As several years passed by and some of the families began to establish firm
financial footing for themselves, another problem drew their attention. Young
people in the community, through a combination of influences from American
schools and society and the restrictiveness of the Staroveri traditions, were
beginning to fall away from the old ways. A few community elders viewed the
situation with sufficient alarm that they began seriously considering other more
isolated locations for their parishes. One of them discovered
that government land was available in the Kenai Peninsula area of Alaska, where
the fishing was reputed to be outstanding. The first Old Believer settlers
on the Kenai Peninsula received a grant from the Tolstoy Foundation in New York
and purchased 640 acres of land on the peninsula in 1967. After
initial investigations by four men, five families moved up to Alaska and began building a community there in the summer of 1968. Ten adults, twelve
children, eight cows and four calves started Nikolaevsk. Solomia Kalugin, Tatiana Martushev
and
Kondraty Fefelov* were among those first settlers.
This unique community of expatriate Russians
descended from ancestors
who refused to conform to changes in their traditional Orthodox religion.
After almost 16 generations of seeking places to live where they could preserve
their culture, they started anew, and called their settlement Nikolaevsk
in
honor of St. Nicholas, the
patron saint of the town's church.
Alaskan neighbors refer to it as "Russian Village."
During the first summer, the families camped in tents on an "oil pan,"
a bed of gravel about a hundred yards in diameter, originally laid down in
preparation for drilling on the spot. The men began constructing an access road
to their village from the nearby roads leading inland from Anchor Point. They
then began laying out the plan for the village itself, and logged out an area
for it in the spruce forest. The first five cabins in the village were built
from the initial trees felled in the area, enabling the small band to
spend the first winter there.
Some of the families who had come later were unable to withstand the cold
winters and had to return to Oregon. However, the majority prevailed and the village continued to grow each year,
with the population stabilizing around 1974. Russian Old Believers from
China, Brazil, Iran, Turkey, Australia and other parts of the United States
moved to Nikolaevsk. By the second year, homes had running water and electricity. When the growing season in the
Alaskan summers proved too short for the production of various favorite
vegetables, the Old Believers built greenhouses with wood-fueled stoves in them
to extend the season.
With cooperative efforts of retired
Army Brigadier General B.B. Talley, 59 Old Believers prepared for and
successfully obtained American citizenship.
On June 19, 1975, a ceremony for their
naturalization took place in the Anchor Point School gymnasium with Judge James
A. von der Heydt presiding.
In 1979 a second group
of Old
Believers took the oath of citizenship and became American citizens. Since then, religious and cultural concerns prompted some families
to
fight against assimilation
and leave Nikolaevsk to form new communities.
The initial settlers tried to limit
their interaction with outsiders so they could better keep the old rites, even
using separate dishes for outsiders who dined with them. They erected a sign
that stood at the end of the dirt road: "Village of Nikolaevsk.
Private Property. Road Closed."
Today, the sign is gone, the road
is paved and the village is more welcoming to outsiders. The town has
modernized. Economically and politically, the residents are
integrated. Socially, however, although polite and highly hospitable, they
still maintain a sense of social separatism.
This new openness was sped by a
religious schism in the village in the early 1980s. Some of the
villagers decided to reinstate the priesthood into their religion, a major
change by the Old Believers, whose priests had died out centuries ago. With
Russian Orthodox bishops practicing within the reformed church, there was nobody
to ordain new clergy according to the old rites. An Old Believer bishop,
Sergei Lipolit came from Romania in
1983 and brought back
the priesthood.
Bishop Lipolit built the Church of St. Nikolas in 1983, then the next
two years painting holy icons for inside and
outside the church. He also painted holy icons for the Old Rite Orthodox
Churches in Oregon and Australia. Lipolit later became a bishop for the Australian-Canadian-American Diocese.
His arrival in Nikolaevsk however, created
a significant rift within the community. Having clergy to provide spiritual
guidance helped in the villager's integration to some extent, while others rejected the return of
priests. Many of these priestless Old Believers moved away
from Nikolaevsk to establish new communities deeper in the Kenai Peninsula.
Old Believers are having to
adapt their culture to their surroundings in order to survive.
Many residents are employed in the Anchor Point and Homer areas. A
majority of the Russian Old Believers depended on commercial fishing as an
income while
many of the women
worked in the fish processing plants. Uncertainty
in the fishing industry, however, with its feast-or-famine price fluctuations,
has caused a growing number of Old Believers to seek other jobs, such as
construction, and move to new communities outside their Russian village.
Nikolaevsk is comprised of 490 residents, about 50 dwellings, two stores - one of them,
the Fefelov Mercantile, a general store/post office, is the only year-round
business. Some of the men constructed their own fishing boats
after working at a Homer marina where they learned the trade. They set up their
own shop in the village by 1972, building
boats not only for themselves, but for non-Old Believers, as well.
The first school opened in an 8-by-20-foot trailer in 1972.
Today, Nikolaevsk has its own
combined elementary/middle/high school,
built in 1976 and renovated in 1981. It is a dual language school with Russian
spoken. In 2002, the 12-mile
road inland from Anchor Point was paved and a state-of-the-art gymnasium was
added to the school. Significantly under capacity, the 250-student school now serves about 90
students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The village remains primarily Old
Believer, though about 25 percent of the students are now non-Old Believer as
the demographics of the village change.
Russian village schools operate on an alternative school calendar. While schools
in the larger towns operate on a schedule similar to that of schools in the
Lower 48, the village schools run according to the Old Believers' religious
calendar, which includes several holidays of varying degrees. Russian
classes are central to students' education, mostly because it is the language
they speak at home. Most students in the village now come to school speaking
English, rather than Russian, but all students graduate speaking two languages.
While the residents of the Old
Believer village struggled to maintain their own ways of life, though, they
also were subject to the outside world's expectations. Previous to
their arrival in the United States, their children may not have had formal
education. Within villages, youngsters learned to read the Bible and learned enough
not to be taken advantage of. But their residence in America meant that by
law, the children now had to be in school. The first generation of
children in Alaska received at least an eighth-grade education. Until 1980, students
attended classes through the ninth grade, then began their adult lives.
Now, more students are
postponing marriage, graduating high school and even venturing Outside for
college.
4.9% of the population are Alaska Native or part Native. The community
includes Russian Orthodox, Russian Old Believers (Old Right Believers) and some
non-Russians. The Old Believers in this area lead a family-oriented,
self-sufficient lifestyle. They use modern utilities, and food sources are from
gardening, small livestock, fishing and hunting.
The villagers stock up on meat and fish for the winter. Light trapping for beaver,
muskrats minks, and weasels adds to the winter stores. They also hunt deer, elk and caribou.
In addition, the Old Believers raise their own turkeys, ducks, geese, chickens,
beef, and pork.
During the summer entire families go subsistence fishing to get the limit per person.
Some of the people fish only in the summer for salmon and work on construction
during the winter in Anchorage. Others fish year round. The Old
Believers freeze, smoke, dry, and can salmon.
Families are typically very large with 8 to 12 children. Traditional
clothing is worn, Russian is the first language, and the church dictates that
males do not shave. Boys typically marry at age 15 or 16, while girls are
married at 13 or 14. In keeping with the Old Rite, three
elements given at baptism—the shirt, belt, and cross—must be worn at all times
by the faithful. Hence men and boys are seen in the long Russian shirt, or rubashka, girded with a belt.
Women and girls lengthen the shirt to form a blouse/slip combination and wear
it under a jumper, or sarafan, sometimes with a peasant apron. The Old
Believers adhere strictly to the church rituals of prolonged fasting periods,
long church ceremonies, and do not allow outsiders or those not "in union" to
eat with them in their homes or attend church services.
A deep concern has arisen that the village will lose its Russian language and
culture as the children take on American ways. Keeping the traditional
language is central to preserving culture, but many of today's
generation won't speak in Russian and have no interest in church because they
don't understand the Old Slavonic read at the services. The Old Believers no longer fear persecution. But other factors -
cultural integration, internal divisions and an ailing fishing industry - are
changing the way they've lived for centuries.
Russian culture thrives in Nikolaevsk, an almost hidden village where Russian is
the de facto language and the residents, members of the Old Believers branch of
the Russian Orthodox Church, still dress as if they were in Siberia in the
1700s.
The Old Believers split from the church in the 17th century when Patriarch Nikon
ordered a number of reforms to Russian Orthodoxy. Some changes were minor, such as
the number of fingers used to make the sign of the cross, but the Old Believers
considered any change to the rites heretical and refused to accept the new
practice, continuing with the old rites.
The Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated their defiant members and the czars
persecuted them. Many left Russia or moved to the Siberian taiga where they
could pass the old rites down to their children in peace. But the
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 forced
many of the remaining Old Believers out of Russia for good, as the Soviets tried
to destroy the old religion and the collective farms threatened their
livelihood.
