Note 11 — Chapter VII · GORELOVKA AND QUEEN LUKERIA

Seven years had elapsed, at the time of our visit, since they had lost their beloved Lukeria Vasilievna, their leader both in spiritual and in temporal matters; they honoured and obeyed her like a queen.11 Her influence was supreme among the settlers on these highlands; and it appears to have extended to all the colonists in Transcaucasia of the Dukhobortsy sect. The traveller Radde, who visited Gorelovka in 1875, was privileged to meet her in her home. He describes her as a widow in the thirties, strong, tall, of full but still shapely forms. Her features wore the imprint of beauty. He testifies to the veneration in which she was held. That Lukeria was nothing more to them than the contemporary holder of an office which had been the outcome of their religious and social needs, would, I think, be no less fallacious to suppose than to credit the rumours current in the country that it had been in the character of a divine personage that her people had submitted themselves to her will. A childlike nature, at once the product of the religious temperament and its peculiar pride, may find it difficult to discriminate between the emotions of worship and of love. When I questioned them, they strongly disclaimed for Lukeria any pretension to supernatural gifts, and they rejected as a fable the imputation that they had paid her divine honours. They had loved and revered in her a good and noble woman, who raised their lives, relieved their sorrows, and led their aspirations towards the higher life. The evidence of her work and example is written in the appearance of this model village, and in the demeanour of its inhabitants. All were well clothed and clean and well nourished; it was a pleasure to see them go about their business in their quiet, earnest way. I saw no poor people in Gorelovka, not a sign of the habitual squalor of the East. Provision had been made for the orphans and the destitute, and I understood that all the colonists of the neighbourhood contribute to the funds. But what impressed me most, beside the evidence of their affection in these dwellings and this enclosure maintained in neatest order, as though in spirit she inhabited them still, was the love of flowers which the queen appears to have developed in her people and brought them to share with her. In the decline of wealth and of the arts, the sight of garden flowers becomes more and more rare in the East; and, at best, they are there little more than the ornament of luxury and the setting of sensual delights. At Gorelovka one cannot doubt that these geraniums and roses are cultivated for their own sake alone.