovtsy start attending church from Wednesday and continue through Bright Week following the Sunday of the Holy Apostle Thomas which is Easter. On Nativity Eve known as Christmas Eve, church services begin at noon with Vespers and the Holy Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, with a break for a few hours and then they continue with the Vigils. On Sundays and Holy Days, services begin at 7 a.m. followed by the Holy Liturgy.
There are some thirty-eight church holidays, which are celebrated by the Old Believers, who spend these in church for at least a few hours each
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day. The service of the bespopovtsy begins at 2 a.m. on Sundays and on
holidays, and usually lasts some six or eight hours. On Saturdays, their services are usually from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Everyone, except the very elderly, remains standing throughout most of the service. Easter service can last up to fifteen hours. The week after Easter, the bespopovtsy celebrate whereby all men and women go from house to house praising Christ in song—slavit’ Khresta, and enjoying their abundant delicacies of traditional food, homemade wine (braga) and beer from which they had abstained during the Great Lent.
The popovtsy churches, the churches with the priests, also celebrate Christmas and Easter with traditional food, wine, whiskey and vodka purchased at stores. They no longer make their wine at home.
The fasting requirements are very long and rather severe. Every Wednesday and Friday are fasting days, in addition to which there are periods during the year when the Old Believers abstain from all animal products, including milk and eggs. This makes a total of over 200 days a year of fasting!
People attending church services are required to dress appropriately. Women must wear scarves and long skirts with long sleeves. Men wear long-sleeved shirts and slacks. Visitors may attend church services but are allowed only to stand in the vestibule. No cameras are allowed in the church. The popovtsy churches were given permission by their priests to use tape recorders, photo and video cameras during the years 1991-98 for special occasions such as weddings. After 1998, no cameras were allowed in the church. Occasionally, an exception may be made for photo and video cameras to be used, but it requires special permission from the priest. For example, Richard Morris and Mikhail Yevstaf’ev were allowed to photograph inside the church for the 2003 Easter service to illustrate their article in a Russian newspaper.
No dogs are allowed on the church premises and there are few, if any, dogs owned by residents of the village.
 
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TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE AND WEDDING CUSTOMS
Prior to marriage, the bespopovtsy elders (startsy) check and calculate the blood relationship of the young people to be married. There are numerous rules written in the old books that impose certain prohibitions for marriage. These regulations are predominantly concerned with kinship relationships, requiring a four-generation gap between bride and groom, and in this manner they reduce the eligible pool of marriageable persons even beyond the common pan-cultural restrictions, which say that a spouse must be approximately of the same age (or the man older), the same tolk (religious affiliation), and that both partners had never been married before. Marriage is forbidden if the elder discovers discrepancies or flaws in the blood relationship between two people. In the popovtsy communities only the priests can check and calculate the blood relationship of marriage-age young people.
Weddings are held in the tradition of peasant village events. Prior to the actual wedding, typical Russian peasant ceremonies such as the engagement negotiations are carried out by the parents of the bride (the nyevyesta) and groom (the zhyenikh). The final agreement is toasted with a drink and presents are given. Other ceremonies include the dyevichniki, a time of increased sewing by the bride and her girlfriends, and the evening events during which the groom and his friends are visiting. There is also the light-hearted “buying of the bride,” in which the groom comes to take her to her new family, and the sentimental proshchaniye (the bride’s farewell) from her parents. The wedding party, with a chain of handkerchiefs, proceeds to the prayer hall. The venchyaniye (lit. crowning ceremony) takes place after the regular Sunday service, and the wedding (svad’ba) is celebrated for three consecutive days at the home of the groom’s father. The bride’s dowry trunk (sunduk) is delivered by her kinsmen and “sold” to the wedding party. Today, for the popovtsy, this is optional. Later, after the wedding meal or feast (obyed or pir), the young couple stands for the poklony (the bowing ceremony), which is the chance for their kin to give them wise advice and a wealth of presents. On the last day of the wedding, the young couple must “buy” the presents from the best man (svidyetel'’) and the matrons of honor with kisses, bows and witticisms. At this point, the bride’s mother-in-law (tyoshcha) is also auctioned off (this is optional for the popovtsy). Later,
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after the meal or obed, the popovtsy once again have the young couple stand for the presents, which gives their kin an opportunity to provide them with wise advice and numerous presents.
Because weddings (svad’ba) are meant to be elaborate and rich, they cannot be held on any of the days of fasting or during the period of Lent. This tends to make the wedding a seasonal event, normally scheduled just before the seven-week Easter Lent. The groom’s family of the bespopovtsy prepares a variety of foods and ensures a plentiful supply of braga (home-made wine).
APPEARANCE AND DRESS
As is the case with nearly every other aspect of Old Believers lives, the traditions of appearance have religious significance and, historically, are deeply rooted. The physical type and appearance of the Old Believers is Slavic.
At baptism, a person is dressed in a shirt bound with a belt and is given a cross to wear around the neck. The three items—the shirt, belt (poyas), and cross—traditionally must be worn at all times in public. The main elements of Old Believers’ appearance—the poyas (woven belt) and the cross—are of a religious significance. These two items symbolize the bond between their bearer and Christ. The belt is not to come off except for bathing and sleeping, and the cross is not to be removed at all except in the event when a chain is to be replaced.
The men wear the long Russian rubashka, a tunic-like shirt girded with a poyas, a woven belt. The woman’s dress is always a full dress, which fits over a long-sleeved blouse and full-length slip. Women lengthen the shirt to form a blouse/slip combination and wear a jumper (sarafan) over it or a talichka along the ever-present peasant apron, which is optional. Children wear adult style clothing but in their smaller size. Holiday clothing is more fanciful and colorful, but of the same style.
Men cut their hair, except for a fringe in front, but leave their beards untrimmed. In the Bible, they are enjoined neither to cut their hair at the temples nor to trim the edges of their beards, for to do so would be to deface
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the likeness of God, in whose image they were created.
The women, according to the Bible, are never permitted to cut or dye their hair. Moreover, they are not allowed to show their hair in public. A woman’s husband is the only one allowed to see her hair. They are also never to show their arms above the wrists or their legs above the calf in public, or any other part of their bodies. Unmarried women plait their hair in a single braid, and after marriage they keep it bound with two braids under a cap (shashmura) covered by a kerchief.
THE OLD BELIEVERS’ LANGUAGE
Among North American Old Believers, Russian is spoken at home and in most work areas. Although only a few Alaskan Old Believers were born in Russia, the Russian language is very much alive for all of them. Given the size of the Russian communities in Oregon and Alaska, there is ample opportunity for men speaking Russian to form groups for contract work outside of their villages, reducing the need to learn English as a second language.
Church Slavonic is used for religious services and the young learn to read and chant from their parents and older siblings. It is considered prestigious for Old Believers to read books in Church Slavonic during worship and religious holidays and parents always admire such an effort. Despite heavy Americanization in North America, the Russian language, as a symbol representing an idea or quality of life, is the channel by which Old Believers communicate their beliefs and attitudes to their children, defining the place they are to take as adults in the community.
THEIR EDUCATION
While the law of the dominant culture, whether in the United States or in the former Soviet Union, has always required the young to attend public schools, parents have been somewhat apprehensive about sending their children to public schools. There are frequent religious holidays when children, as well as their parents, attend church in the early morning hours, conflicting with the school schedule. The school schedule in Nikolaevsk village is adjusted according to the religious demands of the community
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since most of the students are children of Old Believers.
Bob Moore was the first teacher at Nikolaevsk Elementary/High School when it was started in 1970. In 1972, a bilingual program was established to help with English language comprehension. This educator and his staff were dedicated to giving the children of Nikolaevsk the best education possible. Upon his retirement in 1993, Carlton Kuhns was chosen to take his place. The latter continued the tradition of providing high educational standards for the children at the Nikolaevsk School. In 2001, Principal Kuhns transferred to a Christian school in Homer and Terry Martin became the third principal at Nikolaevsk.
Although some Old Believers have received a college education in the 1990s, and many young people left their traditional community, the Old Believers, as a rule, retain their characteristic Russian peasant attitude toward public education. They feel that the young should learn to read, write, and to think rationally in dealing with shopkeepers and hostile neighbors. Anything more abstract is in God’s realm and should be left alone, they consider. Consequently, parents have regularly withdrawn their children from public schools after the sixth grade at a time when subjects they considered offensive were offered to the children, and when children’s labor became an essential additional to the family budget.
The Old Believers in Alaska have changed in some ways over the years. The greatest changes have occurred in matters of material, technological, secular culture and social life, and they reflect an adaptation to circumstances rather than any fundamental alteration of their cultural identity. The most stable forms of their culture, however, have been religious matters and values. To Old Believers religion is not an institution parallel to economics, politics, or kinship, but religion is the soul of their society. For Alaskan Old Believers religion is not limited to a particular sphere of life; religion is all encompassing and dominating every aspect of their life.
 
 
 
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nina K. Fefelov was born in Khabarovsk, Russia and came to Alaska in December 1991. Since 1993 she has been a bilingual instructor at the Nikolaevsk School and has earned her Master’s Degree in Russian Language Arts from Norwich University in 1994.
In addition to her teaching, she has also engaged in entrepreneurial activities by opening her gift shop in Nikolaevsk in 1995 and her caf; in 2001.
In Russia, Ms Fefelov was an electrical engineer and also worked as a travel guide for large groups of adults and students in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. A dedicated teacher at heart, she was a volunteer lecturer in Russian history and literature for various colleges in Russia. From 1989 to 1991, she was nominated President of the Sisterhood for the Old Believers Church in Khabarovsk, and she was the driving force in registering the church and in land acquisition for the church building. Throughout the year 1991, she worked tirelessly to bring the church construction efforts to fruition.
Nina met her husband Dennis during her stay in Nikolaevsk. A widower, he had three sons: a nine-month old, a ten-year old, and a twelve-year old. She assisted her father-in-law, Father Kondraty Fefelov in his dedicated work of starting church construction in Khabarovsk.
Currently, one of Nina’s sons is a successful businessman in Anchorage. He is married and has blessed Nina with a wonderful grandson. She visits her other son, who lives in Russia, every two or three years.
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INDEX
A Russian OLD BELIEVERS Community in a Contemporary World ................ 2
 
 
HOW NIKOLAEVSK WAS ESTABLISHED ........................................................ 3
RELIGIOUS PRACTICES OF THE OLD BELIEVERS ...................................... 5
TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE AND WEDDING CUSTOMS .............................. 7
APPEARANCE AND DRESS 8
 
THE OLD BELIEVERS’ LANGUAGE 9
THEIR EDUCATION
About the Author 11
Russian OLD BELIEVERS community
NIKOLAEVSK
ALASKA
2005