Footnote to Introduction, Dukh-i-zhizniki in America
By Andrei Conovaloff, Updated: 22 June 2022

RE: "heathens" and "rob the Spirit"
Heathen

From 1966 through 1970 in Los Angeles, pomoshnik presviter Harry Shubin, Akhtinsy sobranie (Percy street), several times begged me to drop out of college, for fear I would become a "heathen." He wanted to save me from the worldly fate of my uncles who graduated college. By 1972, I graduated from U.C.L.A. Soon his harassment quit and we became partners because (a) I often attended religious meetings and worked in his kitchen brigade (partiya : team), and (b) in 1975 we began to work together in 1975 on a "History and Issues" seminar presented at the U.M.C.A. for 2 years. We shared a passion for our ancestral history, and he respected and needed my academic skills to type, research, interview and organize lesson plans. My college education became an asset to him, no longer a sin.
Persistent (postoyannye) fears against education among many Dukh-i-zhiznik elders was the main reason I recommended in 1979 to the founders of the Heritage Club that they give two $100 college scholarships to a boy and girl every year as a promotion for higher education, and expand into sponsoring other community charity work. Instead, the Club focused only on scholarships which became their main function, which expanded to corruption (lying, misappropriating funds) and giving $40,000 annually to as many as possible. Many Heritage Club founders were YRCA-ers, taught that for their personal salvation they must unconditionally give in "charity / love / agape" with no expectations from the receiver. The numerous scholarships funded assimilation, causing many youth to leave the community, rather than investing in and reforming needed community services. They refused to give to Molokan students from Russia studying in the U.S. I never received a scholarship from the Club to support my research, perhaps because I refused membership due to my nonpartisan work within their heritage communities.

Rob the Spirit

"Rob the spirit" is a recurring theme among some Native Americans and fundamentalist evangelic Christians regarding laws requiring everyone to have a Social Security number.

A high school classmate of mine at Tolleson, Arizona, a member of the Gila River Tribe of Native Americans, quit high school just weeks before our graduation. The issue flustered several faculty, and was a classroom conversation several times trying student peer pressure to keep him in school until graduation. Now I understand his need to quit school. We (white people) were not his tribal peers. He had to quit school to keep face and faith within his tribe, not with us. He lived in a different culture.

My friend John Walter Bogdanoff also fears social security numbers for his children and avoided college for himself citing his Dukh-i-zhiznik belief that higher education hinders one's Spiritual growth and attainment of the Holy Spirit. He became a Dukh-i-zhiznik prorok (prophet). Similarly many Dukh-i-zhinik girls must drop out of college to get married. Some girls who got Heritage Club scholarships had to quit college if they married into a zealous family.

So far I only found one online religious article somewhat supporting fear against education, which states that college is "valuable" if not "overdone." 

In contrast, about 1974, J.W. Bogdanoff, a U.M.C.A "historian" since 1969, created the idea for a "Molokan History and Issues" class which he brought to me to type on paper. We became friends in the late 1960s because he was fascinated that I was one of a few who went to college and attended the U.M.C.A., spevka, and sobranie. He had the whole "History and Issues" class plan outlined in his mind, including who should teach each lesson, and who could fund it (Mike Sergei Shubin), but could not clearly express it on paper, nor execute it. For that he needed to enlist a college educated guy (me) with skills that he lacked. For several days, John would meet me at my work office (owned by presviter Andrew P. Wren), describe his ideas while I typed. We photocopied the outline which John used to solicite elders to help launch the program.

Ironically, our strongest supporter among the front-row elders was historian Harry Shubin, who years earlier pestered me to quit college, and also lacked writing, printing and organizational skills, but was positioned to politically promote the seminar and defend against attackers. He said a few were quite hostile. Presviter Shubin diligently volunteered to teach the first lessons and substitute for other elders who agreed to teach a lesson, gave their lesson plan, then aborted before their class, some just an hour before. He was actually strongly in favor of education if the topics were about his religion and culture.

When I moved to Fresno in the summer of 1976 for a higher paying job, Harry Shubin lamented that they could not continue the seminar in East Los Angeles without me even though we had compiled sets of lecture notes which they could reproduce as needed. The class ended, and we remained friends to his death.

Back to worldly "'heathens" and "rob the spirit" in
Chapter 1, Dukh-i-zhiniki in America