For several centuries, Russian Old Believers could not find peace in their native land, and in the 20th century many of them finally moved abroad. It was far from always possible to settle down somewhere close to the Motherland, and therefore today Old Believers can also be found in a distant foreign land, for example, in Latin America. In this article, you will learn about the life of Russian farmers from the village of Toborochi, Bolivia. Old Believers, or Old Believers, is a common name for religious movements in Russia that arose as a result of the rejection of church reforms in 1605-1681. It all started after the Moscow Patriarch Nikon undertook a number of innovations (correction of liturgical books, change of rites). Archpriest Avvakum united those dissatisfied with the "antichrist" reforms. The Old Believers were subjected to severe persecution by both church and secular authorities. Already in the 18th century, many fled outside Russia, fleeing persecution. Both Nicholas II and, subsequently, the Bolsheviks did not like the stubborn ones. In Bolivia, a three-hour drive from the city of Santa Cruz, in the town of Toborochi, 40 years ago, the first Russian Old Believers settled. Even now, this settlement cannot be found on maps, but in the 1970s there were absolutely uninhabited lands surrounded by dense jungle. Fedor and Tatyana Anufriev were born in China, and went to Bolivia among the first settlers from Brazil. In addition to the Anufrievs, the Revtovs, the Murachevs, the Kaluginovs, the Kulikovs, the Anfilofievs, and the Zaitsevs live in Toborochi. The village of Toborochi consists of two dozen households located at a decent distance from each other. Most of the houses are brick. Santa Cruz has a very hot and humid climate, and mosquitoes pester all year round. Mosquito nets, so familiar and familiar in Russia, are placed on windows and in the Bolivian wilderness. Old Believers carefully preserve their traditions. Men wear shirts with belts. They sew them themselves, but they buy trousers in the city. Women prefer sundresses and dresses to the floor. Hair grows from birth and is braided. Most Old Believers do not allow strangers to photograph themselves, but there are family albums in every home. Young people keep up with the times and master smartphones with might and main. Many electronic devices are formally banned in the village, but progress cannot be hidden even in such a wilderness. Almost all houses have air conditioners, washing machines, microwave ovens and TVs, adults communicate with distant relatives via mobile Internet. The main occupation in Toborochi - Agriculture, as well as the cultivation of Amazonian pacu fish in artificial reservoirs. Fish are fed twice a day - at dawn and in the evening. The feed is produced right there, in a mini-factory. In the vast fields, the Old Believers grow beans, corn, wheat, in the forests - eucalyptus. It was in Toborochi that the only variety of Bolivian beans that is now popular throughout the country was bred. The rest of the legumes are imported from Brazil. At the village factory, the harvest is processed, bagged and sold to wholesalers. Bolivian land bears fruit up to three times a year, and fertilization began only a couple of years ago. Women are engaged in needlework and housekeeping, raise children and grandchildren. Most Old Believer families have many children. Names for children are chosen according to the Psalter, according to the birthday. A newborn is named on the eighth day of his life. The names of the Toboroch people are unusual not only for the Bolivian ear: Lukiyan, Kipriyan, Zasim, Fedosya, Kuzma, Agripena, Pinarita, Abraham, Agapit, Palageya, Mamelfa, Stefan, Anin, Vasilisa, Marimiya, Elizar, Inafa, Salamania, Selivestre. Villagers often encounter wildlife: monkeys, ostriches, poisonous snakes and even small crocodiles that love to eat fish in the lagoons. For such cases, the Old Believers always have a gun ready. Once a week, women go to the nearest city fair, where they sell cheese, milk, pastries. Cottage cheese and sour cream did not take root in Bolivia. To work in the fields, the Russians hire Bolivian peasants, who are called Kolya. There is no language barrier, since the Old Believers, in addition to Russian, also speak Spanish, and the older generation has not yet forgotten Portuguese and Chinese. By the age of 16, boys acquire necessary experience work in the field and can get married. The Old Believers strictly forbid marriages between relatives up to the seventh generation, so they are looking for brides in other villages of South and North America. Rarely get to Russia. Girls can get married at the age of 13. The first "adult" gift for a girl is a collection of Russian songs, from which the mother takes another copy and gives it to her daughter for her birthday. Ten years ago, the Bolivian authorities financed the construction of the school. It consists of two buildings and is divided into three classes: children 5-8 years old, 8-11 and 12-14 years old. Boys and girls study together. The school is taught by two Bolivian teachers. The main subjects are Spanish, reading, mathematics, biology, drawing. Russian is taught at home. IN oral speech Toborochians are accustomed to mixing two languages, and some Spanish words have completely replaced Russian ones. So, gasoline in the village is called nothing more than "gasolina", the fair - "feria", the market - "mercado", garbage - "basura". Spanish words have long become Russified and are inclined according to the rules mother tongue. There are also neologisms: for example, instead of the expression “download from the Internet”, the word “descargar” is used from the Spanish descargar. Some Russian words, commonly used in Toborochi, have long gone out of use in modern Russia. Instead of “very”, the Old Believers say “very much”, the tree is called “forest”. The older generation mixes Portuguese words of the Brazilian spill with all this diversity. In general, there is a whole book of material for dialectologists in Toborochi. Primary education is not compulsory, but the Bolivian government encourages all students in public schools: once a year, the military comes and pays each student 200 bolivianos (about $30). Old Believers attend church twice a week, not counting Orthodox holidays: services are held on Saturday from 17:00 to 19:00 and on Sunday from 4:00 to 7:00. Men and women come to church in all clean clothes, wearing dark clothes over them. The black cape symbolizes the equality of all before God. Most of the South American Old Believers have never been to Russia, but they remember their history, reflecting its main moments in artistic creativity. Sunday is the only day off. Everyone visits each other, men go fishing. It gets dark early in the village, they go to bed by 10 pm.
26.05.2008The first Russian settlers in Latin America appeared in the 18th century; today, the number of the Russian diaspora in this region, according to official data alone, is more than 150 thousand people and is dispersed mainly in countries South America: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile and Venezuela.
Over the past century, immigrants from Russia have made a significant contribution to the development of Latin American states. The names of General I.P. Belyaev, sculptor Esteban Erzya (S.D. Nefedov), poetess Marianna Kolosova (R.I. Pokrovskaya), painter Nikolai Ferdinandov, singer and composer Anna Marley (A.Yu. Smirnova) and many other talented Russian people are inscribed in the annals of history and cultures of South American countries.
Of course, the Russian diaspora in Latin America did not form immediately; this happened in the course of several migration waves, qualitatively and quantitatively differing from each other. Before the 1917 revolution, for example, migration from Russia to New World had a laboring peasant character. After the revolution and the civil war that followed, it was the White Guard emigration. At the end of the Second World War in Latin America, by the will of fate, there were many refugees of Russian nationality from devastated Europe. Finally, during the modern migration wave, Russian spouses of Hispanics or their relatives settled in the New World. Separately, migration should be singled out within the framework of the Old Believer movement.
Of course, such different waves of immigration could not lead to the formation of a centralized Russian diaspora in Latin America. The only exceptions are, perhaps, the Russian community in Paraguay, as well as small islands of Russian life, as if conserved in time and space, in the villages of Old Believers scattered throughout South America. In this regard, the situation in Bolivia is especially indicative, where the share of Old Believers in the total number of the Russian diaspora is almost the majority.
Bolivia is an extremely interesting country, famous for ancient Indian civilizations, conquistadors, liberators, revolutionaries and the first Indian president in the history of Latin America and an ardent champion of coca Evo Morales.
The Russian diaspora in this country is extremely small. According to 2005 data, almost nine million people lived in Bolivia, while the number of people who spoke Russian was only about three thousand people. The Russian diaspora in Bolivia includes diplomatic workers, Russian wives of graduates of Soviet and Russian universities, ordinary immigrants from Russia and the CIS countries. But the most numerous (and most interesting for research) component of the Russian diaspora in Bolivia are the communities of Russian Old Believers, who live mainly in the tropical departments of Bolivia and number about two thousand people.
Russian Old Believers appeared in Bolivia in the second half of the 19th century. In the future, the path of the Old Believers to Bolivia was thorny and ran along the route Russia-Manchuria-Hong Kong-Brazil-Bolivia. During the revolution of 1917 and the ensuing civil war in Russia, the Old Believers found shelter in Manchuria; at the turn of the 1920-1930s, their colony was significantly replenished by Russian Old Believer families who had fled from Soviet collectivization. However, after the victory of Mao Zedong's supporters in civil war in China in 1949, official Beijing began to persecute Russian refugees, and the situation of the Old Believers again became more complicated. As a result, in the late 1950s, they began to leave the territory of China in whole communities, moving first to Hong Kong, which was under British control, and from there to Australia and New Zealand and also to Brazil. From there, some of them moved to other Latin American countries, including Bolivia (many of the Old Believers still have Brazilian passports and only a residence permit in Bolivia). In turn, the Bolivian government, interested in new workers, met the Old Believers halfway and allocated land on its territory for their families, and also made it possible to obtain soft loans.
Today at early XXI century, the villages of the Old Believers are scattered throughout the Bolivian departments of La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Beni and are located, as a rule, far from large cities. The main occupation of the Old Believers is agriculture and animal husbandry: they grow rice, corn, wheat, bananas, pineapples, sunflowers, and soybeans. The current situation of the "Bolivian" Old Believers can be assessed as very prosperous, given their propensity for hard work and the fertile soil of tropical soil - according to the Old Believers themselves, "only what you do not plant does not grow in the Bolivian land!" . Despite the fact that the Old Believers strictly preserve Russian customs and rituals, habits and traditions of a hundred years ago (some of which, by the way, are almost impossible to meet even in Russia itself), they practically do not experience any problems with local authorities.
The Russian Old Believer village in Bolivia today is something unimaginable. It is enough to give just a number of colorful examples: dogs in booths in a tropical landscape (causing, by the way, genuine shock among the indigenous people, who stubbornly do not understand why a dog needs a separate house); cows grazing in the shade of banana palms; bearded men with old Russian names in bast shoes and embroidered shirts girded with sashes; girls in sundresses weeding pineapples in the garden with the song "Oh frost, frost".
Bolivian Old Believers cherish their traditions. As is known, their distinctive feature are rigid patriarchal canons, one of which is the strict observance of the religious calendar. That is why every Bolivian Old Believer village has its own prayer house, where they pray several times a day; on Sundays and holidays, prayer takes several hours, and adults, despite the 40-degree heat, stand on their feet.
The extreme patriarchy of the Old Believers is also expressed in everyday canons. All foods used for food are grown by the Old Believers themselves; at the same time, they never eat food either in Bolivian cafes and restaurants, or in someone else's house, taking food and even water with them. The Old Believers in Bolivia do not smoke, they only drink their own brew from alcoholic beverages. Watching TV, going to the cinema, reading secular literature, using the Internet is strictly prohibited.
Unlike other Old Believer colonies in America, where children almost no longer speak Russian and many of them went to the cities and disappeared among the locals, in Bolivia the Old Believers retained the Russian language and the Orthodox faith. Surprisingly, modern Old Believers, who have never been to Russia, and many fathers and grandfathers were born either in China or in South America, communicate in Russian - the language of the Siberian village - just like their ancestors a hundred years ago. The speech of the Russian inhabitants of the Bolivian village is replete with words that in Russia itself have long been out of use: the Old Believers say “wish” instead of “want”, “wonderful” instead of “surprisingly”, “very much” instead of “very”, they do not know the words “five-year plan” and "industrialization", do not understand modern Russian slang.
The unique Russian language is preserved through the efforts of the community members themselves. Until the age of seven, children are brought up only in the village, and only then do they begin to go to a regular Spanish-speaking rural school. Old Believer teachers teach children reading and writing; their mothers tell them stories that have been passed down from generation to generation. At the same time, of course, the settlers in the Bolivian wilderness practically do not have modern Russian books.
Finally, the Old Believers strictly observe family ties. Considering that marriages even with distant relatives are strictly prohibited, young Old Believers already at the age of 13-15 have to look for life partners in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, as well as in Canada and the USA (especially Oregon and Alaska, where there are large communities of Old Believers). There are practically no mixed marriages; in the case when Russian girls marry locals, the Bolivian is obliged to accept the Orthodox faith, dress, read and speak Russian and fully observe the traditions of the Old Believers, including reading the holy books in Old Church Slavonic. Not surprisingly, such international weddings are extremely rare; that is why the blue-eyed and fair-haired Bolivian Old Believers so strongly resemble the characters of Russian fairy tales and paintings by Konstantin Vasiliev.
It is characteristic that none of the Old Believers born in Bolivia, Brazil or Uruguay, who have national passports of these states, consider these Latin American states to be their homeland. For them, their homeland is Russia, which they have never seen and about which they know practically nothing. On the other hand, a modern Russian person who has ended up in a colony of Old Believers in Bolivia has the impression that he has returned several centuries ago with the help of a time machine, where pre-revolutionary Russia exists in the Bolivian tropics, which practically no one in Russia remembers.
Against this background, Russian-Bolivian bilateral relations are also developing very actively. For example, in 1999, in the political capital of Bolivia, La Paz, a street named after A.S. Pushkin - thus the city authorities decided to contribute to the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian poet. Interest in Bolivia is also growing in the study of the Russian language and education in Russia (the main incentive here is the possibility of using it when entering Russian universities). The Russian (non-Old Believer) diaspora is slowly but surely increasing; clear evidence is the opening in March 2002 in La Paz of a private Russian kindergarten"Matryoshka". The embassy plays a huge role in supporting the Russian diaspora Russian Federation in Bolivia.
Finally, in February 2008, a truly epochal event took place for the life of Russians in this distant South American country: less than a year after the reunification of the Russian Orthodox Church, and on February 24, 2008, the head of the Argentine and South American diocese of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Platon, consecrated the Church of the Holy Trinity - the first Orthodox church in Bolivia.
Will the Bolivian Old Believers reach this temple - big question, resting both on a religious schism with the official Orthodox Church, and on the unwillingness of the Old Believers themselves to visit big cities full of temptations. One way or another, it seems that a sacred duty official authorities Russia and non-governmental organizations dealing with the problems of compatriots, is to convey to every, even completely forgotten corner of the vast Russian world, information about the Motherland and, most importantly, about its unwavering desire to support everyone who considers themselves part of this world.
See Nechaeva T. Adaptation of Russian emigrants in Latin America // Portal "Compatriots" //
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IN Lately the Russian government began to actively support the return to their homeland of compatriots and their descendants who emigrated abroad. Within the framework of this policy, several years ago, the resettlement of Old Believers from Bolivia and Uruguay to Russia began. Publications and stories devoted to these issues periodically appear in the domestic media. unusual people. They look like either from Latin America, or from our pre-revolutionary past, but at the same time they have retained the Russian language and ethnic identity.
The Russian diaspora in the Americas: large numbers, brilliance and rapid assimilation
The successful preservation of one's own language and culture on foreign Latin American soil is a very rare occurrence for the Russian diaspora. In the first half of the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of Russian refugees and migrants moved to the New World - white emigrants, religious sectarians, seekers better share and refugees of the Second World War, fleeing from the return of Soviet power to the territories occupied by the Germans.
Among them were the most famous technical specialists who made a huge contribution to the development of the new homeland, for example, Igor Sikorsky, Vladimir Zworykin or Andrey Chelishchev. There were famous politicians like Alexander Kerensky or Anton Denikin, famous cultural figures like Sergei Rachmaninov or Vladimir Nabokov. There were even military leaders like the chief General Staff Army of Paraguay, General Ivan Belyaev or General of the Wehrmacht Boris Smyslovsky, adviser to the famous President of Argentina Juan Peron on anti-partisan operations and the fight against terrorism. On the soil of North America, there turned out to be a center of Russian Orthodoxy, independent of communism, devoutly preserving the pre-revolutionary tradition.
Not so long ago in San Francisco or Buenos Aires Russian speech was common. Today, however, the situation has changed radically. Save task national identity turned out to be unbearable for the vast majority of Russian emigrants to the New World. Their descendants in the second, maximum, in the third generation assimilated. At best, they have managed to preserve the memory of their ethnic roots, culture, and religious affiliation, resulting in figures like the well-known Canadian political scientist and politician Michael Ignatiev. This rule is also true for the Old Believers from European Russia (merchants and townspeople), who also quickly disappeared among the population of the New World. Against the background of the common fate of the Russian emigration, the situation of the Siberian Old Believer communities in Latin America, who are now returning to Russia, seems unusual and surprising.
From Russia to Latin America: the path of the Old Believers
Latin American Old Believers are the descendants of those who fled toXVIII - XIXcenturies from religious persecution Russian state in Siberia and later on Far East . In these regions, many Old Believer settlements were created, in which ancient religious traditions were preserved. Most of the local Old Believers belonged to a special sense in the Old Believers - the so-called "chapel". This is a special compromise direction, dogmatically equidistant from both priests and non-priests.
At the chapels, the functions of spiritual leaders are performed by elected lay mentors (“until the true Orthodox clergy appear”). The conditions of life in the expanses of Siberia hardened them, forced them to live exclusively on their own farm and made them more closed and conservative than the rest of the Old Believers. If in the cinema or fiction depict the Old Believers in the form of some kind of forest hermits, then their prototype is precisely the chapels.
The revolution and mainly collectivization led to the flight of the Old Believers-chapels from Russia. In the 1920s and early 1930s, some of them moved from Altai to Chinese Xinjiang, and the other part moved from the Russian Amur to Manchuria, where the Old Believers settled mainly in the Harbin region and created strong peasant farms. Parish in 1945 Soviet army turned into a new tragedy for the Old Believers: most of the adult men were arrested and sent to camps for "illegally crossing the border", and the farms of their families remaining in Manchuria were "dispossessed", that is, actually plundered.
After the victory of the Communists in China in 1949, the new authorities began to unambiguously squeeze the Old Believers out of the country as an undesirable element. In search of a new refuge, the Old Believers ended up in Hong Kong for a while, but in 1958, with the help of the UN, one part of them left for the United States, and the other for Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and Brazil. In the last of these countries, with the help of the World Council of Churches, the Old Believers received 6,000 acres of land 200 miles from São Paulo.
Exploration of South America
Ultimately, separate communities of Old Believers were founded in a number of Latin American countries. Many families of Old Believers managed to live in more than one country until, in the 1980s, most of them finally settled in Bolivia. The reason for this was the warm welcome from the government of this country, which allocated land to the Old Believers. Since then Old Believer community in Bolivia has become one of the strongest in all of Latin America.
These Russians adapted to South American reality very quickly, and now they treat them with unflappable calmness. The Old Believers steadfastly endure the heat, despite the fact that they are not allowed to open the body. They are already used to jaguars, they are not particularly afraid of them, they only protect domestic animals from them. With snakes, the conversation is short - with a boot on the head, and cats are brought in not to hunt mice, but to catch lizards.
In Bolivia, the Old Believers are mainly engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry. Of the most popular crops grown by them, corn, soybeans and rice occupy the first place. At the same time, it should be noted that the Old Believers succeed better than many Bolivian peasants who have lived on these lands for several centuries.
Unlike Uruguay, where the descendants of Russian sectarians live in the settlement of San Javier, the Bolivian Old Believers were able to preserve not only their religion and the way of life that had developed several centuries ago, but also the Russian language. Although some of them went to big cities, such as La Paz, most Old Believers prefer to live in quiet villages. Children are reluctantly allowed to go to big cities, because there, according to parents, whom it is customary to listen to, there are a lot of demonic temptations.
It is noteworthy that being at such a distance from their historical homeland, the Bolivian Old Believers have preserved their cultural and religious customs even better than their co-religionists living in Russia. Although, perhaps, the remoteness from the Russian land was the reason that these people are fighting so fiercely for their values and traditions.
The preservation of traditional values is greatly facilitated by the fact that Latin American Old Believers do not allow their children to marry people of a different religion. And since there this moment There are about 300 Russian Old Believer families in which at least 5 children each, the choice of the younger generation is quite large. At the same time, it is not forbidden to marry or marry a native Latin American, but he must definitely learn Russian, accept the faith of his spouse and become a worthy member of the community.
Old Believers in Bolivia are self-sufficient communities, but they are not cut off from the outside world. They were able to perfectly establish not only their way of life, but also cultural life. For example, holidays are celebrated there very solemnly with dances and songs, but with songs that do not contradict their religion. Despite the fact that TV, for example, is banned, they never get bored and always know what to do in their free time. Along with studying at a local school, where all classes are held on Spanish and where they communicate with the local population, they also study with their teachers, who teach them Old Church Slavonic and Russian, because holy books written on them. Interestingly, all the Old Believers living in Bolivia speak without a Spanish accent, although their fathers and even grandfathers were born in Latin America. Moreover, their speech still bears clear features of the Siberian dialect.
Leaving Latin America
During the stay of the Old Believers in Bolivia, many presidents were replaced in this country, but the Old Believers never had difficulties in relations with the authorities. Serious problems the Bolivian Old Believers began with the coming to power of President Evo Morales, one of the main figures of the "left turn" in Latin America and the first leader of Bolivia to visit Russia. This politician acts as a champion of the ideas of socialism, anti-imperialism and a defender of communities in which many Indian tribes continue to maintain their way of life since ancient times.
At the same time, Morales is an Indian nationalist, striving to expropriate and squeeze out all “foreign elements” from the purely Indian state he is creating, including foreigners and white Bolivians, which include Russian Old Believers. It is not surprising that under Morales "problems" suddenly appeared with the land of the Old Believers.
It was after this that the process of the return resettlement of the Old Believers to Russia intensified, first from Bolivia, and then, following their example, from other Latin American states, primarily those where left-wing populists who are members of the Bolivarian Alliance or sympathize with it are in power. Today, the Russian Foreign Ministry is helping the process of repatriation of Old Believers, although many of them prefer not to go to Russia, but to join their fellow believers in the United States.
Poorly representing the realities of Siberia and naively taking the word of domestic officials, many Latin American Old Believers found themselves in a very difficult situation at the first stage of resettlement in 2008-2011. As a result, not all repatriates remained in Russia. Nevertheless, the process of repatriation gradually improved, and today we can hope that for the majority of these Old Believers their odyssey will sooner or later end in their historical homeland.
There are polar opinions about the chapel Old Believers living in both Americas, and in Russia itself. Someone considers them archaic Russian Amish, someone sees in their communities a fragment of the departed "Holy Rus'" and therefore chooses their way of life as an object to follow.
Of course, comparing the descendants of the Siberian Old Believers in Latin America with the Amish is incorrect.. Absolutely all Russian Old Believers use technology, electricity and even the Internet as needed. In the same Bolivia, none of the chapel Old Believers would have thought of abandoning tractors and combines, perhaps the only forbidden piece of equipment is the TV.
The idealization of this group of Old Believers is also not justified. The opinion of the author of this article, based on personal communication with the Latin American Old Believers, is that these people are just a cast of peasant Russia that has survived to this day.XXcentury with all its good and bad qualities. If to positive traits can be attributed to hard work, attitude to preserve one's identity and commitment to family values, to negative features - low level education and a narrow outlook, which very often prevents the Old Believers of Latin America from making adequate decisions in the modern world.
Maxim Lemos, a professional cameraman and director who lives in Latin America and periodically takes our tourists to the Old Believers.
Let me tell you how I first got there. I accompanied the tourists, we drove by car to different cities of Argentina and Uruguay. And we decided to visit the Old Believers. There is very little information about the Old Believers on the Internet, there are no clear coordinates, it is not clear where to look for them, and it is generally not clear how relevant the information is. There was only information that the colony of Old Believers is located near the city of San Javier. We arrived in this city, and I began to find out from the locals where to find Russians. “Aaah, barbudos!?” - said in the first shop. Barbudos is Spanish for bearded men. “Yes, they live nearby. But they won’t let you in, they are aggressive,” the San Javiers told us. This statement is a bit disturbing. But still, I figured out how to get there by country dirt roads. The Uruguayans said that the "barbudos" do not accept anyone and do not communicate with anyone. Fortunately, this turned out not to be the case. Surprisingly, many "Russian" San Javiers don't really know anything about their Russian neighbors. And everything that is incomprehensible and different, a person, as you know, is afraid. Therefore, there is no special friendship between the former Russian San-Javiers and the Russian Old Believers.
We were about to set off to search for the village, but at that moment one of the San Javierans called us, pointing at the ATM. “This is just one of them,” he said. A strange-looking man in a green shirt lined with a rope belt and with a beard stepped out of the bank. A conversation ensued. In Russian. The man turned out to be not at all aggressive, but on the contrary, kind and open. The first thing that struck me was his language, his dialect. He spoke in a language that I only heard in movies. That is, it is our Russian language, but many words are pronounced differently there, and there are many words that we don’t use at all anymore, for example, they call the house a hut, instead they say “very much” strongly. They don’t say “you know”, but “know”, “you like”, “understand” ... Instead of “stronger”, they say “more”. They say not “it happens” but “it happens”, not “can” but “can”, not “you will start” but “you will begin”, not “others” but “others”. How, evshny, back and forth, beside ... Having talked so sensitively, we asked if it was possible to look at how they live there. The Old Believer agreed, and we went to pick up our car. We were lucky that we met him, without him, according to the scheme drawn by the San Javierians, we certainly would not have found anything. And so we arrived at the village ...
Getting to the village of Old Believers for the first time, you experience a shock. It feels like you are in the past in a time machine. This is exactly what Russia once looked like ... We drive into a village, a house, in the yard a woman in a sundress milks a cow, barefoot children in shirts and sarafans run around ... This is a piece old Russia, which was taken out of it and transferred to another, alien world. And since the Russians did not integrate into this foreign world, this allowed this piece of old Russia to survive to this day.
It is strictly forbidden to take pictures in this colony. And all those pictures that you will see below were taken with the permission of the Old Believers. That is, group, “official” shots are possible. You can not without asking, secretly photograph their life. When finding out why they dislike photographers so much, it turned out that journalists were sneaking up to them under the guise of tourists. Filmed them, and then exhibited in the form of clowns for ridicule. One of these stupid and meaningless reports made Uruguayan TV hidden camera
Their technology is very advanced. All owned. There are also trucks, and combines, and various sprinklers, sprinklers.
Arriving in the village, we met one of the elders, and he told us about the life of this piece of old Russia ... Just as they are interesting to us, we are interesting to them. We are part of that Russia that they somehow imagine in their heads, with which they have lived for many generations, but which they have never seen.
The Old Believers do not beat the buckets, but work like Carlo's dads. They own about 60 hectares, and they rent about 500 more hectares. Here, in this village, about 15 families live, about 200 people in total. That is, according to the simplest calculation, each family has an average of 13 people. So it is, seven big ones, a lot of kids.
Here are some “official”, authorized photos. Those who are without beards are not Old Believers - this is me and my tourists.
And here are some more photographs taken with the permission of the Old Believers by a man who worked for them as a combine operator. His name is Glory. A simple Russian guy traveled for a long time to different Latin American countries and came to work for the Old Believers. They accepted him, and for 2 whole months he lived with them. After that, he chose to quit. He is an artist, that's why the photos turned out so good.
Very atmospheric, like in Russia ... before. Today in Russia there are no combine harvesters and no tractors either. Everything is rotten, and the villages are empty. Russia was so carried away by getting up from its knees by selling oil and gas to gay Europeans that it did not notice how the Russian village died. But in Uruguay, the Russian village is alive! This is how it could be in Russia now! Of course, I'm exaggerating, somewhere in Russia, of course, there are combine harvesters, but I have seen with my own eyes many dead villages along the main Russian highways. And it's impressive.
Let's very delicately, with great respect, look behind the curtain of the private life of the Old Believers. The photos I post here were taken by them. That is, these are official photos that the Old Believers themselves posted in the public domain in social media. And I just collected from Facebook and reposted these photos here for you, my dear reader. All photos here are from different South American Old Believer colonies.
In Brazil, the Old Believers live in the state of Mato Grosso, 40 km from the city of Prmiavera do Leste. In the state of Amazonas near the town of Humaita. And also in the state of Parana, next to Ponta Grossa.
In Bolivia, they live in the province of Santa Cruz, in the settlement of Toborochi.
And in Argentina, the Old Believer settlement is located under the town of Choele Choel.
And here I will tell everything that I learned from the Old Believers about their way of life and traditions.
Strange sensations when you start to communicate with them. At first it seems that they must be something completely different, “not of this world”, immersed in their religion, and nothing earthly can interest them. But when communicating, it turns out that they are the same as us, only a little from the past. But this does not mean that they are some kind of aloof, and they are not interested in anything!
These costumes are not some kind of masquerade. This is how they live, they walk in this. Women in sundresses, men in shirts tied with a rope belt. The women sew their own clothes. Yes, of course, these photos are mostly from the holidays, so the clothes are especially elegant.
But as you can see, in Everyday life Old Believers dress in old Russian.
It is impossible to believe that all these people were born and raised outside of Russia. Not only that, their parents were also born here in South America…
And pay attention to their faces, they are all smiling. Still, this is a strong difference between our Russian believers and the South American Old Believers. For some reason, with all the talk about God and religion, the face of Russian Orthodox becomes mournfully tragic. And the stronger the modern Russian believes in God, the sadder his face. For the Old Believers, everything is positive, and religion too. And I think in old Russia it was the same as theirs. After all, the great Russian poet Pushkin joked and mocked the "priest-oatmeal forehead", and it was then in the order of things.
The Old Believers have been living in South America for almost 90 years. In the 30s, they fled from the USSR, as they sensed the danger from the new Soviet power. And rightly so, they would not have survived. They fled first to Manchuria. But over time, the local communist authorities began to oppress them there, and then they moved to South-North America and Australia. The largest colony of Old Believers is in Alaska. In the US, they also live in the states of Oregon and Minnesota. The Old Believers, whom I visit in Uruguay, first lived in Brazil. But there they became uncomfortable, and in 1971 many families moved to Uruguay. They chose the land for a long time, and finally settled next to the “Russian” city of San Javier. The Uruguayan authorities themselves advised the Russians this place. The logic is simple, those Russians are these Russians, maybe together is better. But Russians do not always like Russians, this is our national feature, therefore, Russian San Jovierians did not develop a special friendship with the Old Believers.
We arrived at an empty place. They began to build everything, to settle in an open field. Amazingly, the Uruguayan colony had no electricity until 1986! They lit everything with kerosene stoves. Well, they adapted to live in the sun. Therefore, the Uruguayan colony is the most interesting, because only 30 years ago they were completely cut off from the rest of the world. And life then was really like in the century before last in Russia. Water was carried by yokes, the earth was plowed on horses, the houses then were wooden. Different colonies lived differently, some are more integrated into the country where they are located, for example, the American colonies. Some colonies do not have much reason to integrate, for example, the Bolivian colony. After all, Bolivia is a rather wild and backward country. There, outside the colony, there is such poverty and devastation, what is it, this integration! 
The names of the Old Believers are often Old Slavonic: Afanasy, Evlampey, Kapitolina, Martha, Paraskoveya, Efrosinya, Uliana, Kuzma, Vasilisa, Dionysius ...
In different colonies, the Old Believers live differently. Someone is more civilized and even rich, someone is more modest. But the way of life is the same as in old Russia.
The observance of all the rules is jealously monitored by the elders. Young people are sometimes not very motivated by faith. After all, there are so many interesting temptations around ...
Therefore, the old people have a difficult task to answer the growing young to many questions. Why can't they drink alcohol? Why can't they listen to music? Why is it not necessary to learn the language of the country in which you live? Why can't they use the Internet and watch movies? Why can't you go and see some beautiful city? Why can't they communicate with the local population and enter into any bad relations with the locals? Why do you need to pray from three to six in the morning, and from six to eight in the evening? Why fast? Why get baptized? Why observe all the other religious rituals?… As long as the elders somehow manage to answer all these questions…
Old people can't drink. But if you pray and be baptized, then you can. Old Believers drink brew. They prepare it themselves. She was also fed to us. And quite persistently, according to the Russian tradition, practically pouring it inside, glass after glass. But the brew is good and the people are good, why not drink something!
The Old Believers most of all like to work on the ground. They cannot imagine themselves without it. And yes, they are generally very hardworking people. Well, who will argue that this is not Russia?!
At first I did not understand why the Old Believers of Uruguay, to whom I go, call the Uruguayans “Spaniards”. Then I realized: they themselves are also citizens of Uruguay, that is, Uruguayans. Uruguayans are called Spaniards because they speak Spanish. In general, the distance between the Uruguayans and the Old Believers is huge. It's quite different worlds, which is why the Uruguayans of San Javier told us about the “aggressiveness” of the Old Believers. The Old Believers, on the other hand, characterize the “Spaniards” as lazy bums who do not want to work, suck their mate and always complain about the government and the state. The Old Believers have a different approach to the state: the main thing is not to interfere. The Old Believers also have a number of claims against the Uruguayan government. For example, recently a crazy law was passed in Uruguay, according to which, before sowing the land, you need to ask the authorities what you can sow there. The authorities will send chemists, they will analyze the soil, and issue a verdict: plant tomatoes! And with tomatoes, the business of the Old Believers will burn out. They need to plant beans (for example). Therefore, the Old Believers are beginning to think, but should they start looking for a new country? And they are keenly interested in how they treat the peasant in Russia? Is it worth moving to Russia? What would you advise them?
The theme of harvesters, irrigation, plowing and sowing occupies one of the main places in the life of the Old Believers. They can talk about it for hours!
Boundless Brazilian Rus'…
Technique: combines, irrigators, seeders, etc., the Old Believers have their own. And each harvester (which, by the way, costs 200-500 thousand dollars), the Old Believers are able to repair themselves. They can disassemble and reassemble each of their harvesters! The Old Believers own hundreds of hectares of land. And further more land they rent.
The families of the Old Believers are large. For example, the head of the Uruguayan community, to which I sometimes take tourists, has as many as 15 children, and he is only 52 years old. There are many grandchildren, he does not remember exactly how many, he has to count, bending his fingers. His wife is also a young and quite earthly woman.
Children are not sent to official schools. Everything is very simple: if children learn the language of the country where they live, then it is very likely that they will be tempted by the bright life around them and choose it. Then the colony will dissolve, and the Russians will dissolve in the same way as in 10 years the Russians from the city of San Javier turned into Uruguayans. And there was already such an example, in the Brazilian colony, children began to go to an ordinary Brazilian school, which was in the neighborhood. And almost all of the kids, when they grew up, chose the Brazilian life instead of the Old Believer. I'm not talking about the Old Believers of the United States. There, in many families, the Old Believers communicate with each other in English.
Senior Old Believers from all the colonies are well aware of the risk of dissolution of the colony in the country, and resist it with all their might. Therefore, they do not send their children to public schools, but try to educate them themselves as far as possible.
Most of the time, kids are taught at home. Learn to read in Church Slavonic. All the religious books of the Old Believers are written in this language and they pray in this language daily from 3 to 6 in the morning and from 18 to 21 in the evening. At 9 pm, the Old Believers go to bed in order to get up at 3, pray and go to work. The daily schedule has not changed for centuries and is adjusted to daylight hours. To work while it's light.
In the colonies of Brazil and Bolivia, local teachers are invited to the school for children, who teach them respectively Portuguese and Spanish. But the Old Believers see an exclusively practical meaning in teaching the language: it is necessary to do business with the locals. Old Believer children play traditional Russian games, bast shoes, tags and many others, with purely Russian names.
Most of the photographs that you see here are from Old Believer holidays, most often from weddings. Girls get married most often at the age of 14-15. Guys at 16-18. All traditions with matchmaking have been preserved. The wife of the son should be chosen by the parents. They try to pick up from another colony. That is, a bride from a Bolivian or Brazilian colony is brought to a groom from a Uruguayan colony and vice versa. Old Believers try very hard to avoid incest. Do not think that poor underage children are left with no choice. Formally, parents should choose, but in practice everything happens quite gently and naturally, and of course the opinion of a teenager is taken into account. No one is forced to marry anyone. Yes, you probably see for yourself from these photographs that there is no smell of any violence against a person here.
But of course you have a legitimate question - get married at 14??? Yes exactly. And yes, by doing so they violate the laws of the countries in which they live. They noisily celebrate the wedding, after which they live together, and are considered husband and wife. And when they turn 18, they register their marriage with official bodies.
By the way, the Old Believers have a completely different chronology. But what a “worldly” year it is, they also know: they also have to understand all the documents about the lease of land, the purchase of soybeans, and the payment of bills.
By the way, Old Believers call Jews Jews. At first I thought it was their terry anti-Semitism. But then I realized that they pronounce this word without any negative at all. After all, that was the name of the Jews in the old days ...
See, in the photo everything is like a selection, in the same sundresses? The fact is that clothing and its color play a huge role in the life of the Old Believers. Yellow pants - two times ku. For example, at a wedding, all guests from the bride's side dress in one color, and from the groom's side - in another. When a society does not have a color differentiation of pants, then there is no goal, and when there is no goal ...
The Old Believers do not have log houses, but concrete ones, built in the traditions of the construction of the place where they live. But our whole way of life is old Russian: canopies, littered quarters, sitting places for women with children while the men are at work.
But there are still Russians inside the house! Old Believers sheathe the house inside with wood. So much more alive. And they call the house a hut.
Babs and girls (as female individuals are called here) do not work on the ground, but are busy with housework. They cook food, take care of the kids... The role of a woman is still slightly crippled, somewhat reminiscent of the role of a woman in Arab countries, where a woman is a dumb animal. The men are sitting and eating. And Marfa with a jug, at a distance. “Come on, Martha, bring more of this and that, and let's get some tomatoes back and forth!”, and the soundless Martha rushes to complete the task ... Somehow embarrassing even for her. But not everything is so harsh and tough. You see, the women are also sitting there, resting and using smartphones.
The men are engaged in hunting and fishing. Quite a busy life. Yes, and we have nature here, I'll tell you!
In addition to brew, they also drink beer. However, I have not heard of alcoholics. Like everything is in business. Alcohol does not replace their life.
Here are collected photos from different colonies. And each of them has its own rules, somewhere tougher, and somewhere softer. Cosmetics are not allowed for women. But if you really want to, then you can.
Interestingly, the Old Believers talk about picking mushrooms. Naturally, they do not know about boletus, boletus and white. Slightly different mushrooms grow in this area, they look like our butter mushrooms. Picking mushrooms from the Old Believers is not a mandatory attribute of life. Although they listed some names of mushrooms, and they are Russian, although they are not familiar to me. About mushrooms they say something like this: “sometimes someone who wants to collects. Yes, but sometimes they gather the bad ones, then the stomachs hurt ... ”. And trips in jeeps to nature, and grilled meat, and all the other attributes of picnics so familiar to us, they also have.
And they even know how to joke. By the way, they also have a sense of humor.
In general, you see for yourself, the most ordinary people.
Old Believers greet with the word "Healthy!". Neither "hello" nor "hello" they use. In general, the Old Believers do not have the address “You”. Everything is on "you". By the way, they call me “leader”. But the leader is not in the sense of the main one. And in the sense that I drive people. Guide, so be it.
By the way, did you feel one striking discrepancy between Russianness? What's wrong with those smiles? Do you feel that when photos with smiles, something is subtly not ours? They smile with teeth. Russians usually smile without showing their teeth. Americans and other foreigners smile with their teeth. Here is a detail from somewhere appeared in this parallel little Russia.
Although you probably noticed even in these photos how many people have positive on their faces! And this joy is not feigned. Our people have more than some kind of longing and hopelessness.
Old Believers quite often use the Latin alphabet for writing. But the Cyrillic alphabet is not forgotten either.
For the most part, the Old Believers are wealthy people. Of course, as in any society, someone is richer, someone is poorer, but on the whole they live very well.
Here, in these photos, mainly the life of the Brazilian, Argentinean and Bolivian colonies. There is a whole report about the Bolivian colony of Old Believers, where the rules are not as strict as in the Uruguayan colony, and filming is sometimes allowed there.
Our usual wedding, our house in the background. Only two palm trunks make it clear that this is not Russia
Old Believer youth loves football. Although they consider this game “not ours”.
Do the Old Believers live well or badly? They live well. In any case, the Uruguayan and Bolivian Old Believers live better than the average Uruguayans and Bolivians. Old Believers drive jeeps for 40-60 thousand dollars, they have smartphones of the latest models ...
The main written language of the Old Believers is in Latin and Spanish. But many people know Russian too.
But there are many restrictions imposed on the Old Believers. Televisions are prohibited, computers too. Yes, and about phones, the Old Believers say that it's all from the devil. But it's okay, there is. Televisions would also appear, but they are not needed. The Old Believers got used to living without them for many generations, and no longer understand what they are for. Computers are prohibited in some colonies, in others they are used. Yes, and in modern smartphones there is mobile Internet ...
There are even homemade comics on the Facebook of the Old Believers. This one did not really understand him: “I love her”, “I want to hug him”, “I want to sleep!”. By the way, on Facebook, the Old Believers often correspond in Portuguese and Spanish. Those who somehow received a local education are enrolled. They were taught to write in Spanish-Portuguese. And they don’t know how to speak Russian, only to speak. Yes, and they do not have a Russian keyboard.
The Old Believers are very interested in today's Russia. Many of them are grandfathers who fled from Soviet Russia In the 1930s, they were ordered to return to Russia without fail when conditions were right. So, for almost a century, the Old Believers lived in foreign lands in anticipation of a favorable moment for returning. But this moment did not come: Stalin began to drive the people into camps, and most importantly, what was important for the Old Believers, he strangled the village with his insane collectivizations. Then Khrushchev came, who began to take away livestock from the people, and forcibly introduce corn. Then the country began to engage in various arms races, and from abroad, especially from here, from South America, the USSR seemed to be a VERY strange and exotic country. Then perestroika began and poverty set in in Russia, and finally Putin came ... And with his arrival, the Old Believers started up. It began to seem that perhaps the right moment had come to return. Russia turned out to be a normal country, open to the rest of the world, without exotic communisms and socialisms. Russia began, indeed, to take steps towards Russians living in other countries. Appeared " Government program about returning to their homeland, ”the Russian ambassador to Uruguay came to the Old Believers and began to make friends with them. With the Brazilian and Bolivian Old Believers, conversations also began with the Russian authorities, and in the end, a small group of Old Believers moved to Russia and settled in the village of Dersu in Primorsky Krai. And this is a Russian TV report:
Reporters in this report tell the official version regarding the traditions of the Old Believers. But there is no need to think that the Old Believers have such a strictly regulated, and such an iron routine. To reporters and various visitors, visitors whose reports can be found on the Internet, the Old Believers tell how it SHOULD be. But in order for this to happen, people must not be people, but machines. They try to stick to their rules. But they are living people, and the American infection in the form of globalization and other dirty tricks is actively introduced into their lives. Step by step, little by little. But it's hard to resist...
Everything is ours! Selfie on a smartphone with lips in a bow ... Still, native roots! …..Maybe this American influence got here?
…no answer…
In general, it is customary to think that any orthodox believers are incomprehensible and very strange people. I don’t know how strongly the Old Believers believe, but they are absolutely normal, earthly, their own people. With humor, and with all the same desires and desires that we have with you. They are nothing holier than us. Or we are no worse than them. All are good in general.
And even though the guys grew up on another continent, but everything is ours: both plastic bags and sitting like a kid ...
Well, who will say that this is not an average Russian picnic?
Oh, Uruguayan Rus'! ...
