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ROMANIAN ARTWORKS

CAVIAR FISHERMEN OF ROMANIA

3/12/2015

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At the  Danube's mouth, in Romanian  territory, lives a Lipovan community  from the Russia of centuries  ago, surviving in surroundings and circumstances that make their lives seem less like  a page from history than one from a tale of Pushkin.  My first glimpse of the Old Russia existing  outside the boundaries of the new Soviet  State had been caught as I cycled in Galicia,  the Carpathians, and Bucovina, where the  Ukrainian farmers wear their hair cut  "under the bowl,'' own their little plots of  land, and are devoted to their religion as in the heyday of Tsarism.
    Now in Bucharest I had heard of the  vast and mysterious land of the Danube Delta, and when spring came I procured from the military authorities the necessary  special permit to pass through the Delta zone to Valcov in Bessarabia on the Black  Sea.  But my bicycle, on which I had pedaled  from Krakow all the way through Poland  and Romania, had to be left behind: there are no railways nor, at the time of my visit,  were there any feasible roads in the Delta;  and so my destination could best be reached  by water.
    On the "Romania Mare", which I boarded  at Oltenita, I met Sergei Nicholaivich, a  Valcov Russian.  Silistra fell behind us ; then the big railway  bridge at Cernavoda, the only bridge  to cross the Danube in its lower stretches.  Here the sea is only 30 miles away and  a canal has long been under consideration,  for the river, instead of following its logical  outlet, makes a sudden turn to the north  and wanders on for more than 200 miles.  Vivid scenes succeeded each other: the  river traffic, the little ports, the wide brown  reach of water, the green marshlands.
    After passing a few fields of grain and a  rare herd of cows wading under willows  growing in the water out from the muddy shore, the Romania Mare came into Galati.  Romanian, German, and Greek boats lay  at the docks loading lumber and grain from  the River Prut to distribute up the Danube to central Europe or down through the  Black Sea to Mediterranean and Atlantic  ports.  We gazed at the first houses of the port,  built on low land that is flooded completely  whenever it rains.
     "How this makes me long for home! "  exclaimed Sergei Nicholaivich in Russian.  The streets of water had recalled his home  town, the " little Venice" of Valcov near  the sea.  For him, I found, this was to be no ordinary  voyage. Son of Lipovan fishermen  for generations, he had been borne by the war as a soldier of sixteen out into an unfamiliar  world. The disastrous campaigns  which had raged back and forth over Romania,  tearing up the deeply rooted lives of millions of shepherds, fishermen, and  farmers, had left him adrift in Bucharest. First as a singer in a balalaika orchestra,  then as an artist, he had struggled along with the tens of thousands of other provincials  who threw in their lot with Romania's rising postwar capital.
    But city life was not for him. Despite  twenty years of it, there was something  stronger. Now he was going back to the  fisherman 's life to which he had been born.   "Many Russians have died of homesickness,''  he said. "And many who have died  have requested that a bit of earth from  their native land be buried with them so  they would not feel so far from the home  they love."
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The fare is simple: fish and fish soup, eaten with wooden spoons from a bowl in the center of the table, and sour black bread baked in clay ovens shaped like the little houses which stand in many Valcov gardens. Traditionally, the Lipovan wears a long, full beard, but nowadays unmarried youths often are clean-shaven.
     Near Tulcea the Danube splits into three  big branches which flow through the wilderness  of the Delta. The middle one, with Sulina as its Black Sea port, is the only one  safe for larger ships, and along it passes  all the through river navigation.  Surprisingly enough, 67 per cent of the  Danube's total volume flows out the Chilia  Arm, the northernmost channel. Yet only  a small line of boats goes down it, back and  forth to Valcov, transporting the fish and more especially the caviar for which the  place is famous. Thus Valcov lies far off the usual lines of communication.  As a part of Bessarabia, which borders on the Soviet Union, Valcov was Russian  from 1878 to 1918. Now it again belongs  to Romania.
     Age-old customs, however, have altered  little. Indeed, this whole coastal region  has been the scene of succeeding settlements of remote peoples and races as changing as  the course of the river itself. A hundred miles to the south is Constanta,  whose name of Tomis, where Ovid was exiled, was forgotten during the long  centuries of the Turkish Empire, Russia's  great rival on the Black Sea.
     For years Tsar and Sultan contended for  the Delta. South of the river, along the coast to Constanta, are villages of Romanians,  Tatars, Bulgars, Germans, and  Turks. When we stopped at the port of  Tulcea, I saw the slim minarets one finds  throughout the Balkan lands where the  Ottoman Empire left its indelible stamp.  Then in Ismail, on the northern side of  the Delta, I saw the bulbous red steeples  of the Russian Orthodox churches.  Here was the territory marking the limits of the Russian Slav advance coming  down from the north and arrested by the formidable waste of changing waterways and the thousand square miles of marshlands  the river deposited at its mouth.  Ismail was for a time, however, a very  strong Turkish fortress. It was stormed and sacked in 1 790 by the Russian General  Alexander Vasilievich Suvarov, who foughtincredible battles against the armies of the  Crescent in this seemingly sunken continent of greenery aswarm with water fowl and  amphibia and flanked on the north and  south by the barren coasts of the stormy  Black Sea.
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OCEAN AND RIVER TRAFFIC MEET AT GALATI, 92 RIVER MILES FROM THE BLACK SEA. Vessels of many nations steam up the Danube to this port where they load timber, wheat, oil, wool, and fish. Above Braila, 13 miles farther upstream, barges and other shallow-draft boats do the freighting.
    The "Romania Mare" twisted through  treacherous flats intersected by a maze of  channels which looked exactly alike to  everyone except the pilot. Then, with a  final twirl of the wheel, our little ship was  turned to bring us head on against the current  to the Valcov dock.  The pier was stacked with crates and barrels and thronged with interested villagers.  At one side stood a barefooted man with a huge beard that covered the  front of his white linen smock.  Sergei recognized him as his brother.  They embraced, kissing each other three  times on the cheek.  The brother, whom Sergei introduced  as Vasili, held himself very straight and  met our curious glances with a grave  serenity.
      'See what a man!" Sergei Nicholaivich  turned to me proudly. " So I would have  been had I never seen the city."  "And you?" he asked me. "What will  you do? You must come to my mother's."  I looked around: no hotels, no porters,  no carriages.  Waterways and canals  stretched in every direction. Under a  wooden bridge a row  of black high-prowed  fishing boats was drawn up along the  miry bank.  In one of these workaday gondolas Sergei's  brother rowed us through the main canal and then, turning into one of the  "side streets," poled us along in a network  of narrow waterways just wide enough for  two boats to slide past each other. They were bordered by woven fences, behind which I caught glimpses of straight-stalked hollyhocks and lupines and  the fishermen 's deep-eaved houses. Willow trees drooped over the water.  Gliding under the slanting sun of this warm May afternoon, it seemed that I was  drifting through a mirror like Alice into  Wonderland. 
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"SEA COSSACKS," LIPOVANS HAVE BEEN CALLED Most of these fishermen have splendid voices. They sing for the fun of it any time, but especially in church choirs or when rhythmically poling their boats
     Men with long hair and beards padded barefoot along rickety little wooden sidewalks  raised on stilts from the water. Their gaze was clear and blue-eyed, at once childlike  and spiritual. Crowding over, they let by a woman carrying buckets of water on  a wooden shoulder yoke.  
    Two shawled  women poled  past in a boat  with a load of  glistening river mud. I looked  questioningly at  Sergei Nicholaivich.  "Mud from the  river bottom is  used to build  and repair our  houses," he explained.  " Dried,  it is as hard as clay. Whenever  cracks appear in  the walls, all we  do is plaster wet  mud over them ,  until you 'd think  the house had  measles. Then  the daubs are  whitewashed and  the house is as  good as new.
     "The women  take care of all of  this," he added,  "and every Saturday  they whitewash  most of the  house inside and  out."
     Our boat drew  up in a tiny inlet  which took the  place of a private  entrance in this
woodland Venice.  Through the gate of the willow fence we walked into a vegetable garden, coming to  a low house the color of baked mud, with  roses in a tangle against its sides.  We stepped over the threshold into a long room divided by an enormous clay stove.  A shelf of glazed pottery circled the walls. Here Sergei's family had gathered, waiting  to receive him.
    When he entered, everyone from the little children up made a deep bow, the women  bowing even lower than the men. Sergei Nicholaivich walked straight to the family  icon which is always in the far corner at the right of the entrance door. Bending  low, he made a  majestic sign of  the cross. His  hand, touching the forehead, swept nearly to  the floor, then  from the right  shoulder over to  the left.  These reverences  he repeated  three times, after  which he went  from one to the  other, beginning  with the old men,  and each kissed  him thrice on the cheek. Throughout  the entire  ritual of welcome  to the home-coming  son there was an impressive silence.  I had the  feeling that these  were decidedly more than ordinary  fisherfolk.
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Bessarabia belonged to Romania until 1812 , when it was taken by Russia, but after the World War it again became part of Romania. The Soviet Union now looks longingly at this rich granary, which they still consider "occupied territory." Flowing across Europe from Germany, the muddy Danube empties into the Black Sea through a many-mouthed delta.
    "Ours is a puritan  race," said  Sergei Nicholaivich  to me afterward.  "Whatever  befalls us,  whether it brings  joy or sorrow, we  must accept serenely. "How did our  people come to  live in these lost  marshlands of the  Delta? You see,  at the time of
Tsar Alexis, the father of Peter the Great,  the priests under the Patriarch Nikon  decided to make a new translation from  the Greek of the Bible and the Books of the Service.  "Of course they found things in the old translation which they thought were  wrong and which they corrected. But many  of the Russians couldn't see why they  should change what they had been saying  and doing for 500 years. This was the  beginning of the division of the Church.
     "There were really no great differences  at first. Only such things as, for example,  the Orthodox making the cross with three  fingers, representing the Trinity. We  Lipovans claim that the Trinity is the  thumb and last two fingers, and we make  the cross with the two middle fingers, saying  that in all of the pictures Christ gives  the benediction with these two.  "But then Tsar Alexis' son, Peter,  wanted to break all the old customs and to  Europeanize Russia. He was the first Tsar  to ·visit far-western Europe, and he cut the  beards of the boyars and introduced the  smoking of tobacco.
     "He wished to build a fleet to defeat  the Swedes. So he went himself to Holland  and England to see how to make ships.  He came back after working there as a  simple laborer for half a year, and wanted  to change everything. Part of the Russians  said he wasn't their Tsar Batyushka,  their Little Father, but an Antichrist.
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A family without one of these graceful boats is a rare exception. Many houses have fenced mooring inlets where the craft are "parked." Footbridges cross and recross Valcov's "flowing streets." Everywhere tall willows shade walks and canals.
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Fishing from small boats where the river current meets the Black Sea is hazardous, for the storms in this area sweep off the steppes with fierce and sudden fury . Thatched roofs are often blown away. Even the chimneys are damaged, as on this shack where toppled stones have been replaced with a pipe. In many huts fishermen sleep on flat stoves during bitter winter nights.
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While the oarsman controls the boat (a lotka) , two men haul the prize alongside with gaffs. Even after the fish is taken aboard, it may thresh about viciously until killed. Over the gunwale a fourth man pulls in the rig of bare hooks strung on short cords. Sturgeon, heading inshore against the fresh-water current, swim into the hooks.
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Sitting at the left, one man hones the aluminum and steel hooks, mostly imported from England, which replace the old-fashioned kind hammered from nails. Floats support the fishing rigs, made of many yard-long leaders strung on a main line a few inches apart.
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After the roe is removed, it is strained through a sieve to clean it of fibrous tissues. The eggs are then washed, treated with salt, and packed in cans or barrels as caviar. Romanians regard caviar as a staple part of their diet. They serve it with seasoning in a large bowl, with crackers and toast , as canapes with thin slices of cheese and vodka, and in many other ways.
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The finest grade of caviar is called "fresh" because it is unsalted. It is grayish and liquid, but perishable. The kind most generally exported is the black caviar, prepared in brine and pressed in barrels or tins.
    "Peter cut his beard, smoked, and instead  of the traditional greatcoat of the boyars  edged with beaver or sable fur and trimmed with rows of pearls and diamonds, he decreed  the new-type caftan, thus changing the national costume. His son Alexis was  for the old ways, so the boyars and the  people found in him the center of their  hopes, but his father had him put to death.
     "The Old Believers were seeking refuge in the wild country. A sect in the mountains,  believing the Antichrist had come in the Tsar, proclaimed the Judgment Day  was at hand. They burned all the churches with themselves inside. There was a great  wave of hysteria.  Peter the Great began sending the police to fight with the people, the majority of  whom had fallen under the influence of fanatics. These believers were obliged to  flee farther and farther.  Some went north into Siberia, some into  the Caucasus. And others, escaping first into the linden forests from which they got  their name of Lipovan-'lipa' is Russian for  'linden tree'-finally came here, to the  Delta, which was then under Turkish  suzerainty and could be reached only by  sea.
     "The marshlands and the thousands of islands were deserted and here our ancestors  stayed, naming their settlement 'Vilkov,' from the Russian vilka, meaning ' fork,'  after the three channels to the sea. They made a few canals and with the dirt from  them created ground high enough for their  houses.
     "They continued wearing their beards  long, like the old boyars, and refused to  take up smoking or to make any other  changes in the old customs."
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Nets and the long set lines rigged with many hooks are supported by slabs of tree bark, tin cans, cork, or tightly bound bunches of twigs or reeds. Because of high import duties, cork is little used.
     After the first solemnities of Sergei Nicholaivich 's reception, we all sat down on  benches at a huge bare table beneath the  icon in the "Holy Corner."  Beside each place lay a wooden spoon,  deeply cupped and satin-smooth with wear.  First came boiled fish and then a clear fish  soup with a bit of potato in it. (Unless the soup contains something solid, it always  comes after the fish dish.) With this, instead  of bread we ate pirozhki, a black flour  pastry filled with cabbage. Following the example of the bearded old men, we let this part of the meal pass almost in silence. But then, to celebrate,  there were big fresh strawberries served with smetana, or sour cream. The fire in  the heavy iron samovar was replenished  with coals from the kitchen, and glass  after glass of steaming tea passed around.
     Sergei Nicholaivich's mother impulsively  leaned over and put an extra blob of the  rich cream on his berries, then blushed protestingly as a roar of laughter broke out.  Embarrassed, Sergei turned to translate  their joking remarks for me.
     "Children love smetana. So when one  is an only or a spoiled child and his mother
is always putting it on everything he eats,  he is known as a 'smetanik.' That's what
they are calling me.
     "Now they are telling me about two  storks and a duck." Sergei kept me informed  while keeping his eyes on the others  who were talking, each one supplementing,  confirming, or encouraging the others.  "They say that a duck laid an egg in a  stork's nest on the chimney of a house. A committee of storks gathered on the roof.  They judged that something was not quite right in this whole business and killed the  mamma stork, the duck, and destroyed the  nest.
   "We know that the storks in their conjugal  relations are very strict,'' he explained.  "They come back to the same nest year  after year, and always the same couple.  When they arrive, we know that winter  is over and spring on its way. Every house  must have its nest on the roof, for the storks  bring luck to the family"  
  
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Each year the same avian couple comes back to this nest. Some storks live so long that they may see more than one generation grow up in the house beneath.
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A bearded Lipovan holds a big sturgeon with dexterous feet while he slits it open. The eggs, made into caviar, are much more valuable per pound than the flesh, which is abundant and cheap.
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Apart from sturgeon, the catch may include carp, burbot, plaice, perch, herring, and shad. Small plots supply villagers with potatoes, cabbages, strawberries, and other produce, but fish is the "main course" at almost every meal.
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Boxes of caviar, sturgeon, and herring are piled awaiting shipment from the sheds of the Cooperative, which controls the fisheries of the region. Fishermen are paid set prices for each kilogram (2.2 pounds) of fresh or salted fish. Valcov still lives in the age of wood: boats, bridges, many of the buildings, sidewalks, house furnishings, fences, and wharves are fashioned of lumber.
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Valcov became Romanian again in 1918. Villagers in their black, high-prowed boats carried the army of Tsar Alexander II southward across the Danube to meet and defeat the Ottoman forces in 1877. Valcovians say a huge bell in the tower commemorates this victory.
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Black Sea sturgeon, seeking spawning grounds, swim up the fresh-water streams veining the marshlands of the Danube Delta. Fences across the channels are closed behind the ascending fish. Trapped, they are easily netted or gaffed in the shallow waters. During the busy fishing season, the men live in these crude encampments, returning to Valcov only for supplies.
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Much of the Delta's caviar, as well as fresh and salted fish, is sent by steamer up the Danube for distribution to Bucharest and other inland European markets. Large quantities also are shipped by way of the Black Sea to foreign ports.
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Her people are a Russian religious group, composing the majority of Valcov's population. Their name comes from the word "lipa", meaning "linden," a tree common in the lowlands around the Black Sea.
   But the great  topic for every  one was the disaster  which had  befallen Valcov  that winter.  In winter  months the  cruel and bitter  northeast winds  blow down from  the steppes across  the Black Sea.  "Sometimes the  Danube freezes  over in one night,"  said Sergei Nicholaivich.  "Ships  are caught in  midstream and  may remain in  the grip of the  ice until spring.
     "This last winter  the river froze  over. When  spring came the  river was jammed  with pack ice  and swollen with  rain. It rained  and rained. The  river rose day  after day, week  after week, until  the whole of  Valcov was under  water.
     In this disaster  Sergei's family  lost its oldest  member. He died  from exposure during one of the terrible  nights spent in the open boats. The clay house had been  destroyed by the water.  "Our winters ... brr! " shivered Sergei.  "The withe fences keep some of the cold  wind off, and layers of rushes are piled  around the house walls like a winter overcoat.  But even then it's unbearable."
    He laughed. "They used to tell me when  I was small that if I were good it would  snow sugar. And if it was snowing on  Christmas Day, that meant Saint Nicholas  was shaking his white beard over our  house."
     Eleven of the family had sat down at  the table. When we stood up, and everyone  had crossed himself again three times,  the old mother herself took me into the  room where I was to sleep.  Native tapestries in Bessarabian horizontal  leaf patterns hung around the walls,  and at the foot of the bed was a wooden  chest ornamented with painted flowers.  What held my eye was a stack of pillows  on it, beginning with a huge pillow at the  bottom and pyramiding to a tiny one on  top, all of them to tuck around one on freezing winter nights.  When I was comfortable, the old mother  and the granddaughter who had helped her  left me, after making a low bow. I learned  afterward that the Lipovans consider a  guest in their home as one "sent by God."  I was awakened by cathedral bells. When  I came out of my room the whole family  had already gathered, and with an earlymorning  mist still hanging over the water  we rowed to Sunday Mass.  A trembling image reflected on the water  was our first glimpse of the great white  cathedral. Though built on a sand patch  and screened by trees, it would seem very  European and cosmopolitan were it not that  its domes and towers are topped by big onion-shaped cupolas which rise like fanciful  turbans in the sky.  Starchy pinafored girls, men with cheeks  scrubbed, women whose hair was brushed  shiny under their head shawls-they were  all there, coming afoot over the wooden bridges, or by boats that jostled one another  on their way.
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Lacking shovels, these women throw handfuls of river silt from boat to shore. Cracks in the clay shacks are daubed with the natural "cement," or additions to the dwellings are built with it. Some huts are made entirely of thatch, in the shape of tents
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If this Russian fisherman is disappointed with the haul , his stoical face does not show it. On the shore, nets dry on tall poles.
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Chunks of fish are dipped out of the dish set in the middle of the group, and eaten with slices of bread. Fish scraps fall from every table in Valcov, a "promised land" for cats.
     The bells were still ringing, the sound  rippling over the placid air. One of them,  the huge bell in the tower, was cast in  1877 , I was told, in commemoration of  the delivery of the Delta region from the   Turks.  Inside, a choir was singing the incredibly  mystic and lovely chorals of the Orthodox  litany, the voices swelling sometimes to a  tremendous volume, then dying to sustained  pianissimos. During the Mass celebrated  by the priests in rich brocaded robes, one worshiper prostrated himself completely,  lying with his arms outstretched. Others,  humbled on their knees, touched their foreheads  repeatedly to the floor in token that  they gave themselves wholly to their God.  All the magnificent voices of the Russians  were not in the choir. In the teahouse I  heard groups of young men singing in perfect  harmony; and later I heard the men,  as they pulled their boats, sing ancient boatmen's  songs from the sixteenth and seventeenth  centuries.
     As we poled back through the flowery  willow-drooped canals, two little girls tossed  roses and forget-me-nots into the boat from  a frail bridge overhead. And farther along  another child shyly offered us a penny's worth of the dried strawberry leaves which  the Lipovans use to make a fragrant tea.
     Our boat was tied in a long row with  dozens of others-all exactly alike except  for the number painted on the front to  identify them easily for official control and  we stepped out on the one terra firma  promenade, which was crowded with Sunday  strollers.  Remarking on the animation among the  youthful, not without its purport, I was  told the young men get married at about  21, usually directly after military service,  and the girls marry earlier, most often at 16.  The young girls are allowed to walk on  the promenade across the bridges, but not  to dance except at weddings. As a result  of this restriction, at some of the teahouses  where tables and chairs were set in  the open and music from a balalaika or  guitar invited the customers to dance, it  was the boys and young men who performed  the intricate figures and flying steps of  the Cossatchok, while shawled women and  fair-haired girls looked on.
     We sat down in one of these fishermen 's  teahouses where tea costs five lei (three  and a half cents) the service. Atop a china  pot holding about six glasses of hot water  rests a tiny pot of strong tea which keeps  hot in the steam from below. With this  are served four pieces of sugar and a slice  of lemon.  The proper way to drink is out of the  saucer. In the cold this has the advantage  that the steam from the scalding tea warms  the face.  The saucer is balanced on the first three   fingers  of the left hand. Between the other  two fingers and the palm is placed loaf  sugar broken into small bits. (Granulated  sugar is never used.) One nibbles a bit of  the sugar, then takes a sip, noisily, of tea.  When you 've had enough, you turn the glass  upside down on the saucer and put any  leftover sugar on top.  "In the old days, when sugar was a luxury,''  Sergei told me, "a lump was tied to a  string from the ceiling. Each one would take  a sip of tea and a lick of the sugar and then  let it swing over to the next person. This  was called the licking way of taking tea."
     Tea drinking in quantities has the effects  of a Turkish bath. So a part of the ritual
is putting a napkin over the back of the neck  with the ends hanging down in front so  that after many glasses one can wipe away  the perspiration to keep it from streaming  down the face.
     Discussing the amenities of tea drinking,  we watched a youth who was dancing.  He was patched like a thrifty harlequin,  and his smock flapped with each bend of  the knees. Sergei Nicholaivich pointed out  to me that the Lipovans and Orthodox Russians  of Valcov have no other national dress  than the smock and tight trousers one occasionally  sees.  "There are other Russian sectarians in Galati, Iasi, and Bucharest who wear distinctive  dress," he said. "They belong to  the group called Scopiti (Skoptsi) , whom  you have seen in Bucharest as the droshky  drivers wearing high astrakhan hats and  long full caftan coats of black velvet with  colored sashes. Coming sometimes from the  higher classes, they were exiled from Russia  even before the war.  "Valcov has some 8,000 inhabitants.  The majority are Lipovans, the remainder  being Orthodox Russians, a few Romanian  officials, and some Jewish families.
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