Dukhobors and Moloccans Remaining in Georgia Migrate

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Subject: Dukhobors and Moloccans Remaining in Georgia Migrate

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Dukhobors and Moloccans Remaining in Georgia Migrate


Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Ekonomicheskiy Soyuz Supplement)
in Russian
6 Mar 99 p 7

Article by Andrey Bagirov: "Hostages of a Political 'Game': Dukhobors
and Moloccans Remaining in Southwest Georgia Migrate Mainly to Russia.
But the Causes of This Phenomenon Are Not Only Cultural-Social"

Historians, political scientists, and also journalists have long been
tracking the past and the present of the Dukhobor and Moloccan
communities in the Transcaucasus. The Russian sect members, who moved
(or most often, were deported) there as far back as the first half of
the last century, founded more than the Russian culture of land
cultivation in southwestern Georgia and northern Armenia. They also
founded a special ethnosocial environment, which, having become a
magnet of sorts for native Christian peoples, survived the Turkish
aggression of 1916-1920, the Bolshevik terror, and dekulakization. It
also survived the persecution of religion by both the authorities and
the "official" orthodoxy.
 
In time, the USSR leadership came to the conclusion that the "Russian
islands" near the Turkish border restrain the recurrence of
Transcaucasus nationalism while strengthening the USSR's geopolitical
positions.

For instance, when their "neighbors"--Meskhet Turks--were deported
from southwestern Georgia (1942-1944), the Dukhobors and Moloccans
were almost forcibly resettled to where places from where the former
had been moved as an "undesirable and potentially dangerous element,"
as one of Beria's directives states. But the Russian sect members did
not heed the persuasion and prescriptions, and stayed mainly in the
villages of Bogdanovka, Kalinovka, and Slobodka (Georgia's
Akhaltsikhskiy Rayon), Kalinino and Krasnoselsk (northern Armenia),
and in northwestern Azerbaijan.

It is noteworthy that the documents in the "Mingrelian Case"
(1951-1953), started by Stalin with the purpose of getting rid of
Beria and his proteges in Georgia, said, for instance, that "local
bourgeois nationalists intend to undermine the great friendship
between Russians and Georgians, including...by way of provocations
against the Russian population living in Akhaltsikhskiy Rayon." The
decision was made at the same time to stop the persecution of
Dukhobors and Moloccans in the Transcaucasus.

With the disintegration of the USSR, they became hostage to political
ambitions of the central and local authorities of the sovereign
republics. As we know, this manifested itself most in Georgia. The
result was a mass exodus of our compatriots, mainly into Tula Oblast's
Chernskiy Rayon.

As early as 1991, the RSFSR Council of Ministers adopted a decree on
state support for the resettlement of Russian sect members from
southwestern Georgia into the Central-European oblasts of Russia, and
in May 1996 the analogous document issued by the Russian Government
prescribes aiding (including the Tula Oblast administration) in the
repatriation of Dukhobors and Moloccans into Tula Oblast's
aforementioned rayon in 1996-1998.

They are also moving to neighboring areas of Armenia, where there has
never been and is not any persecution of the Russian- and
Russian-speaking population, including religious communities.  Alas,
it is not easy to take off from the land that has become native to
many generations of spiritual [dukhovnyy] Christians (as Dukhobors and
Moloccans officially call themselves and their teachings). Especially
considering that their relations with the local population in the
Transcaucasus have not become any worse since the disintegration of
the Union.

However--and not without the knowledge of the Georgian
authorities--the Russian sect members have been finding it
increasingly difficult to live and work, perform their religious
services, and communicate with Dukhobors and Moloccans in Russia,
Canada, the United States, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, New Zealand,
and South Africa. The capital of sorts of Dukhobors and Moloccans in
Georgia also was renamed recently: Bogdanovka village is now called
Ninotsminda.

But there is also another aspect. After a half-century-long exile,
Meskhet Turks are returning to the republic--from Krasnodar Kray,
Central Asia, and Kazakhstan. According to the Imeni Baratashvili
Meskhet Fund, by the end of February 1999 about 600 members of this
ethnic group had returned to their native parts.  Although Meskhet
Turks in the former USSR number more than 200,000 now, the state
program of their settlement in Georgia, signed in 1996 by E.
Shevardnadze, envisages the repatriation of 5,000 Meskhet Turks into
the republic by the year 2005. And the annual repatriation has been
set at 150 persons who identify themselves as "ethnic Georgians"
(something those desiring to return object to increasingly less).

According to E. Shengelaya, first deputy chairman of the Georgian
parliament and a senior member of the ruling party--the Civil Union,
the repatriation of Meskhet Turks will represent a step toward the
country's entry into the Council of Europe and Tbilisi's closer
relations with the European Union, the United States, and Turkey.

In the opinion of analysts, Ankara also is interested in strengthening
"the Turkish factor" in southwestern Georgia. In particular, according
to information from Turkish, Georgian, and Armenian sources, Turkey
frequently links its economic aid to Georgia with the accelerated
return of Meskhets (Muslims) to Akhaltsikhskiy Rayon. This is also the
area through which will go the railroad (Akhalkalaki-Karsa-Erzurum)
that for the first time will link Georgia and Turkey and on top of
that will bypass the existing link through Armenia.

In the opinion of G. Akopov, an expert with the Krasnodar Kray
legislative assembly and president of the Armenian- Russian charitable
foundation EKOS, Turkey's goal is to neutralize anti-Turkish
manifestations in the neighboring border-adjacent area, because
southwestern Georgia is becoming a sphere of Turkish strategic
interests.

Thus, the exodus of Dukhobors and Moloccans from that area,
accompanied by the repatriation of Meskhet Turks, seems to illustrate
the coincidence of Tbilisi's and Ankara's economic and political tasks
in this region.

At the same time, on the cusp of the 1980s and 1990s the Armenian
population in Akhaltsikhskiy Rayon sharply increased, and not least
because of the exodus of Dukhobors and Moloccans from these lands,
which have become very fertile. It came to the point where the local
Armenian movement (Dzhavakkh) now is demanding autonomy within Georgia
for this area...

It cannot be ruled out that conflicts may flare up between Meskhet
Turks and Armenians, and Ankara will be unlikely to remain on the
sidelines in a potential conflict so close to Turkish borders.

In short, peoples and confessions are being unwillingly drawn into
political machinations along the entire perimeter of Transcaucasus
borders with Turkey.


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