Ignorance of unique Russian Orthodox sect fosters book on Marianna
Courtesy of Mary Kay Zuravleff
Mary Kay Zuravleff
Courtesy of Mary Kay Zuravleff
Every time Mary Kay Zuravleff visited relatives in Erie, she heard stories about her Russian ancestors.
Something that piqued her interest was that all four of her grandparents were Old Believers. This Russian Orthodox sect steadfastly clung to their traditional religious beliefs in opposition to the modernization efforts of Czar Peter the Great.
Because of the severe persecution that followed, some Old Believers attempted to leave their motherland by answering ads in European newspapers placed by the Pittsburgh-Buffalo Coal Company looking for workers for its booming mine in Marianna, Pa. The company paid for the workers’ voyage over the Atlantic in exchange for their labor.
Included in the Russian exodus were Zuravleff’s ancestors, all Old Believers, who ended up in Marianna to work the mine.
“When I told people I knew about the Old Believers, no one had heard of them,” Zuravleff said. “I’d been hearing stories about them all my life, but I could not find my people on the bookshelf, Old Believer Russian Orthodox who consider theirs the one true church. Like most fundamentalist sects, they are rich in rules, starting with food: no milk, meat, or eggs for six weeks before Easter or Christmas, on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saints’ Days. “
“During services, which are conducted in Church Slavonic, women and men stand on opposites sides of the church, and the women wear long skirts and cover their hair (which it is a sin to cut; wearing makeup is also a sin). So is smoking because your body is a temple, but not drinking because Christ’s first miracle was turning water into wine. They are, after all, Russian.”
Because she couldn’t find a book written on Old Believers, she decided to write one. Released this year on June 6 by Blair Publishing, “American Ending” is a labor of love, eight years in the making. It is a fictionalized narrative told from the point of view of Elena, the first in an immigrant family to be born in the U.S.
“The book is based on stories I heard from my grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles,” Zuravleff said.
The story is set in the years 1908 through 1920, before the infamous Marianna Mine Disaster of November 28, 1908, which killed 154 men. Historic events mentioned in the book include President Theodore Roosevelt’s visit a month before the disaster and the building of the church.
The author also mentions the customs, practices, foods and beliefs of her Old Believer grandparents and references the mine tipple, train, mine shaft and the company store.
Even before visiting Marianna, Zuravleff saw photos of the town. Later, while on a visit to Pittsburgh for a wedding, she spent a day in Marianna, looking over the church, talking to residents, stopping by the house her grandparents lived in and visiting the cemetery where her grandparents and grandmother’s siblings are buried.
“I even walked up the hill in Marianna and was glad I had the physical experience because I learned how hard it must have been for the miners to get home after a hard day’s work.”
The heroine, Elena, born in 1899, had high hopes growing up but had a lot of dissolution along the way because of the way her family was treated.
Based on the stories about her paternal grandfather, who developed black lung and desperately wanted to get out of the mine, the book traces the couple’s move to Erie, where Elena’s husband secured a job at Griswald, maker of cast iron stoves and pans.
About two-thirds of the 304-page book is set in Marianna, with the remainder set in Erie.
Another reason for writing the book was to show the parallels between the immigrant experiences of her ancestors with those of contemporary American immigrants.
“I wrapped up the first draft during the last presidential administration, as the day’s headlines reported on parents and legislators who wanted to keep America’s unflattering history from our children,” she said. “I was writing about America’s restrictive immigration laws and a deadly pandemic showing up in World War I veterans, as the America outside my studio was separating immigrant children from their parents and debating whether to include citizenship on the next census. One day, instead of typing 1919, I typed 2019, and I leaped back from my keyboard as if it had delivered an electrical jolt. In fact, I was shocked to think that everything that was happening in America had already happened.”
The word alien, she said, introduced her to a little-known episode in American immigration law. Starting in 1907, with the passage of the Expatriation Act, American women who married foreign-born men lost their citizenship. The law didn’t affect American men who married foreign-born women, and with the passage of the Cable Act of 1922, the women didn’t get their citizenship restored. If their husbands became naturalized, these American-born women who’d been stripped of their birthright could apply to be U.S. citizens.
Zuravleff’s paternal grandmother had been born in America but lost her citizenship when she married her Russian immigrant husband. “To see my grandmother declared an alien infuriated me, and the fact that no one I talked to had heard of this law made the novel a necessity,” she said.
“American Ending” made Oprah Winfrey’s Best Books of Spring 2023 list. Zuravleff is also the author of “Man Alive!,” a Washington Post Notable Book, as well as “The Bowl Is Already Broken” and “The Frequency of Souls.”
She is the winner of the American Academy’s Rosenthal Award and a multiple recipient of the D.C. Artist Fellowship. Born in Syracuse, raised in Oklahoma City, and educated in Houston and Baltimore, she now lives in Washington, D.C.
At 6 p.m. on Wednesday, October 18, Zuravleff will give a reading from her book at the Marianna Library, 247 Jefferson Avenue. She will also show a slide presentation with photos of her family and some of Marianna’s miners during her reading. A discussion and book signing will follow the presentation. For more information, phone 724-267-3888.