Everyday Life and Problems of Dukhabors (The End)

Village of Old People

There are not young people in the village of Gorelovka at all. All respondents are over fifty. “Now you will meet only old people everywhere-on the plots, on the road, in the yards…Only elderly people remained here. I live with my eighty-two-year-old father who has got deaf and blind and I am looking after him. My children went to Russia. My youngest son went there during the first migration. Although he worked on combine, then he could not get any job and went to Russia. He moved to Tula in the Arkhangleski district with his wife and children. I do not want to go to Russia, I have got used to living here but I have no choice. I have to go…I receive only 38 lari a month. I could not plant potato this year either,” said sixty-year-old Anastasia Tikhonova. Finally we found a young man next to the shop in the center of the village. He was sitting near the wall in the sun. Local people seldom see sunshine in the village.

“One or two young people have stayed in the village. I do not work anywhere and hang out the whole day uselessly. I was happy when I went to school. But now I have nothing to do. Where shall I work? It is very difficult to live in the village. I will go soon too,” said twenty-one-year-old Evgeni Mencherov.

Endangered Dukhobors

Local people complain about hard social conditions and are going to leave Javakheti region. “Soon I will also go. My son lives in the Rianski district with his family. It is hard to live here. My parents and sister are in Russia too. Although I was born in Gorelovka I want to go there. Here we earn our living from cattle breeding. It is very difficult to live here in winter. You can observe that we have not planted anything because of cold.  I do not know what will be this year. Our life is getting worse and worse,” said fifty-four-year-old Dusia Sukharukova.

“Nobody assists us. The roof of my house has collapsed and I have nobody to ask for help. So I have to go. Our past will never return to us because it is miracle and miracles never happen,” said fifty-seven-year-old Anastasia Balabanova.

What Was in the Past?

Dukhobors do not know anything about private property so they created cooperative after collective farms were abolished and it worked very well. Once the village had its own militia too, but now the former building of the militia station is ruined. They had nursery school and a library too but now they are in the villagers’ sweet memories. There was Cultural Center where ‘dances’ were arranged every evening. They also had cheese factory in Gorelovka.

“The cheese factory produced Dutch cheese and the production was exported abroad. We produced so much cheese that they took the production by trailers everyday,” recalled Raisa Astafurova.  

Initially villagers started to dig wells with bare hands to get drinking water. Population still uses that water. “In the past, there was a bucket at every well but now they have stolen all of them,” said aunt Zina.

There are three-meter-long stones next to the wells. Cattle drank water from those stones, which now are covered with moss. The number of cows is less than families in the village and the stones have lost their function.

“Majority Acts According to Their Will” 

“The minority is harassed here,” said Dukhobors; however only several of them can dare to complain loudly. The people live in fear. “They are threatening us and smashing our windows,” said the villagers in private talks.

Raisa Astafurova does not avoid speaking openly about their problems. “What shall I say? We are minority and the majority acts according to their wish despite our opinion. Here, Georgian and Russians are minorities and Georgian people as mush suppressed as we are. People cannot speak about the problems loudly. Armenian people insult and suppress us. We must obey their orders,” said Astafurova.

The woman recalled concrete facts of Dukhobors’ suppression. “My husband works as a manager for the Russian School and gets a salary of 40 lari. But in Armenian school the manager gets 115 lari. How could it happen? Is it envisaged under the law? How can it be so?” asked Astafurova.

“Georgia Is My Homeland”

Mikheil Slatukhin is 80. He lives with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and a grandchild in the village. He gets irritated when somebody speaks about the migration and is not going to leave the village.

“I am not going anywhere. Why should I go?! We have lived here for 160 years and not only one year. Georgia is my homeland and I do not intend to go anywhere!” said Mikheil Slastukhin.

Although it is late May, there is still snow on the mountains. Cold climate makes hard social situation even more unbearable. Local people cannot buy fire-wood because it is too expensive. So they save cattle manure, then they dry it and use for heating in winter.

Storks make the monotonous daily life of the village more beautiful. They sit on the light posts of the village. They have made nests on the tops of the posts and nobody bothers them there.

At last we are leaving the village of Dukhobors where only storks live without problems…

Gulo Kokhodze, Ninotsminda