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Ivan Grigorieff, founder of the Russian Mormons, began by preaching that God created the world in six days, but by degrees he came to attack established religion as well as the existing social order. According to him, the molokanes were "pestilent," the douchobortzi were "destroyers of the faith," and the chlysty were "mad cattle." There was only one truth, the truth of Grigorieff!
A sect of considerable importance, that of the molokanes, owed its origin to the douchobortzi. It was founded by a sincere and ardent man named Oukleïne, about the end of the eighteenth century. Moloko means milk; hence the name of the sect, whose adherents drank nothing else.
Taking advantage of freedom to expound the Gospel, they profited by it for use and abuse, and it seemed to be a race as to who should be the first to start a new creed. Even as the douchobortzi had given birth to the molokanes, so were the latter in turn the parents of the stoundists.
Nothing is more to be decried than the desire for worldly honour and glory. Did not Our Lord Himself say that He was not of this world? Emperors and kings reign only over the wicked and sinful, for honest men, like the douchobortzi, have nothing to do with their laws or their authority. War is contrary to the will of God.
The douchobortzi and the molokanes were deeply impressed by the advent of Napoleon the First. It seemed to them that a man who had taken part in so many heroic adventures must be an envoy of the Deity.
Improving upon the principles of liberty professed by the douchobortzi, the molokanes taught that "where the Holy Ghost is, there is liberty"; and as they believed the Holy Ghost to be in themselves they consequently needed neither laws nor government. Had not Christ said that His true followers were not of this world? Down, then, with all law and all authority!
About the year 1750, a Prussian non-commissioned officer, expatriated on account of his revolutionary ideas, appeared in the neighbourhood of Kharkov. He taught the equality of man and the uselessness of public authority, and was the real founder of the douchobortzi, who believed in direct communion with the divinity by aid of the spirit which dwells in all men.
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