A small grant to document Doukhobors in Kars, Turkey, was awarded to resident historian
Vedat Akçayöz (Alchayoz), who for 15 years has advocated to protect, restore and display the heritage of the remaining sites and artifacts of over 10,000 Spiritual Christians from Russia who once lived in Kars Province.
As Director of the Kars Culture and Arts Association, he is working on a Doukhobor video documentary, photo exhibit, book, and cultural centre-museum.
The government may provide space for a long-planned Russian culture center-museum in Kars to educate the public and welcome heritage explorers. Vedat hopes to preserve classic houses in the former
Doukhobortsy Pokrova village (now Porsuklu) and the former
Molokan and
Prygun Blagodarnoye village (now Chakmak, joined with Chalkuvar). His grandmother was
Prygun.
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| Vedat Akçayöz in the temporary museum, in his office in Kars, Turkey. The larger photos were taken in Stavropol, Russia, of families and descendants who left Kars in 1962. |
Vedat plans to present his first Doukhobor exhibit by the end of 2013 with photos and video showing the history from origins in Old Russia,
relocation to the Caucasus and Kars,
burning of guns in 1895, arrests and
exiling to Siberia, why and how Tolstoy aided them, migration to Canada, and those remaining in
Georgia.
His major problem is language. Nearly all the information is in languages foreign to him, and he has limited access to translators. Very little Russian sectarian history was published in the Turkish language.
In September Vedat was hosted in Gorelovka,
Georgia, by Nikolay Sukarukov for 3 days, from 30 August to Sept 3, 2013. Though he previously visited Georgia Doukhobors 6 times, he did not understand much of their history until this year. So he returned (~200 km, 125 miles each way) to gather missing details, photos and video.
In October he is going to Azerbaijan to try to locate the
3rd burning of arms site. This is the first effort we know of to explore this historic Doukhobor site since Tarasoff failed to find the exact site in 1977.
An international joint effort was accomplished this Spring to orientate Vedat. In April, 2013 his son Alper Akçayöz, who speaks English, stopped in Los Angeles for one day, during his first 1-week vacation in the USA. He was met by historian Andrei Conovaloff from Arizona, whose grandparents on both sides were from Kars. They toured and photographed Los Angeles Spiritual Christian historic sites. Alper collected photos and video at a wedding of a congregation from
Melikoy village, the
large cemetery, and met descendants of Kars Armenian
Pryguny from Karakala village who sang a
psalom in Armenian.
Conovaloff presented 4-hours of condensed history about Spiritual Christians from Russia in Kars, which was simultaneously translated to Turkish by Alper and recorded on video for his father.
Suggestions from Koozma Tarasoff (Canada), and Joyce Keosababian-Bivin (Israel) were included.
First, locate the 3 historic 1895 Doukhobor burning of arms sites, and showcase the Kars site as a historic landmark. Tarasoff says this is the single most important historic location in Kars province from which Vedat can begin to introduce Doukhobor history. The burning of arms impacted all Spiritual Christians in the Caucasus.
Second, identify the village of Karakala where persecuted Protestant Armenians joined
Pryguny who resettled in Kars oblast from Russia in the 1880s. Keosababian-Bivin, born in Los Angeles, is a historian of Armenian
Prygun descent who has been trying for
decades to find her ancestral village. This month Vedat confirmed that an
old photo matches the village nicknamed
Merkezkarakale (central Karakale).
In Los Angeles, some of the zealous Spiritual Christians from Russia participated in the launch of the Pentecostal and Evangelic Christian movements, which are similar to their faiths. Some
Prygun immigrants attended the nearby
Azusa Street Revival in 1906. In the 1920s, the Armenian Apostolic congregation fellowshipped with
Subbotniki and hosted
Aimee McPherson, while
Pryguny participated in her Foursquare ministry and radio show. In the 1950s, Karakala descendant
Demos Shakarian hosted the first
Oral Roberts crusades in California, and launched the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International. Several of celebrity
Kim Kasrdashian's relatives, born in Karalaka, are buried in the
old Prygun cemetery in East Los Angeles.
Vedat showed his
first photo exhibit in 2008, then produced a
video and appeared on local TV many times to promote his projects about Spiritual Christians. Last year he learned that the Turkish term
malakanlar generally referred to all Spiritual Christian faith groups (
molokan, prygun, dukh-i-zhiznik,
dukhobortsy,
subbotnik, etc.) not just
Molokane.
This year Vedat realized he is a descendant of Spiritual Christian
Pryguny, not
Molokane, and has
Dukh-i-zhiznik relatives in Russia and in Los Angeles, County, United States of America.
People in eastern
Anatolia, Turkiye, have mostly forgotten how many different faiths from Russia were in their territory during the Russian occupation (
1877 -
1922), and that many descendants are Turkish citizens. Among the non-Orthodox Christian faiths resettled from Russia were:
- Dukhobortsy (spirit-wrestlers), various divisions
- Dukh-i-zhiznik faiths, founded in 1928 in Los Angeles and exported to Kars
- Luidi Bozhe (God's People), various divisions
- Molokane (dairy-eaters during fasts, Lent), one faith
- Protestant Armenians who joined Pryguny
- Protestant Germans from Russia, many faiths, Anabaptists
- Pryguny (jumpers), various divisions
- Subbotniki (Saturday people), various divisions
- and others
Though most foreigners from Russia were repatriated to the USSR by the 1960s, more than 1000 descendants of these forgotten faiths remain scattered throughout Turkey.
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Doukhobor group in Vedat's office museum, Kars, Turkey, 2011. L to R: Ken Harshenin,
Eileen Kooznetsoff, Rose Ann Bartley (Hadikin), Natalie Stewart (Hadikin), Diane White
(Stoochnoff), Walter Stoochnoff, (hand, leg shown), and Fred Kooznetsoff. |
In 2009
Vedat invited heritage explorers, and in 2011
he invited more university students to get involved in research.
So far 5 groups of Canadian Doukhobors have explored their
Karakhanskiye settlements in Kars province and 4 reported in
Iskra.
- 2007 — Ken Harshenin (Iskra #2003, Feb. 2008, pages 16-23) on Spirit-Wrestlers.com.
- 2009 — Florence Chernoff-Lymburner (Iskra #2028, March 2010, pages 14-15), expanded with colour photos on the Doukhobor Heritage Website.
- 2010 — Carrie Eirene Stevensen, Doukhobors - Духоборы - Kars - Turkey, 7 heritage photos, on Flickr.com.
- 2011 — Group of 7 led by Ken Harshenin in photo above (Iskra #2051 - #2057).
- 2013 — Verna Postnikoff (Iskra #2070, September 2013, pages 30-32), edited with colour photos on Spirit-Wrestlers.com.
When Vedat first made contact with Spiritual Christian historians in the West (Tarasoff, Kalmakoff, Conovaloff), he hoped sponsors would bring him to North America to collect data. Instead, heritage explorers came to him.
Now he says: ‘Who knows, maybe I can show my Doukhobor exhibit in Canada. Of course, this is a dream. Why not? Martin Luther King says to us: “I have a dream.”’
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More news from Turkey about Doukhobors.
