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interesting group of them at the present time is the
so-called Dukhobortsi (Warriors of the Spirit), who are in
the largest numbers in the department Voronezh, and
who were exiled to the Caucasus, to a region without
water. They have shown such energy as to have
converted this desert into one of the most fruitful and
richest regions in the Caucasus. They work in common,
old and young, women and children. They can all read,
although they have no schools; they teach their children
themselves. They do not recognize holy images. They
hang up in their houses, in the corner where the images
are usually placed, an embroidered towel. They do not
carry the cross, but, regarding it as a symbol and
memorial of Christ’s sufferings, detest instead of honoring it.
In time of war they have rendered the greatest
service to the country, when there was need of transporting
supplies or the wounded over the sometimes impassable
roads of the Caucasus; they freely rendered their
service to the State, which had treated them so harshly, and
gave their wagons and time without compensation. Yet
it is characteristic in this connection that in all these
sects the most profound hatred of the heathenish,
heretical institutions of Western Europe has been
nourished.
But the national consciousness and hatred of the
foreign, mounted from the lowest classes of society to the
highest during the great national struggle against
Napoleon, who in 1812 inundated the land with hosts of
Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards. The
great prosperity of the national literature followed the
great contest with its victorious exit, which, both in
Pushkin and in Griboyédof, however much the one is
influenced by Molière and the other by Byron, is
controversially turned against the foreign influence in the
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