• May 23, 1977 — Arizona Ended Russians' Long Search
• May 24, 1977 — Pryguny Arizona Start Difficult
• May 25, 1977 — Dukh-i-zhizniki

Arizona Ended Russians' Long Search

      At the northeast corner of 75th and Maryland avenues some distance southwest of the city of Glendale is an inconspicuous little cemetery often unnoticed by passing motorists.
     The graves, crooked random  in neat, straight rows, are marked only by low, unimpressive headstones and unmarked sticks, each one much like the other. Surrounding this small burial ground is a strong, steel-mesh fence. One locked gate provides the only access 
     Here rest the remains, of some hardy, independent souls who, in the years between 1911 and now, peacefully came to the end of a long journey, a journey, that really began almost 200 years ago in the province of Tambov Tamboy in central Russia.
     On Griffin Avenue, an unpaved, dusty road running eastward from 75th Avenue and about a block mile from the cemetery, nestles a stucco meeting hall church set amidst a grove of 3 tall tamarisk trees.

THIS IS the meeting hall church of the Spiritual Christian Pryguny* Molokans of Arizona, a structure outwardly unidentifiable as a church because it bears no crosses or other evidence of being a spiritual center.
     Along 75th Avenue, Griffin Avenue and the various roads and streets in that area are a scattering of rural mailboxes bearing names such as Popoff, Tolmachoff, Treguboff and Conovaloff. Also: Gozdiff, Konnoff, Kulikoff, Papin, Prohoroff, Shubin, Susoeff, Teckenoff, Uraine, Veronin.

FOR ARIZONA it all began on a Wednesday afternoon, Aug. 30, 1911, when a Santa Fe train departed Los Angeles. Aboard were 170 adults and progeny ranging from babes in arms to a host of boy: and girl youngsters. About 30 families.
     They were Spiritual Christians, Maksimisty and Pryguny Molokans, a religious sects frowned upon by the Russian Orthodox Church. And they were hoping to end years of wandering in a search for religious freedom that had taken them from one place to another in Russia and even into a part of present-day Kars, Turkey that was then a bit of Russia.

THEIR MOVE to Arizona was prompted primarily by the land development company of Greene and Griffin, an adjunct of the Southwestern Sugar and Land Company, a big, for those times, corporation which in 1906 [started in 1903] built a large sugar beet mill in Glendale.
     It was Greene and Griffin who sold the immigrants parcels of land ranging from five to 40 acres at $100 to $125 an acre to 4 different congregations of Spiritual Christians. The first land was bought with life savings, some of which was brought from Russia but much of which had been earned and saved as the Molokans slowly worked their way from one continent to another by selling land the first Maksimist congregation bought near Los Angeles. The Pryguny earned wages in San Francisco and the other 2 in Los Angeles. Some were married to Molokane
     Among those aboard the train were farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths and others accustomed to working with their hands. They saw Arizona as the end of the trail, the promised land. 
      And that it was to become, but not immediately.

Pryguny Molokans' Arizona Start Difficult

     The party of Russian Spiritual Christians Molokans who detrained at Glendale early in the morning of Aug. 31, 1911 was said by newspapers of the day to be the largest single group of settlers to arrive in the Salt River Valley up to that time.
     They were heartily welcomed by the Southwestern Sugar and Land Co., always in need of toilers in the sugar beet fields. But their welcome by Glendale's populace of 1,000 and farmers in the area was anything but hearty.

IT WAS THOUGHT that the new comers would compete unfairly with native labor when not engaged on their own plots of newly-purchased ground. And, anyway, they were a strange people speaking a strange tongue, a people with dress, customs and a religion that did not conform.
     Consequently, the new arrivals retreated to their little farms, where at first they lived in tents, and kept themselves to themselves. Those first years were indeed years of adversity what with unfriendly neighbors, the language barrier and crop failures.
     But they persisted, and, after all they did have the religious freedom they sought. In those years their whole life centered around the church.
     Back in Russia in the early 1800s (1805), the Czar had promised that they could worship as they pleased (but not evangelize). However, the Russian Orthodox Church was every bit a powerful as the Czar and a lot less lenient when it came to the matter of a competing religion.
The Molokans, a comparatively small sect, were persecuted without let-up until around 1840 when the state church directed them to leave their native region and move to southern Russia.

AROUND 1905, singly and in small groups (largest 300), the Spiritual Christians, mostly Pryguny with Molokans and others, began working their way toward America, journeying from first one country to another as they worked and saved for the final jump across the Atlantic and on westward.
     Their stay in Los Angeles and San Francisco merely was a stopgap until they could establish permanent colonies, for few of them cared for city life. Some settled in northern Mexico, some, came to Glendale and a few went to Chino Valley Cottonwood, although they did not stay long in the latter place.
     That first group in the Glendale area was joined from time to time by other Russians, not all of them Molokans. Some from Canada were Doukhobors, a feisty offshoot of the Orthodox Church. Some were just plain Russian immigrants who sought the companionship of other Russians, no matter their religion.

THE TENTS gave way to sturdy frame houses. The small plots of land expanded into more acreage as a frugal, hard-working, shrewd people gradually acquired more ground and more know-how about American farming. Still for most the meeting hall (sobraniia) church continued to be the center of their lives, and the elders of the church ruled with an iron band.
         By 1920, four adjacent Russian villages occupied 8+ square miles, from Tolleson to Glendale, along 83rd and 75th avenues from McDowell road to Northern avenue. Each congregation was mostly from different villages in the western Caucasus of different faiths, with their own presbyter.

THEIRS WAS a strict Dukh-i-zhiznik religion, but, as in all religions and governments some took the rules and regulations more seriously than others. Nevertheless, in those earlier years of the settlement, few rebelled.
     Like farmers everywhere, some of the Spiritual Christians Molokans did well in those first years and some not so well. It soon became apparent to all that growing sugar beets was no road to fortune despite the promises originally held out by the Southwestern Sugar and Land Co.
     It was around then that some of the Russians became discouraged and left the colony to join other members of the sects in California. Those determined to remain turned to vegetable growing, cotton and milk cattle for a livelihood.
     Then came the post World War I depression of 1920. More left, but some many of those returned within a year or so as the depression began to abate. Once more the colony was restored with, in general, the customs of the Old Russia World church still retained.
     Those few families who struggled through the hard times in Arizona, enduring all sorts of hardships, are the hard core of what remains of the colony.
     It is their names foreign sounding names like Popoff, Tolmachoff and Conovaloff, that appear on the rural mailboxes along 75th avenue and adjacent roads. Mostly, however, the mailboxes are those of descendants, for the only original settler still alive is aged Paul Popoff.
   Popoff died about 1984. Also born in Russia was Martha Conovaloff-Papin, who lived on 83rd at Encanto and died in 1996, a few days short of 100.

Dukh-i-zhizniki Molokans

     Russian Spiritual Christians Molokans, a strict but all but outlawed sect in their native country, found all the religious freedom they wanted when, in 1911, they established their colony in the Glendale area. Nevertheless, they did run into trouble after the start of World War I.
      Their young men, 34 35 of them, simply refused to register for the draft.
      The federal government, understanding the tenets of the pacifist Spiritual Christian Molokans faiths, had no intention of sending the sect's followers into battle, few spoke English, none were citizens, nor did officialdom expect to list them as conscientious objectors. Draft authorities only wanted them to register along with all other men age 21 to 30.
      A man came out from Washington to explain all this, but his efforts and those of state officials were to no avail.
      In June of 1917, Arizona's governor called the recalcitrant group in for a hearing at which they explained that their religion forbade subscribing their names to anything pertaining to war in any manner. They couldn't, they said, even claim exemption. 

WHEREUPON the baffled governor left them to the mercy of the courts. Federal court decreed that all should go to jail for a year, and that they did, spending, in all, 10 months in the Yavapai County hoosegow which had been designated a federal detention center just for them.
 

THOSE FESTIVALS were a great  break from the hard, boring routine of a life of toil. Women cooked tasty  Russian dishes in the kitchen at the rear of the church. Men yarned and sang Russian hymns somewhat like the Gregorian chants of the Roman Catholic church.
    That's the way it was up until War II when most Spiritual Christian Molokan boys marched off to the services without protest.
    After the war the change was rapid. Church elders lost some of their power after the boys had seen "Parce" (Paris, France). Although few if any of the immigrants them deserted the faith, many descendants declined to stick too close to the rules. As the years went by, many also merely neglected to attend church because, they joined and married into other faiths, the services were conducted in Russian and they didn't understand the language.

MANY OF THE younger generation became class valedictorians, athletes,* beauty queens or otherwise distinguished themselves in the Glendale school system. (Also in Maryvale, Pendergast, Tolleson, Cashion, and Fowler schools.) Most were highly popular with both teachers and fellow students. Of those more than a few married outside the church and quite a number made their mark in a variety of professions in Arizona and elsewhere.
   Nevertheless, the colony in the vicinity of 75th Avenue south of Glendale still exists extending south past Tolleson. Many sons and daughters have left the farm, but, in general, farming still is the principal business of descendants those Molokans who remain on acreage much expanded since first settled by immigrant parents or grandparents.
   The old meeting hall** church is still there on Griffin Avenue, and services, still conducted in Russian, are held regularly, even though attendance is not what it once was.***

* Nationally famous athletes include Olympic diver Michael Galitzen, his brother AAU diver Johhny Galitzen, and baseball player Lou Novikoff. 

** The original wood meeting hall burned in 1950, and was rebuilt in stucco.

*** In 1977, there were over 100 households in Arizona that descended from these Russian Spiritual Christians, and over 100 attended holiday services. By 2000, about 150 descendant households existed, but holiday attendance dropped to less than 30.