Many think of Doukhobors as a closed society. To the contrary, we commonly interact with the ethnic Georgian population. I have many Georgian friends and I have never felt that I am any different from them. I think, first of all, it is the result of our coexistence.

There are only a few Georgians around us, however we have excellent and close relations with them and other people living nearby. We work together, we do rural activities together, we go to the same school, we are born and raised together. In other words, we have a fairly close relationship with the people living nearby. The openness of the Doukhobors is also confirmed by the fact that marrying a non-Doukhobor is not forbidden for us and there are many mixed families around me.

Those of us who went to Georgian schools did not have any problem with the language. Because my parents are teachers, getting education and building a career has never been under question for me. I decided to allocate more time to learning languages ​​and I started studying French philology at Tbilisi State University. I will pursue my master's degree in International Relations. I would be happy to work on resolving existing conflicts in the Caucasus.

Going to school was difficult. In winter, we would walk to another village in the snow because the nearest school was there. For the past few years, I’ve been the only one from my community to get admitted to a Georgian higher education institution, because most of others studied at non-Georgian schools, so it would be difficult for them to take exams and study in Georgian. Those who manage to continue their studies mostly go to Armenia or Russia.

Many people have recently shown interest in our traditions, which we have preserved in Georgia for almost 2 centuries. They come with different projects, we meet them generously and introduce them to our customs. This attention means a lot to us, because there are many problems in our villages that we are not able to solve on our own: power outage is frequent, we do not have gas, there is no public transport and it is expensive for us to get to the region or the capital. It is important for us to increase awareness of the needs of our community with the support of our guests.

Many people show interest towards our traditional clothes, which have an interesting history. Alongside Russian characteristics, they also contain elements of many peoples: Ukrainians, Belarusians and other Slavic peoples. Yes, our clothes are very colourful. The abundance of colours symbolizes the love of life. It is often that the guests also attend Sunday meetings at the shrine with us, where we go dressed in colourful clothes and follow the rules with special care. Colourful clothes are part of important events. In the past, we all used to go to weddings dressed in our traditional clothes. It is also noteworthy that we never wear dark clothes as a sign of mourning, because for us the death of a person is the beginning of a new life.

I believe everyone is equal. For several centuries, my people have lived like this. Every person is a unique and free creature with his/her own culture, race, religion and interests. I do not hide and, to the contrary, I am proud to be a representative of old Russian ethnic culture and Georgia is my homeland.