Vasiliy Lubkov

Vasiliy Semionovitch Lubkov (Василий Семенович Лубков), born December 24, 1869.

In 1891, Lubkov, who was 22 at the time, declared himself to be the living God and took control over the New Israel Church.

In 1905, under the leadership of Lubkov, the church moved its center of operations to Rostov-on-Don. The church later spread its influence over the south of Russia.

In 1911, Lubkov visited the United States to seek refuge for his followers; however, he did not find the country suitable for his followers. At the same time he met with a Uruguay consulate, Hose Richlingom.

In 1912, two representatives of the Uruguay president, Jose Batlle y Ordoñez, visited the Caucasus to visit the potential immigrants. They so highly appreciated their workmanship and skill that in July 1913 two ships "18 de Julio" and "Taongarupa" brought 300 families to the coast of the river Uruguay 164 kilometers from Montevideo.

From 1913 to 1914, about 2,000 followers under the leadership of Lubkov immigrated to Uruguay and established a farming town San Javier, Uruguay. There Lubkov set up his very restrictive rules. He confiscated all the possessions of his followers and turned them into essentially one family. If anyone went against him he was told Za okolitsu! (За околицу!), which meant that he was supposed to get his personal belongings and leave the town. The problem was that none of the immigrants, except for Lubkov, knew the local language or socialized with the local people, and therefore had a strong dependence on Lubkov.

In the end of the 1920s, Lubkov gathered a few more loyal families and moved to the Soviet Union, to a city called Manich. Some other families later followed and settled north of the Caucasus.

During the World War II the New Israel immigrants sent aid in the form of sweaters through the Red Cross back to the Soviet Union.

In 1972, the Uruguay government repressed the town by destroying the local library named after Maksim Gorkiy and burned all the books both in the library and in all the houses. They also arrested many of the graduates from Russian universities. These repressions however did not impact the Uruguay-Moscow relationship, as seen from the fact that Moscow in 1979 put 14 turbines of 135,000 kilowatts each onto the Salto-Grande Power Plant.

Some of the family names are: Smirnov (Смирнов), Lushkin (Лушкин), Kutsenko (Куценко), Pilipchuk (Пилипчук), Nikitin (Никитин), Puchkaryov/Puchkariov/Puchkarev (Пучкарёв).