LERMONTOVO, Armenia - With its birch grove, chickens and geese pecking at the dusty ground and neatly kept houses, this one-street village looks like the traditional image of Russian rural life. But it is the pre-collectivization image - patriarchal men with long beards, women bent over in the fields, a sense of sobriety and hard work clinging to everything. The only things missing are the onion-domed church and black-robed priest.

This lack of a church is not the result of some Soviet-era anti-religious campaign. Lermontovo is not in Russia at all, but in the mountains of northern Armenia, not far from the town of Vanadzor, and its Russian founders were "heretics" - members of the Molokan sect exiled from Central Russia to the southern Caucasus by the tsars.

The Lermontovo Molokans say their ancestors came during Catherine the Great's reign. "We came from the Tambov and Saratov regions," said Esfir Dolgova, 53. "They say there's an oak [in Tambov] around which the Molokans gathered when they left, and it's still there today. We've kept the memory of our past alive all this time."

But keeping that memory alive is becoming ever more difficult. The Molokans stubbornly held onto their way of life during the Soviet years, refusing to let their children join Communist youth organizations, for example, but the economic troubles of post-Soviet Armenia are proving a more destructive force. There were more than 20,000 Molokans in Armenia during the Soviet era, and now there are only 5,000, of whom 800 live in Lermontovo. Those who can are leaving for Russia, and, cut off from their community, lose the old way of life, while those who stay struggle to survive and dream of leaving.

"Yes, I've thought about leaving," said Natalya Tsetkova, 28. "My brother now lives in Maikop in Russia, but there are no other Molokans around and that makes it hard to keep our laws."

This is not surprising - the Molokan laws include such un-Russian rules as not drinking, smoking or swearing. The Molokan ethic mixes hard work and strict honesty with a sober, frugal way of life and the all-pervasive presence of religion. The sect originated in the 17th century and its followers earned their name for doing forbidden things like drinking milk (moloko) during Lent. They don't have icons, priests or churches; instead, they have a presbyter (like a minister) and meet in homes, gathering to read the Bible and pray. Though sent mostly to the South Caucasus, some of the Molokans went further afield and founded Molokan communities in the United States, Mexico and Australia.

"Some Molokans do drink, smoke and swear," admitted Natalya's husband, Grigory. "But if you obey the laws, you don't. And I obey the laws."

Grigory calls himself a pureblooded Russian and, with his thick blond beard and vivid blue eyes, looks the perfect illustration of the strong, jovial, all-enduring peasant. A while back, he shaved his beard off, but then had a narrow escape in an accident and took it as a sign that God wanted him to grow it back. He said that, apart from the period just following Armenian independence, when nationalist feelings were higher, the Armenians have always been very tolerant toward the Molokans.

The Molokans generally speak very little Armenian, sending their children to Russian schools and living an isolated life. Most of the Lermontovo Molokans' contact with the Armenians is limited to when they go to Vanadzor to sell their vegetables at the market. But now, as the Molokans leave for Russia, some Armenians and Zoroastrian Kurds have moved into the village. The only entirely Molokan village remaining in Armenia is nearby Fioletovo, which the Lermontovo Molokans call a "prosperous and beautiful" village.

Armenians living in Lermontovo said that previously, the Molokans would only sell their property to other Molokans, but these days anyone with money to offer is welcome. The problem is that few people have any money to offer. The region around Vanadzor used to be a resort area - Armenia's Switzerland - with its densely forested slopes and mountain springs. That was before the devastating 1988 earthquake and the economic ruin of the post-Soviet years. The slopes are now increasingly bare, as people chop down the trees for heating. A Soviet-era fur farm stands abandoned, the animals having long since escaped into the wilds, and only the reopening of a fearfully grim-looking chemical plant has given some jobs to the local people, including some of the young Molokans.

"I never imagined I'd have to rely on what I can grow in my own garden to survive," said half-Russian, half-Armenian Sergei, a Moscow-trained unemployed engineer from Vanadzor, who bought property from departing Molokans in Lermontovo. "People here used to go picking mushrooms in the woods for pleasure, now they do it as survival."

"We work and work, but all that grows here are potatoes and cabbages," sighed Tsetkova, imagining how well the Molokans could live if they were all able to move to Krasnodar or one of the other fertile southern Russian regions. "But then again, life isn't meant to be too easy."

This fatalism comes through again and again when talking to the Molokans - a stoic, even cheery acceptance of their lot. "You should have come for the Last Judgement holiday," said Dolgova with a broad smile on her face. "We fasted all day long. You could have seen the jumping Molokans," she added, explaining how there was an even smaller, stricter group of Molokans called "jumpers" because when they pray they begin to jump.

To your average modern person, the Molokan way of life seems terribly cut off from the world. They don't have TVs, radios or stereos, and though they are allowed to read "worldly literature," the emphasis has to be on the Bible.

"You get used to it," said Susana Chechina, 16, who came from the town of Dilizhan to visit her relatives in the village. "In the evenings we read or sew. It's true though that when we young Molokans get together we do sometimes listen to music, because it's hard at times to know how to entertain yourself."

Chechina said she'd never been to Russia but wanted to go. She had already finished school and was attending sewing classes in Dilizhan. Lermontovo used to have a small textile factory, but that has since closed down.

For the Molokans, education poses the problem of too much exposure to the influences of the modern world. "Higher education isn't encouraged," Tsetkova said. "The kids leave for universities and they don't come back. They don't keep the faith."

Tsetkova herself grew up in a less strict Molokan family where radio and music was quite normal. She enjoyed school and had considered studying to become a doctor, but then met Grigory, her future husband, who came from a stricter background and wouldn't hear of having radio or TV in the house.

"Sometimes I think about what my life might have been like if I'd continued my studies," Tsetkova said. "It would have been a very different life. I wouldn't have been able to return here."

Back in Yerevan, which used to have the greatest number of Molokans, local people describe seeing their Molokan neighbors leave for Russia one after the other. Entire Molokan villages have been deserted as people scrape together what resources they can and head for Russia. The return to their historical home comes with both hope for a better future and pain at leaving Armenia, which had become the only home they knew.