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New Jersey's Cossacks
| Article
# : |
11754 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1987 |
2,616 Words |
| Author
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Merlinda Fournier
Merlinda Fournier is a free-lance author based in the
Washington, D.C., area. |
The rolling fields and wooded stretches leading into New Jersey's pine barrens are distinctly rural, not at all the great industrial wastelands stereotypical of the state. The southern counties are a land of horse farms, small rodeos, and large billboard signs begging the passerby to smoke Marlboros. A sign hyping a Western clothing store proclaims, "This is cowboy country." New Jersey is home to some remarkable horsemen: the Russian Cossacks of New Kuban.
These are cowboys of the East who were forced to abandon their steppe horses - "light as an arrow, strong as the wind," as one Cossack proudly described them - to flee the advancing Bolshevik forces of the Russian Revolution. Today, these horsemen are an aged remnant of a once proud military life-style.
The community of New Kuban, off Route 54 in Buena Vista Township, is hardly noticeable at all. There are no stores or gas stations, not even a post office, to mark the settlement. The houses, bordering Weymouth Road for several miles, are obscured by rows of oak and pine. Only the churchyard and minister's residence testify to a corner of czarist Russia transplanted to America. The diminutive white church with green roof and gold domes seems like a set in a Disney fantasy film.
Yet it is this Orthodox church, where a small box of Russian soil rests on the altar, that is the last remaining life in a community many of whose members are literally dying out. Father Nikolai Nekludoff, the present batushka (priest), sighs and point past the church down a narrow tree-lined road. Rows of distinctive headstones are inscribed in Russian; each stone displays a prominent picture of the deceased and
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