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Chapter 1
DOUKHOBORS — an Overview
1.
Introduction
The term Doukhobor is derived from Dukho-borets, or
Spirit Wrestler. It was first formulated in 1785 by the
Russian Orthodox archbishop of Ekaterinoslav in the
southern region (present-day Ukraine) of the Russian
Empire, who used the term in a derogatory manner, implying
that it referred to those who wrestled against the spirit
of the church and God. The group itself, however, adopted
the name with the understanding that it referred to people
who "wrestle with the spirit of truth." Although
comprising elements of religion and a distinct way of
life, Doukhobors might best be described as a social
movement characterized by love, human goodness, and
justice. At present the largest number of Doukhobors
outside the homeland is in Canada, which has a Doukhobor
population (in 2002) of about 40,000. There are about the
same number in the former Soviet Union.
The origins of the Doukhobor movement go back to the
1650s, when Patriarch Nikon introduced reforms in the
Russian Orthodox Church. His action led to protest among
many believers and the result was the development of
several factions or schisms that came to be known as the Raskol, or
great division. The Raskol, in turn, split into
two groupings, Popovtsy
(priestists)
and Bezpopovtsy
(priestless).
The
Popovtsy sought to return to the pre-reform
Orthodox traditions, retaining both priests and the
veneration of icons. That orientation is today best
represented by the Old Believers. The Bezpopovtsy dispensed
entirely with priests and some of them, like the future
Doukhobors, rejected all church trappings, including
icons, sacraments, and even the Bible. They argued that
God exists in spirit and truth, that each individual is
his or her own church, and that there is no need for
priests. Although the Doukhobors rejected a priesthood,
they soon developed the principle of spiritual leadership,
which during the nineteenth century tended to become
hereditary.
By the time the Doukhobors became a distinct religious
group in the early eighteenth century, they had rejected
not only the Russian Orthodox Church but also the tsarist
regime that backed the official church. Together with the
rationalistic groups including the Molokans and
later the Tolstoyans,
the Doukhobors were considered to be among the most
harmful and extremely dangerous sects to both the church
and the state. As a result, Doukhobors were frequently
persecuted by the Russian imperial authorities and forced
to live in peripheral regions of the empire, such as
southern Russia (Kursk, Voronezh, Tambov, and Saratov
provinces), Ukraine, the Don Cossack region,
Transcaucasia, and far eastern Siberia (Irkutsk and
Kamchatka).
The importance of spiritual leaders within the movement
dates back to the 1730s, when a Socrates-like, unnamed,
wandering teacher from Moscow appeared in the Kharkov
province of Ukraine. He argued that the hierarchy and
clergy are man-made inventions, that all churches and
their rituals are therefore superfluous, and that
monasticism is a distortion of human nature. He also
criticized the existing social order, claiming that the
tsar and church hierarchs were in no way superior to other
people and that Russia's serf system was a disgrace to
humanity. This first Doukhobor teacher proclaimed that all
men and women are brothers and sisters.
Following in the footsteps of the unnamed wandering
teacher was Sylvan Kolesnikov, a Doukhobor organizer in
Russia's Ekaterinoslav province (present-day Ukraine).
Kolesnikov opened his home as a learning centre, where he
also taught the Doukhobors to survive by evasion,
stressing that external forms of religion are unimportant
and that a believer might profess any religion provided
that they remained true to themselves and lived a good and
simple life. He also introduced the custom of bowing to
the God within every person, and he stressed use of the
oral tradition based on the so-called ‘book of life’.
Next came Ilarion Pobirokhin, a prosperous wool dealer in
the Tambov and Kharkov provinces, who taught that truth is
not found in books but rather in the spirit. What was
important, therefore, was not the Bible but rather the
‘book of life’ of living memory. Under Pobirokhin's
leadership, the Doukhobor oral literature of hymns was
greatly expanded. It was not long, however, before
Pobirokhin became taken with his own self-importance and
proclaimed himself to be the living Christ, arguing that
his divinity was passed on to him via chosen individuals
since apostolic times. Not surprisingly, Pobirokhin's
claim caused friction among the Doukhobors themselves and
brought as well persecution from tsarist Russian
authorities.
For most of the nineteenth century, Doukhobor life in the
Russian Empire was characterized by two developments:
frequent internal power struggles between the community
hereditary leaders, including figures like Savelii
Kapustin, Lukeria Kalmykova, Mikhail Gubanov, and Peter
Verigin; and alternative periods of tolerance and
persecution by the Russian imperial government. During the
1840s, most Doukhobors (numbering about 4,000 at the time)
were exiled to Transcaucasia. After a period of
cooperation with the authorities during the Russo-Turkish
War of 1877-78, about 5,000 were allowed to settle in the
newly acquired territory of Kars near Russia's border with
the Ottoman Empire. This period of tolerance ended in
1895, however, when Doukhobor military recruits and then
civilian community members began to burn their firearms.
The tsarist government reacted to Doukhobor pacifism by
new persecutions during which several hundred were exiled
to Yakutsk in far eastern Siberia and others were isolated
in their community. The remainder, with the help of the
renowned Russian novelist and committed pacifist Lev
Tolstoy, sought refuge by emigrating to Canada.
The Doukhobors in far eastern Siberia were basically left
alone by the tsarist regime until it fell in 1917. Under
the new Soviet regime, the Doukhobors managed to survive
because of their distance from the centre of political
authority in Moscow and most especially because of their
ability to downplay external forms of religion in favour
of an emphasis on a person's private beliefs.
2.
Migration
Doukhobor emigration from the Russian Empire dates to the
late 1890s, when an appeal for help authorized by Tolstoy
drew attention to the cruelty being perpetrated on the
Doukhobors in Transcaucasia. Drawn up in 1896, it was
signed by Pavel I. Biryukov, whom Tolstoy had sent to the
area to investigate the situation at first hand. Together
with two other followers of Tolstoy, Ivan Tregubov and
Vladimir Chertkov, he was exiled for his involvement in
the affair. Chertkov went to England, where he established
a publishing venture in Russian and in English. Through
his activities, donations were made to the Doukhobor
cause, including $17,000 from the proceeds of Tolstoy's Resurrection. The
Society of Friends (Quakers) took up the cause because
they shared the Doukhobors' abhorrence of war, the
swearing of oaths, outward sacraments, and a separate
priesthood. Finally, in February 1898, the tsar granted
the persecuted dissidents permission to leave Russia.
Among the destinations considered were Chinese Turkistan,
Manchuria, Syria, Egypt, Texas, Hawaii, Central America,
USA and Brazil. However, only Cyprus, which had been under
British rule since 1878, was available as an immediate
refuge; here 1,126 Doukhobors, with the assistance of the
Quakers, found a temporary haven in the summer of 1898. As
a more permanent location, Canada seemed to provide the
most promise. The anarchist leader Pyotr Kropotkin, who
had visited Toronto in 1897 to attend a meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science, was
impressed by Mennonite settlements in the Canadian
northwest. His views appealed to members of Chertkov's
committee, and he was invited to meeting with them and the
Quakers administering the Doukhobor fund. James Mavor,
professor of political economy at the University of
Toronto, who was an expert on the prairies and a friend
and admirer of Tolstoy and Kropotkin, was contacted.
Kropotkin advised Mavor that the situation was desperate
and that the remaining dissidents must leave from the port
of Batumi at once. Three conditions were essential if the
group was to emigrate to Canada: exemption from military
service, complete independence in the organization of
their community, and large blocks of land.
Mavor wrote to Clifford Sifton, minister of the interior
in the Liberal government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who had
been actively promoting immigration to western Canada. The
prosperity of the west depended on settlement along the
route of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which had been
completed in 1885. Since, In Tolstoy's words, the
Doukhobors were "the best farmers in Russia," they were
ideal immigrants. In 1898 a delegation of ten arrived in
Canada to negotiate an agreement. The party included two
Doukhobors, Ivan Ivin and Peter Makhortov, and their
families, escorted by Prince D.A. Hilkov and Aylmer Maude,
an Englishman who had spent many years in Moscow. The
group considered a large territory in the Beaver Lake area
near Edmonton as a possible location, but local opposition
to non-British settlers put an end to the idea.
In the North-West Territories (now Saskatchewan), the
delegates found three
blocks of land that looked promising; they included
some 162,000 hectares [400,302 acres, 625 square miles]
with excellent soil and a good water supply, in addition
to 135,000 hectares [333,585 acres, 521 square miles] of
swamp and other non-arable land. Sifton approved the
settlement of the Doukhobors on this territory. Each
immigrant who reported to the immigration office in
Winnipeg would receive a bonus of $5 and an additional
$1.50 towards transportation costs. A grant of 65 hectares
[161 acres, .25 square mile] of arable land would be made
to each male over the age of eighteen or head of
household. A special committee was set up in Winnipeg to
disburse the money placed in the Doukhobor fund, which was
intended to assist the settlers after their arrival and
help them to purchase any supplies needed for the
establishment of their colonies. The Doukhobors' request
for recognition as conscientious objectors was granted by
an order-in-council of 6 December 1898.
After these arrangements had been made, the Quaker
committee chartered two ships, each of which made two
voyages between December 1898 and the following June. In
total, 7,500 Doukhobors arrived in Canada, of whom 65
percent were adults and the rest children (many of them
under five years of age). Some 55 percent of the newcomers
were females and 45 percent males. Despite this mass
movement, however, over 12,000 [~ 60 %] Doukhobors
remained in Russia, including members of the Middle Party
(headed by Alesha Vorobeov), who refused to join the
emigration because of disagreement over such issues as
vegetarianism and sexual intercourse, which was proscribed
by Peter Verigin. Exiled in Siberia, he did not come to
Canada until late in 1902. As well, most of Michael
Gubanov's Small Party stayed in the Caucasus. Following
the arrival of the Doukhobors in 1899, immigration to
Canada virtually came to an end, except for small groups
who arrived in 1905, 1911 and 1912.
3. Arrival and Settlement
Western Canada was still a frontier society when the
Doukhobors arrived, although the population of Winnipeg
had reached 50,000. Few schools existed except in the
towns, and much of the land was still unsettled. After
stopping at immigration halls in Winnipeg, Dauphin,
Selkirk, Yorkton, and Prince Albert, advance parties went
on to the areas reserved for the Doukhobors. The tracts
had been given the settlers en bloc, with the
understanding that they would distribute the land as they
saw fit. It was unsurveyed, and there were no roads and
few bridges, so that ferries had to be constructed across
rivers. Each of the three colonies comprised nearly 400
square kilometers, one-third of it bush and swamp. The
Doukhobors from Georgia, along with some from Elizavetpol
and the Kars region, settled in the North Colony.
Most of the Kars people went to the Prince Albert Colony,
while the largest settlement, the South Colony,
was comprised of migrants from all groups, including those
who had been in Cyprus.
Two of the reserves were in the northeast corner of what
was then Assiniboia Territory (now southern Saskatchewan).
The North Colony (also called Thunder Hill) was located
112 kilometres from Yorkton and contained six townships.
The South Colony, with an annex called Devil's or Good Spirit
Lake Colony and containing fifteen townships, was
situated 48 kilometres from Yorkton. The town, on the
north line of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), served
as a shipping and trade centre for the colonists in the
two reserves. An arrangement was made between the
government and the CPR by which the railway exchanged its
holdings in the area for land elsewhere, thus allowing the
Doukhobors to settle in compact communities rather than on
alternative homestead land. The Prince Albert, or Saskatchewan
Colony (also known as the Duck Lake and later Blaine
Lake Colony) comprised the third reserve; it consisted of
twenty townships 320 kilometres to the northwest in
Saskatchewan Territory, where only even-numbered sections
were reserved for Doukhobors. The southern part of the
reserve was 32 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon, but the
railway centre during the early years was at Rosthern, 40
kilometres to the east on the Prince Albert line.
The Doukhobors settled in a village pattern not unlike
that of the peasant commune, or mir, in Russia. Verigin had advised them
to establish themselves on a communal basis, with no more
than fifty families to a village. Such an arrangement
would enable the limited resources, money from the fund
and other donations, to reach the people. Log dwellings
luted with clay were common in the North Colony, while sod
and clay houses were built in the South and Prince Albert
colonies. Later, many of the early dwellings were replaced
with brick or wooden structures. Some villages erected a
separate meetinghouse, or dom, although in most cases any home or
large building in the village served this purpose. In all,
more than ninety villages were established in
Saskatchewan.
By 1907, however, a crisis over landownership had
developed resulting in ultimately breaking up of the
collectives. In the face of demands from the
Conservative opposition for settlement on the British
model, the Liberal government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier
reneged on its earlier promise that Doukhobors could live
and work in colonies. The opposition said that one
English-speaking settler was ‘worth 25 Doukhobors to this
country’. Frank Oliver, the new Minister of the Interior
ordered communal lands to be registered individually. A
large group of Doukhobors led by Verigin, who had been
released from Siberian exile five years earlier, believed
the sentiment expressed by Lev Tolstoy that in order to be
true Christians one must avoid individual ownership of
property. Independent Doukhobors (those who opposed his
leadership) filed claims for some 238 homesteads. Most
simply affirmed the truth in filling out the applications
(and did not have to take the offensive Oath of Allegiance
which only came into being in 1908 when the new minister
of the Interior changed some sections of the Homestead Act
and insisted that applicants would henceforth have to
swear allegiance to the Crown before becoming citizens).
Those who did not accept the new policy lost 121,000
hectares of improved land, though they were allowed to
keep 6 hectares per family.
The following year, communal Doukhobors purchased 7,700
hectares of largely forested land in the Kootenay
and Boundary areas of British Columbia. Because it
was a private transaction, an oath of allegiance was not
required and the process of citizenship was not enforced.
By 1912 some 8,000 Doukhobors had relocated there and were
living in such centres as Waterloo (Brilliant, at the
confluence of the Kootenay and Columbia rivers),
Castlegar, Grand Forks, Nelson, Shoreacres, and Slocan
Park. They cleared forest lands, planted orchards, and
constructed forty-four communes, each consisting of pairs
of two-story houses with connecting courtyards.
In Alberta the Doukhobors established a new colony on
4,557 hectares [11, 260 acres, 17.6 square miles] near the
towns of Cowley and
Lundbreck about 112 kilometers west of Lethbridge,
on the route of the CPR. Verigin and his followers chose
this location as an intermediate supply centre for the
production of grain and vegetables and for stock raising.
Thirteen villages were founded, and they were colonized by
three hundred Doukhobors from British Columbia. Within two
years, wheat and flour were being shipped from these
foothill settlements to Brilliant. Anastasia Golubova
started a fourteenth village, independent of the others,
near Shouldice
in 1926; it lasted almost twenty years and numbered 165
people at its height. Another small colony was established
at Kylemore,
Saskatchewan, some 80 kilometres west of the South Colony.
This purchase was made with the idea of increasing the
return on grain because land was cheaper here than in the
main settlement.
Some 150 Doukhobors from Siberia had emigrated to Canada
in 1905, settling in Saskatchewan. Six years later 200
non-Veriginite believers arrived and took up homesteads in
the Langham district of Saskatchewan, where they
established close contacts with the independent Doukhobors
in the Prince Albert Colony. Migrations from the original
British Columbia settlement by the radical svobodniki, or Sons
of Freedom, a splinter group established in Saskatchewan
in 1902, took them elsewhere in the province — to Krestova
in 1929, Gilpin in 1935, Hilliers on Vancouver Island in
1946, Uruguay in 1952, and Agassiz and Vancouver in 1962.
This last movement brought one thousand members of the
group to the coast to be closer to family heads who were
serving prison sentences for their activities.
Unexpectedly, it exposed both adults and children to the
assimilative forces of an industrial society and changed
many of them forever.
The 2001 census found only 3,800 Doukhobors (compared to
4,820 in the 1991 census; a loss of 21.1 percent), based
on a ‘religious’ designation, in Canada. With a wider
definition of religion, ethnicity, way of life, and social
movement, the number today exceeds 40,000, of whom some
20,000 reside in British Columbia (mostly in the southern
interior settlements of Castlegar and Grand Forks and in
Vancouver), 14,000 in Saskatchewan (principally in the
northeastern settlements of Verigin and Kamsack and the
Saskatoon area, including Langham and Blaine Lake), and
4,000 in Alberta (mostly in Calgary, with a few in the
original settlements of Cowley and Lundbreck). The rest
are scattered throughout Canada. Some 500 Doukhobors now
reside in the American states of California and Oregon.
[See maps at Doukhobor
Genealogy Website.]
4. Religion
Doukhobor roots are religious, but to describe the
movement as a religion is insufficient. Its founders were
simple peasants who, three hundred years ago under the
tsar, formed a dissident group to challenge church
orthodoxy. For these people, the confines of the church
building, the doctrines of the Bible, and the
authoritarianism of the priest or minister were more a
hindrance than an aid to salvation. They also regarded the
rule of kings, queens, and tsars as an outmoded
institution based on inequality and violence. Like the
Quakers, the Doukhobors sought the realm of God — which
for them was also love, truth, and beauty — in the hearts
and minds of men and women. The expression ‘God is love’
was not only metaphorically correct but also real. A God
in the heavens was nonsensical, and words without deeds
were emptiness. To the Doukhobors, the social structure of
the world around them seemed a perversion of the natural
social order. Since the early days, there has been a
steady progression in their thinking from a sectarian
religion to a moral and social movement. The concept of
God within each individual is central to their beliefs.
The Ten Commandments, especially the prohibition against
killing, are to be obeyed. But they reject the Bible as a
sacred document, as they do the formal institution of the
church and its hierarchy and sacraments.
The search for moral and philosophical roots, tied to the
inner God, characterizes the Doukhobors as a people. The
most far-reaching aspect of the movement is a belief that
the individual need not be associated with any religion or
know anything about the Bible or other sacred book to have
direct access to the power, energy, and health-giving
benefits of love and to the essence of God in the heart of
each person. This anarchistic tendency explains why the
large majority of the community does not belong to
Doukhobor organizations, even though, when pressed, they
will describe themselves as Doukhobors or
internationalists. Many consider themselves plakun trava (a grass
that moves against the prevailing current of the water). A
study in the 1970s showed that Doukhobor ideology was
particularly resilient in the face of the twentieth-
century forces of secularization, modernization, and
professionalization. Yet some members of the community
have adapted to society around them in a desire to be more
‘modern’ and ‘respectable’. By calling the meetinghouse a
church, they can obtain status and tax exemptions. For
some of them, the introduction of bibles into the
meetinghouse and the carrying out of rituals will bring
them into favour with ‘God-fearing’ churchgoers.
All Doukhobor services are related to molenie (prayer),
the usual title of Sunday morning sobranie (a
gathering of people), which consists of formal greetings,
the recitation and singing of Doukhobor psalms, the bow to
the spirit within (in British Columbia accompanied by hand
pumping [hand-shaking] and kissing in a distinctive
manner), the singing of hymns, and the final greetings.
This service is usually followed by a less formal
gathering. During the service, men traditionally stand in
rows on one side of the room facing rows of women on the
other side; and, bread, salt and water are placed on a
table separating the two at the head of the room. Among
all Doukhobors, the Lord's Prayer (Otchie nash in
Russian) is read before every official function, and a few
families also repeat it before meals.
5. Community Life
In the homeland, life in the commune was based on
self-sufficiency, both economical and social. The village
assembly, composed of heads of households, met frequently,
usually on the first day of the week, to discuss the
affairs of the community. A starista, or elder, was selected whose
duty corresponded to that of a chairman or speaker. Any
contact with the outside world took place in the orphans'
home and was made by the leader of the day, together with
the starista. Because the commune was a self-contained
unit, there was no need for the sort of organizations
common in industrial society. Women wove cloth and made
the clothes. Men manufactured shoes, harnesses, and all
kinds of farm implements. There were meetings (sobranies)
at which women and men participated equally in the
decision making.
The Doukhobor vision of God's presence within each
individual envisaged a society without an established
class structure — priesthood, bureaucracy, or aristocracy.
At the same time, a contradiction arose in the late 1770s
when Ilarion Pobirokhin had proclaimed himself Christ and
claimed that his divinity had been passed down from the
time of the apostles. His successors accepted this
aberration as a way to institutionalize their power, a
theocracy brought to Canada by the Verigin family. It
resulted in splits between those who supported the
Verigins' divine leadership (the community Doukhobors) and
those who opposed it (the independent Doukhobors). All
today agree on the values of pacifism and non-violence and
the use of a cappella singing, and reject the church, the
priesthood, and the Bible, but the sharing of power based
on a spiritual or an elected leadership has been the
principal cause of internal divisions throughout the past
century.
When the first Doukhobors arrived in Canada in the 1899,
they encountered a hierarchical society in which those of
British origin were at the top and newly arrived European
and Asian immigrants at the bottom. They resented this
class system, which resembled that of tsarist Russia.
Initially, the newcomers worked at such tasks as cutting
lumber at thirty cents a day, below the going rate. But
they soon became more competitive in their business
relations. The frontier society encouraged
individualistically-minded members to leave the commune
and strike out on their own. Signing for homesteads, they
became landowners. They sent their children to public
schools, and some eventually became lawyers, doctors,
engineers, and teachers. Still staunch pacifists, the
independents formed their own organization on democratic
principles to protect their rights, but during World War I
they had to stave off attempts by Peter V. Verigin to
persuade the government to take away their exemption from
military service.
His son, Peter Petrovich Verigin, in 1928 tried to placate
the independent Doukhobors, as well as non- Doukhobors, by
organizing the Society of Named Doukhobors and adopting a
declaration of principles. It stated that the community
Doukhobors believed in one leader, Jesus Christ, who was
the son of God, that its members did not recognize any
political party, and that they did not vote in elections.
The Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ (USCC), the
organization formed in 1938 to succeed both the Christian
Community of Universal Brotherhood and the Society of
Named Doukhobors of Canada, has since adopted this
document as its own. The ‘spiritual-divine’ style of
leadership has gradually declined in favour of a
democratically elected model. In 1961 the current USCC
leader, John J. Verigin, was elected its honourary
chairman.
The USCC, representing the community Doukhobors, remains
the main organization in Canada. It possesses the largest
resources, including community centres in Grand Forks and
Brilliant, an elected executive committee, four standing
committees on peace and the environment, the future,
lifestyle planning, and migration, and a youth, women’s’
and men’s’ organization active throughout the interior of
British Columbia. Among its projects are annual youth
festivals in May characterized by traditional singing,
speeches, and sports, a Sunday school program for
pre-schoolers, school picnics, youth sports days, an
outdoor picnic on Declaration Day in August, an annual
family retreat, an in-house bilingual publication, Iskra (Spark;
Brilliant, BC, Grand Forks, B.C., 1943-), crafts centre,
and a video club. A new residence, Sirotskii Dom, was
built for the leader in Grand Forks in 1993. At the 1999
Annual Convention of the USCC, John J. Verigin, Jr. (the
present leader’s son) was hired as Executive Director of
Operations. Today he paid-up membership approaches one
thousand, but the organization has many more supporters.
It favours a spiritual leadership in a democratic cloak, a
low poklon (bowing
ritual) in the religious service, and the use of the
Russian language.
The independent Doukhobors make up the second major group.
They originally formed part of a more broadly based
organization, the Union of Doukhobors of Canada, which was
established in 1945 with eight thousand members. However,
two years later the community Doukhobors withdrew. Today
the independents are organized as the Canadian Doukhobor
Society, with a current paid-up membership of 300 but
endorsed by many more. Its headquarters are in Creston,
British Columbia. The organization, which uses both the
Russian and English languages, is oriented to moral issues
and pacifism but rejects the 1928 Declaration and the
concept of spiritual leadership. Its members are involved
in the peace and disarmament movement and closely work
with the USCC in these activities, as well as in cultural
programs such as the youth festivals. The organization
owns no community centres and has no standing committees,
but it commemorates annual Doukhobor Peace Day on 29 June,
holds a Day of Love in February, publishes a newsletter The Sheaf, and
maintained a homepage on the World-Wide Web, the CDS Gateway (archived),
not updated since 2000. The USCC has its own web site: www.Iskra.ca. Also, the
independent Doukhobors established a joint research
committee that between 1974 and 1982 held a number of
symposia on the Doukhobor movement. These gatherings
brought together some four hundred people from all sectors
each month and served as a medium for community education
and intergroup reconciliation.
The third group is composed of those formerly called the
Sons of Freedom; within the community, they are commonly
referred to as zealots, or svobodniki. Their organization, the
Christian Community and Brotherhood of Reformed
Doukhobors, was led by a non- Doukhobor, Stephen S.
Sorokin, until his death in 1984; today, it is, no longer
viable, with only several dozen members. In the 1990s
those willing to associate with or be categorized as Sons
of Freedom has greatly diminished in number. The core
group mainly resides in the isolated community of Novoe
Poselka (New Settlement), near Krestova, British Columbia.
In 1995 one-half of the community refused to pay taxes, an
action that produced tension with local authorities. A
local carpenter used to edit and publish a monthly
newsletter, Istina (Truth),
as well as build coffins and conducts funerals at a
fraction of the commercial rate. Choirs from this third
isolated group have been amongst the best.
Local and regional organizations have provided continuity
for the Doukhobor movement. Each one has a women's group,
whose members generally look after hospitality for the
sobranies, as well as for weddings, funerals, seminars,
concerts, Heritage Days (in Verigin, Sask. where exists The
National
Doukhobor Heritage Village and Museum) and other
events.
The Saskatoon Doukhobor Society, one of the largest of the
local groups, has been in existence since 1955. It owns a
community centre and has an adult executive and a woman’s
group. Among its activities is a choir group, Russian
language instruction, the translation of Russian hymns
into English, being active in the peace movement, and
holding a week-long bread-baking project at the annual
Saskatoon Industrial Exhibition. The Saskatoon Society
publishes a monthy journal The Dove as part of a new organization
the Doukhobor
Cultural
Society of Saskatchewan which was established in
1989 to unite the scattered communities of Pelly, Kamsack,
Verigin, Canora, Watson, Blaine Lake, Langham, and
Saskatoon. In February, the new Society holds its annual
workshops at Manitou Springs in Watrous, Saskatchewan.
These gatherings have inspired Doukhobor singers across
the proivince to create a Centennial Choir that regularly
participates in Youth Festivals in BC.
The United
Doukhobors of Alberta is based at Cowley, where
Michael M. Verigin has served as secretary- treasurer
since 1974. A small community centre is located nearby in
Lundbreck, but it is used infrequently because most of its
members have moved to Calgary and other urban centres. In
Cakgary there is a Third Sunday of the month sobranie
meeting as well as a Nifty 50s Seniors Club.
Doukhobors in the Grand Forks and Kootenay areas hold
sobranie meetings on Sunday mornings at the USCC
facilities. The Grand Forks Youth Choir meets Sunday
evenings at the USCC Community Centre, while the Vision of
Peace Youth Choir meets at a similar time at the Brilliant
Cultural Centre. Elsewhere the Kelowna and Creston
Doukhobors have cultural associations with Sunday prayer
meetings, while the Victoria Doukhobor Group gathers
weekly on Sunday evenings.
Doukhobor youth have also contributed to group maintenance
and revival. The Saskatoon Doukhobor Student Group in the
1950s organized a series of informative panel discussions
about the movement and supported the first
English-language Doukhobor publication, a monthly called
the Inquirer (Saskatoon,
1954-58). Thirteen members participated in the 1957 World
Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow. On a regional
level, the Doukhobor Youth National Executive Council came
into being in 1968 and until 1974 sought
unsuccessfully to unite all Doukhobor factions into one
union. However, its efforts did lead to the creation of an
English-language youth magazine, Mir (Peace; Vancouver, 1973-81), which
was sponsored by the Union of Young Doukhobors of
Vancouver (UYD). In Castlegar young people founded a
non-partisan Doukhobor Cultural Association in 1968 with
the goal of a ‘step-by-step approach to unity’. Although
it has fewer than fifty members, the association has been
active into the 1990s in arranging workshops, seminars,
sports days, picnics, and fund-raising drives. A
centennial project (commemorating one hundred years of
Doukhobor history in Canada) was the construction in 1999
of a retreat complex at Whatshan Lake, British Columbia,
for individuals and families ‘who embrace a philosophy ...
[based] on the principle of universal kinship and the
pursuit of peace through non-violent means’. It also
administers a low-income housing project for senior
citizens in Castlegar sponsored by the Doukhobor
Benevolent Society, which is involved in a similar project
in Vancouver. A conference held in Saskatoon in December
1989 brought together community, independent, and zealot
young people from British Columbia and Saskatchewan in
discussion and included an impromptu concert that cut
across group boundaries. The conference was followed by
youth workshops in western Canada that had as their theme
‘Discoveries in Doukhoborism’. For the past decade, the
Saskatchewan Doukhobors have sponsored an annual winter
workshop at Watrous..
Non-sectarianism was also the goal of the UYD, organized
in 1968 by a group of young people, most of whom were
attending post-secondary educational institutions in the
area. The association has helped to preserve the cultural
and social traditions of the Doukhobors by holding
concerts, participating in the Canadian Folk Society
concerts, performing in churches, on television, and at
the Federation of Russian Canadians centre, and holding
handicraft bazaars to raise money. Its choir has performed
at the annual Doukhobor youth festivals in Castlegar and
during the Montreal Olympics in 1976, and has made three
successful concert tours of the interior of British
Columbia. At its twentieth anniversary festivities in
1988, some 150 UYD alumni and their families gathered for
a four-day summer camp that featured singing, games, and
discussions. Since then, such camps have become an annual
tradition. In addition, students attending the University
of Victoria have been active singing in choirs; one of
these choirs performed in the July 2005 Heritage Programme
in Verigin, Saskatchewan during the commemoration of the
100th anniversary of the province.
Belonging to any of these organizations does not guarantee
that one is a Doukhobor. But those who do belong
demonstrate through their deeds the Doukhobor values of
non-violence, love, hospitality, cooperation, and justice.
The Doukhobor centennial in 1995 brought together all
factions to celebrate the spirit of 1895, when their
ancestors burnt their firearms in affirmation of the
commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’. The 2005 Saskatchewan
Centennial also brought together all Doukhobor groups in
celebration of their pioneers who showed the way.
6. Economic Life
Their early history under the tsar influenced how many
Doukhobors looked at economic life in the new world.
Prolonged oppression by the established church, the state,
and the aristocracy instilled in them a tradition of
opposition to authority in general, to wealth and
privilege, and to virtually all activities that contribute
to wealth. This tradition was supported by the religious
beliefs that ‘one does as the Spirit moves’ and that
‘God's laws are supreme’. On the other hand, despite their
break from a feudal system, there was a considerable
carry-over of subservience to authority instilled by
generations of serfdom. In principle, the Doukhobor
community in the homeland was one of free and equal
individuals who obeyed only the dictates of their own
consciences and functioned on a basis of voluntary
cooperation. In fact, those who followed particular
leaders became subservient to a highly centralized
theocracy characterized by an extreme dependence upon
their leader's authority.
Geographic isolation from other groups helped to hold the
Doukhobors together; they were forced for their own
survival to rely upon a simple, relatively self-
sufficient economy based upon diversified agriculture and
the supplementary trades of a peasant village community.
It is not surprising, then, that the land took on an
almost mystical concept for the Doukhobors and that
farming was seen as the ideal occupation. After all,
Russian writer Lev Tolstoy, who helped their emigration to
Canada, had a lifelong interest in the question of land
and its importance to the peasants. However, on the
Canadian prairies, survival was the first priority. While
the able-bodied men worked on railway building and as
farmhands at subsistence wages, the women, old men, and
children built the villages. When horses and oxen were
lacking, women formed teams of twenty-four to pull the
plough. They also made garments, rugs, shawls, and
hangings from homespun fabrics. The men produced
furniture, boots and shoes, ladles, harnesses, horseshoes,
spades, spinning wheels, and tools of various kinds. From
the outset, the Doukhobor community in Canada was torn by
a three-way conflict between Russian peasant tradition,
Doukhobor beliefs, and the attraction of materialism in
the larger environment. The earliest villages were
established and run on communal lines as Verigin had
directed. Communal houses and dining halls were built,
although many settlers lived in their own dwellings. The
land, acquired in large blocks from the government, was
owned and managed cooperatively, as were most stores,
livestock, machinery, and other facilities. Wages received
from outside employment were, in theory if not in
practice, pooled in the general earnings of the community.
The first cooperative, a Doukhobor-owned store in Swan
River, Manitoba, encountered difficulties and eventually
ceased because the capitalistic ethic did not coincide
with the group's cultural background. People feared
exploitation.
Growing inequality between the more well-to-do families
from Kars and Elizavetpol and the poorer ones from the Wet
Mountains created friction and frustrated the communal
enterprise [map].
Those who were better off generally opposed communal
ownership because they stood to lose from it. A number of
them withdrew and either became members of the independent
group or struck out on their own. The Sons of Freedom
evolved into a conservative group that opposed deviation
from the anti-materialistic, cooperative norm; they
protested against the breakdown of community life and
attempted to curb the growing individualism of the
well-to-do. Their first pilgrimage in November 1902
brought out 1,700 participants, who left their villages
and trekked to Yorkton. While the women and children
remained there, six hundred men continued on to Minnedosa,
Manitoba. They expressed their opposition to government
pressure to acquire individual homesteads.
The colonies of community Doukhobors under the leadership
of Verigin were incorporated in 1917 as the Christian
Community of Universal Brotherhood (CCUB). It had its
headquarters in Verigin, Saskatchewan, until 1931, when it
moved to Brilliant. The CCUB built roads, bridges,
sawmills, concrete reservoirs, and irrigation facilities
and planted tens of thousands of fruit trees, which
eventually supplied excellent produce for its jam
factories. As in the earlier Saskatchewan settlements,
earnings from outside employment were in principle pooled
in the common treasury. This system was later changed to
an annual assessment levied on every adult male. Each
village in turn was responsible for raising its quota for
the overall operations of the CCUB, which included brick
factories and flour mills in Saskatchewan. Verigin imposed
a rigid austerity program on himself and his followers in
order to reduce expenditures, pay off the debt, and expand
capital assets.
However, the CCUB began to decline rapidly following
Verigin' s death in October 1924 as the result of a
still-unsolved explosion on a train and the accession of
his son, Peter Petrovich, to the leadership. The executive
of the CCUB had borrowed $350,000 from the Bank of
Commerce, secured by bonds held by the National Trust
Company. Under the younger man and the impact of the Great
Depression, the organization went further into debt and
finally into bankruptcy in 1937. Foreclosure proceedings
were instituted the following year. Community accountant
William A. Soukoreff gave four reasons for the CCUB
collapse: heavy mortgage rates, a decline in the paid-up
membership from 8,000 in 1908 to 2,113 in 1937, the
increasing number of non-payers, and enormous losses from
the activities of radical members as well as unknown
outsiders who had resorted to arson as a form of protest
against government persecution or for other reasons.
A comprehensive study of community lands in the period
1928-31 concluded that inefficiency contributed to the
collapse. Independent Doukhobor farms had crop yields that
averaged 50 percent higher than those of community
Doukhobors, orchard cultivation was neglected, and an
elaborate irrigation system estimated in 1930 to have cost
$438,000 was of ‘unsound design’ and never worked. The
failure by management to seek expert advice was a related
problem. The study found that the managers were frequently
illiterate people chosen by the community, whose members
tended to scorn education and outside expertise. Peter P.
Verigin's smoking, drinking, and gambling also contributed
to the eventual downfall of the community.
The provincial government took measures to forestall the
threatened eviction by paying the money owed to the
creditors, Sun Life Assurance Company and the National
Trust Company. It ruled that the CCUB was not eligible for
protection under the Farmers' Creditors Arrangement Act
because a limited company could not technically be
considered a farmer. Many Doukhobors felt that the
government tricked them by gaining control of their
buildings and some 7,700 hectares of land [19,027 acres,
29.7 square miles] (with properties in Saskatchewan and
Alberta, worth about $6 million) for less than $300,000
[~$15/acre]. A Land Settlement Board was set up to
administer the land, which the community members rented
for a nominal amount until 1961, when it was sold back to
them for a price much below market value. When the
receiver had completed its operations in 1945, $142,000
had been left for the legal heirs of the CCUB. By 1980 the
money had grown to $267,000, and a trust fund was
established for community purposes.
World War II greatly improved the economic status of the
Doukhobors in British Columbia as hundreds of carpenters
and other construction workers found jobs erecting a new
dam at Brilliant, a project designed to increase
hydroelectric power for the Consolidated Mining and
Smelting Company plants in Trail. The war, however,
increased resentment against the Doukhobors in the Nelson
and Grand Forks communities because their young,
able-bodied men were exempt from military service. For
years many Doukhobors complained that they were ‘last
hired and first fired’. The Cold War also had a negative
effect on Doukhobor employment. Members of the community
failed to gain jobs or promotions because they were
identified as Russians and therefore not to be trusted.
In 1950-52 researchers established a profile of workers in
the interior of British Columbia. Although they resided on
small farms and in villages, Doukhobor labourers were
extremely mobile in seeking employment in non-farming
industries and trades in the larger cities and towns and,
to a lesser extent, in more distant logging camps and
mining towns. Trail and Nelson, where one-third of the
1,437 Doukhobor workers in the sample were employed, were
the main centres. Upon their arrival in British Columbia,
Doukhobors had worked in logging and saw-milling, cutting
and transporting logs for railway ties as well as for
their own dwellings and farm buildings. The CCUB's
extensive logging and saw-milling enterprises provided a
training ground for large numbers of them, both as
executives and as labourers. In the 1950s almost 43
percent were concentrated in the fields of carpentry and
forest products. By far the major portion of the 655
listed in the study as unskilled were in general
construction. Only a small fraction were in such
white-collar positions as managerial, professional, sales,
and clerical work. A smaller proportion of women among the
Doukhobors than in the general population sought
employment outside the home, with many concentrated in the
category of food workers (almost entirely fruit packers
and harvest hands employed seasonally in the Okanagan
valley). The other areas of employment for women were as
cooks and waitresses and in domestic service. Few were in
white-collar or office jobs. Ten major firms employing
4,000 workers had only 84 Doukhobors on their payrolls, a
result, it would seem, of discrimination as well as the
Doukhobors' personal preference for seasonal work.
The study also found that the Doukhobors generally had
lower costs of living than other wage earners, a fact that
enabled many of them to achieve a more substantial
lifestyle than most casual labourers enjoy. Those in
British Columbia were definitely not joiners of
organizations such as trade unions, the Board of Trade,
and service clubs. At the time of the study, the standard
of living of most Doukhobors in the province was not high;
their houses were generally modest, unpainted, sparsely
furnished, and not located in the more desirable
residential areas. Once the Land Settlement Board began to
sell land back to the Doukhobors in 1961, however, they
built new houses for themselves. Today, many spacious and
expensive homes are to be found throughout the Kootenay
and Boundary areas, and most Doukhobors own one or more
cars or trucks.
By the early 1990s, their situation had improved to the
point that they compared well with other Canadians. The
Saskatchewan and Alberta independent Doukhobors had a head
start on those in British Columbia because they had few,
if any, inhibitions about education. Many of their sons
(and later their daughters) obtained university degrees
and found their way into such occupations as teaching,
medicine, law, engineering, science, commercial art,
publishing, consulting, the mass media, and the civil
service. British Columbia Doukhobors were hampered for
several generations because their early leaders opposed
higher education, but, once this attitude changed in the
1950s, the young people moved ahead rapidly. Today, they
are found in most occupations, especially education,
medicine, and management. No longer predominantly a
farming people, Doukhobors now depend for their livelihood
primarily on wage employment. Although they continue to
cultivate small tracts of land for part of their food
needs or to supplement their cash incomes, much of this
work is carried out by the women and children.
7. Family and Kinship
Traditionally, Doukhobors regarded marriage as a sacred
relationship between two individuals; they objected to the
intervention of any third party, such as the clergy, and
therefore did not recognize the role of government or the
church in the union. The essence of the marriage ceremony
was a demonstration of consent on the part of the parents
and the witness of relatives and friends. The Saskatchewan
government recognized the Doukhobor form of marriage in
1909, and British Columbia did so in 1953. In both
provinces, parties to the marriage are obliged to complete
the standard registration form, have it witnessed, and
send it to the local registrar of vital statistics. In the
villages, weddings took place in the home, with only the
immediate relatives in attendance. With the Doukhobors'
greater affluence, celebrations are now often held in a
public hall, where many friends and relatives can attend
and share in an elaborate banquet, liquor, and often a
dance. With a degree of breakdown in the community,
intermarriage has increased, and some couples have had
their union sanctioned by a civil ceremony or a minister
from another religious group.
The shift away from the communal lifestyle characteristic
of the Doukhobors in the homeland and the early years in
Canada towards individual landownership has resulted in a
corresponding change from an extended family to a nuclear
one. As well, family size has been reduced from an average
of eight children in the homeland to two in this country.
But the role of women as protectors of the home, educators
of the children, and leaders in the community has remained
central to Doukhobor life. In Canada during the early
years, women did not leave the close-knit settlements, and
consequently they had no opportunity to learn the English
language and Canadian customs. With the rapid
technological change that followed World War II and new
career opportunities, however, they increasingly entered
professions such as teaching and nursing. Among the
younger generation, there appears to be a mix of
traditional and modern lifestyles: women are pursuing
careers and raising children at the same time.
Generally, there has been a strong taboo among Doukhobors
with regard to anything connected with sex. Children were
told that ‘babies came from the river’. This myth
persisted to the 1950s, but, with modern sex education
provided in schools and the availability of instructional
literature, a greater frankness has prevailed. Children
have also experienced more freedom in their upbringing.
Traditionally, they played a role in the economic survival
of the family unit by helping with such chores as
gardening, fruit picking, and cooking. The child was
taught to respect all adults and would not dare to say no
to a parent. Though they participated in adult activities,
young people were expected to keep quiet when their elders
were speaking. A scolding or ‘bending the ears back’ kept
them in submission. At the same time, children felt at
ease visiting a neighbouring village because they knew
that any baba (grandmother),
deda (grandfather),
dyadya (uncle),
or tyota (aunt)
would look after them as their own.
Before the introduction of government-sponsored old age
pensions and other social-security programs, children were
responsible for the care of their elderly parents, and
several generations often lived in the same household. In
recent years, the parents have become more independent. To
minimize the disruptive effects of homes for the elderly,
Doukhobors in British Columbia in the 1980s began building
their own institutions, which could provide for cultural
expression through singing and traditional handicrafts.
However, many members of the community are still bothered
by this shift away from family care for the elderly.
In an attempt to escape discrimination during the Cold
War, some Doukhobors changed their surnames to more
Anglo-Saxon-sounding forms, such as Podwin for
Podovinikoff. In recent years, others have returned to the
original Russian spelling of names, such as Tarasov
instead of Tarasoff, Papove rather than Popoff, and
Faminow for Faminoff (the ending "off" was added by
immigration officers in the 1890s). A distinctive
characteristic of the Doukhobor family has been the
transfer of ideology, especially the values of pacifism,
love, respect for adults, hospitality, and friendship to
one's neighbour, from one generation to another. The
bread, salt, and water placed on the table at Doukhobor
meetings are symbols of a common humanity. Expressions
such as Slava Bogu
(Praise be to God), often used in: formal greetings,
acknowledge the spirit of God within each individual, a
quality that unites the whole human race.
8. Culture
Most Canadian Doukhobors are bilingual, speaking English
as the language of business and a southern Russian dialect
mixed with elements of central Russian, Belorussian,
Ukrainian, and English within the community. In the
extended family, knowledge of the heritage language was
kept alive by the grandmother, who read psalms to the
children at bedtime. Today, elders in the community
express a concern about a loss of Russian among their
youth, swept along by the forces of English language
education, competition for good grades, and the
anti-Soviet propaganda of the Cold War. Books in Russian
and in translation have helped to preserve the language
and culture. The most notable is that of Vladimir
Bonch-Bruevich, a Russian ethnographer who in 1899-1900
recorded traditional folklore among the new immigrants to
Canada and published the Zhivotnaia kniga Dukhobortsev (Doukhobor
Book of Life, 1909). A collection of over three hundred
psalms, as well as parables, verses, and forms of
greetings, it constitutes the musical and literary
heritage of the Doukhobors. [See: Robert B Klymasz, "Tracking
the 'Living Book': Doukhobor Song in Canada Since 1899".
Canadian Journal for Traditional Music (1993)]
Acappella singing has continued as the dominant mode of
cultural expression. Singing of the psalms is
characterized by long, drawn-out passages using staggered
breathing. Although occasionally based on biblical models,
the psalms were composed by the Doukhobors themselves or
inherited from proto-Doukhobor groups that had broken away
from the Russian Orthodox Church, some as early as the
fifteenth century. Because of their archaic wording and
difficult tempo, the psalms are gradually giving way to
hymns and folk songs, which employ a faster tempo.
Historical hymns deal with specific events in tsarist
Russia, such as the 1895 burning of firearms, the
persecution that followed, the migration, and the
Doukhobor martyrs. Contemporary ones reflect social ideals
and events among the Doukhobors in Canada.
During the past fifty years, many choral groups have
sprung up, especially among the community Doukhobors but
also among the independents of Saskatchewan and Alberta
and the zealots of British Columbia. These groups have
visited communities throughout North America, and over
seventy albums and cassettes have been recorded. Choirs
have participated in numerous events such as a tour of the
Soviet Union in 1966, Expo 67 in Montreal, the Seattle
world's fair in 1974, the opening of the British Columbia
legislature that year and of the United Nations in 1982, a
centennial tour of North America and Russia in 1995, and a
youth festival in Cuba in 1997. The use of folk-song
collections from the former Soviet Union has helped
Doukhobors to preserve their knowledge of Russian. Hymn
books and musical scores are not used, except by some
choirs in Saskatchewan. The choirs also do not have
conductors, although a member of each group serves as
director. Objection to the use of musical instruments was
finally abandoned in the early 1970s when a piano was
brought into a Doukhobor community centre for the use of a
visiting Russian artist. Today, several groups have
included guitars, accordions, and saxophones on their
recordings, but musical instruments are still barred from
religious meetings. Dancing was also traditionally frowned
upon but is now practiced by many young people.
There is a saying that every second Doukhobor is a writer,
an allusion to the fact that members of the community have
an inborn habit of philosophizing about life. Among the
earliest scholars was Alex P. Harshenin, who in 1974 wrote
a doctoral thesis on the Doukhobor language. Nina Olson
studied the movement from an anthropological point of
view, and from 1925 to 1992 Nick N. Kalmakoff collected,
printed, and hand bound editions of traditional hymns and
songs. Nicholas Zbitnoff, a Saskatchewan-born doctor who
practiced medicine in Ukiah, California, for many years,
photographed Doukhobors and collected their family
histories throughout his life.
Peter N. Maloff and William A. Soukoreff of British
Columbia have produced folk histories in Russian, while
Saskatchewan-born Eli A. Popoff has written many stories
and several novels in Russian and English. The most
prominent editor in the community, Peter P. Legebokoff,
was responsible for the journal Iskra
from 1952 to 1973. Ivan Sysoev, who
composed more than a thousand hymns and poems in the
Russian language, is the best example of a Doukhobor poet.
With the exception of some productions in the 1930s, a
radio script in the 1950s, and the occasional play,
Doukhobors have not created many dramatic works. A
multimedia presentation by the community in Saskatchewan
in the 1970s, which incorporated songs, slides, acting,
and narration, was an innovation. Alberta-born Larry A.
Ewashen, known as both a playwright and a filmmaker, wrote
a play about the burning of firearms for the hundredth
anniversary of this event in 1995. The most prominent
Doukhobor artists are painters Frederick
Nicholas
Loveroff and Bill
Perehudoff and sculptor William
Koochin.
Among the publications catering to the Doukhobor community
is Iskra, which
today is issued monthly as a bilingual journal of the
USCC. Through its pages, readers are informed about their
history, heritage, and current cultural activities. A
radio program in Russian, which ran from 1970 to 1996 on
the CKGF station in Grand Forks, was produced, directed,
and narrated by singers Fred and Luba Rezansoff and their
friends. Broadcast six days a week, it lasted for ten
minutes; the first half was devoted to local and
international news and the second to singing. The purpose
was to keep the Russian language alive and to inform
listeners about events in the homeland and the rest of the
world. Doukhobor elders especially benefited from this
program, which helped to dispel misconceptions about the
community by providing a positive image of its activities.
Though the program ceased on Fred Rezansoff's death in
1996, plans are currently under way for the
Russian-American Broadcasting Company of New York to
provide a Russian-language radio and television service in
Canada, two one-hour weekly TV programs from Toronto,
Ontario: Russian Waves
by TokmakoV TV Productions Ltd (www.toktv.com) and a
Sunday program by Russian-Canadian Broadcasting Corportion
with TV along with a radio program and weekly newspaper
(416-738-1179).
In the fall of 2005, Russian
Waves produced an illustrated program on the
Doukhobors featuring an interview with Koozma J. Tarasoff.
Viewers in western Canada were able to view the program as
were viewers from around the world on satelite TV.
Other aspects of Doukhobor culture are influenced by the
surrounding North American society. For example, the
English language is gradually creeping into Sunday
religious meetings in Saskatoon. To counter this
development, the local society has a program of
Russian-language instruction. Cultural festivals, family
gatherings, and a growing interest in genealogy are
indications of a renewed interest in roots. The
celebration of Doukhobor Peace Day on 29 June unites all
members of the community around the central issue of
pacifism, while Declaration Day, held in British Columbia
on the first Sunday in August, is a reaffirmation of
Doukhobor beliefs. Panel discussions and symposia serve
similar functions.
Clothing, food, and crafts are also forms of cultural
expression. For choral performances, women often wear
blouses, skirts, and platoks
(kerchiefs) adapted from traditional Russian forms.
Food grown in their own gardens is shared with friends and
relatives in the form of such traditional dishes as lapshevnik (noodle
loaf), borshch (cabbage
soup),
pirogi (filled
with vegetable or fruit), lapsha (noodle soup), vareniki (cottage
cheese or fruit dumplings), and blintsi (pancakes). Only a few members
of the community are vegetarians, but a reverence for life
remains a deep-seated value for all. Some women still knit
socks, produce handmade rugs, or embroider distinctive
Slavic designs, and men continue to make wooden ladles,
sugar bowls, and spinning wheels. Modern medicine is fully
supported in the community, but a few older Doukhobors
rely on folk cures, prayers, and incantations. The use of
bone-setters, steam baths, and heat are popular,
particularly among the older generation.
Leisure was not a concept known to early Doukhobors since
people were not supposed to be idle. In the early
communes, before the introduction of modern farm
machinery, members sang while they worked in the fields;
the same practice was to be found in the village
courtyards in British Columbia during the 1920s. Work and
leisure thus formed an integrated whole. Among the
independent Doukhobors, soccer, baseball, hockey, curling,
and swimming were popular recreations. Every Sunday in the
village of Pokrovka northwest of Saskatoon, for example,
young and old came out to play baseball, ‘Russian bats’,
and softball. From such outings evolved baseball teams
that toured the province and participated in sports days.
Notable sports figures have emerged from both the
independent and community groups: Peter Knight, a world
champion bronco rider in the 1930s; Jon-Lee Kootnekoff, an
Olympic basketball player and coach in the 1960s; Ron
Cherkas, who distinguished himself as a player with the
Canadian Football League a decade later; Debbie Brill, a
world champion high jumper in late 1970s and early 1980s;
and Tim Cheveldae, a National Hockey League goalie in the
1980s.
9. Education
Schooling did not arise as an issue in the homeland
largely because the Doukhobors lived in isolated communes
beyond the concern of authorities. Fundamental education,
culture, and religion formed one continuous whole. The
religious sobranie provided
singing and discussions and the community group, or skhodka, the
rudimentary laws of behaviour. Young people were trained
through a well-developed moral code and by the example of
their elders. Individual members taught their children
whatever they knew about reading and writing, and
apprentices learned occupational skills from master
craftsmen. In the towns, formal education tended to be
dominated by the Orthodox Church. Doukhobors regarded such
schools with disfavour because they were the means by
which the church and the state sought to destroy their
movement. Peter V. Verigin and two of his brothers, who
were the youngest in a family of nine children, received
some formal education because their parents could afford
to pay for private tutors.
When the Doukhobors attempted to transfer their way of
life to Canada in the 1899 and the early 1900s, they found
a culture dominated by English and different attitudes
towards education. The Quakers conducted summer schools
for the community in the early 1900s and took several
pupils to Philadelphia for further study. In Saskatchewan,
public schools were organized in some areas. But Verigin,
after years of imprisonment in Siberia, was suspicious of
any government involvement. Whatever affected the
Doukhobors' way of life was interpreted as a challenge to
their beliefs and was met with resistance. Initially, the
source of conflict was the content of education rather
than the process. Schooling was thought to prepare young
people for military service, which Doukhobors considered
to be wrong. It promoted competition, cheating, the notion
of easy profit, and the exploitation of the working class.
These tendencies were contrary to the ideals of simplicity
and honest labour that the Doukhobors valued. Further, the
schools encouraged young people to leave their parents and
rural communities. As well, both Verigin and his son,
Peter Petrovich, were afraid that if members of the
community were educated, they would follow their own
conscience and the leaders would lose their authority.
Lev Tolstoy's writings, both literary and philosophical,
were occasionally available in the early years, but their
availability and popularity continued into the 2000s. The
influencem on the Doukhobors of Russia's literary giant,
Tolstoy, cannot be underestimated. Tolstoy's highest
essence lies in his spiritual quest — his search for the
meaning of life and his search for truth. The Kingdom of God is within
You and A
Translation and Harmony of the Four Gospels were
the most popular followed by War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection (which was inspirited by
the Doukhobors), Master
and Man and Where
love is, there God is also, and The teachings of Christ told
for Children.
Generally, the ideas shared by Doukhobors and Tolstoy
included the rejection of violence, the unity of people,
peaceful labour, respect for every living thing, and
brotherhood on the Earth. However, some of Tolstoy's ideas
were presented in extreme and unbalanced form by his
followers such as publicist Vladimir Chertkov and
anarchist Alexander M. Bodyansky resulting in the rise of
zealotry.
Difficulties over education developed further after the
community Doukhobors and the Sons of Freedom moved to
British Columbia. Educational practice of the day meant
that children were divided into grades, faced competitive
tests, participated in military drill, were subjected to
political indoctrination, and were forbidden to speak
Russian. Community schools in the province were supervised
by a trustee from Victoria, and Doukhobors could not
exercise any control. To enforce attendance, the
government brought in the Community Regulation Act in
1914. This statute defined as community members anyone
living "under communal or tribal conditions"; it held each
member responsible for the registration of births and
deaths in the community, the regular attendance at school
of all children between the ages of seven and fourteen,
and compliance of the entire community with the Health
Act. Convictions would result in fines.
For the approximately one thousand independent Doukhobors
who remained in Saskatchewan, government policies were
more favourable; members of the group were also more
responsive to the concept of education. In 1915 Peter G.
Makaroff became the first individual of Slavic origin to
enroll in a Canadian university and graduate. After
earning a degree in law three years later, he became a
distinguished lawyer and an avid proponent of the pacifist
cause. By the 1990s the community in Saskatchewan had
produced engineers, doctors, educators, and professionals
of all kinds. In British Columbia, once the children began
attending schools and especially after World War II, they
showed a great thirst for knowledge. Today, many from this
group too have graduated from institutions of higher
learning.
In order to preserve the mother tongue, Doukhobors since
the 1930s have organized Russian-language classes after
school or in the evening using primers, or bukvary, obtained
from the homeland. After years of lobbying, the community
Doukhobors in British Columbia succeeded in establishing
heritage-language courses within the public and high
school system in Grand Forks and Castlegar, paid for by
the federal government. Both members of the community and
non-Doukhobors have participated in this program. Since
the 1960s, over 150 students have gone to the Soviet Union
for language training, and others have joined tours of the
country organized by local educators. Some of them have
become Russian instructors in their home communities. A
few married Russians and either remained in the Soviet
Union or brought their spouses to Canada. Their belief in
the need to build bridges between East and West has
stimulated some members of the community to study the
language at university. Selkirk College, located at
Castlegar in the heart of the community in British
Columbia, has for over two decades offered
Russian-language instruction, as well as anthropology
courses with a focus on Doukhobor life.
10. Politics
Theoretically at least, the commune system in the homeland
was a self-contained one where all heads of households had
a say, though a class system eventually crept in and
usurped their role. The leader and his or her inner circle
looked after the payment of taxes, the allocation of
conscripts, and relations with officials. Lukeria
Kalmykova, for example, compromised her principles when
she succumbed to the state's demand to use Doukhobor men,
horses, and wagons to transport supplies for the tsarist
troops in the Russo-Turkish War, a service for which the
Doukhobors were rewarded with land grants and gold.
Persecution and exile in the homeland created a distrust
of church and state, however, and Verigin and his
followers transferred this attitude to Canada. The move to
British Columbia resulted in the refusal to register for
individual land titles because people supporting Verigin
feared that this action would eventually lead to the
acquisition of Canadian citizenship and in turn would
require an Oath of Allegiance (or an Affirmation, which
was less understood). Many Doukhobors in Canada also
avoided membership on school boards, municipal councils,
or other political bodies, and initially refused to
register births, marriages, and deaths.
When the community Doukhobors lost their lands in 1907,
they attempted to obtain redress for the injustice by
lobbying the Canadian government. They also did so in the
years after 1914, when authorities in British Columbia,
using the Community Regulation Act, raided community
property to enforce school attendance. Both independent
and zealot Doukhobors pressured the British Columbia
government in 1953-59 when it forcibly took Sons of
Freedom children away from their parents because they
would not send them to public schools (the zealots
launched a campaign in 1997 seeking a government apology
for this action). As early as 1903, extremist elements
among the Sons of Freedom had resorted to demonstrations
of public nudity and at times to arson and bombing of
private and public property to draw attention to their
cause. These actions shocked the Canadian public including
the Doukhobors and resulted in the arrests and
imprisonment of thousands of individuals. Imprisoned
zealots have also fasted to gain attention. These violent
actions have been condemned by community and independent
Doukhobors as contrary to the principles of love and
respect for one’s neighbours, and in the media the actions
of a few extremists have been wrongly attributed to the
group as a whole.
The Conservative government of Richard B. Bennett
attempted unsuccessfully to ban all Doukhobors from voting
federally (they would in any case have favoured the
Liberals, who had allowed them to immigrate to Canada). In
1931, however, members of the community in British
Columbia lost the right to vote both federally and
provincially, a law not rescinded until 1956. In July 1934 the
Society of Named Doukhobors of Canada, at its second
convention, condemned the discriminatory legislation. In a
strongly worded statement, the convention declared:
‘Members of the Society of Named Doukhobors have never
recognized and do not recognize any political party. They
have never entered nor will they ever enter into the ranks
of any political party. They have never given nor will
they ever give their votes during elections; thereby they
are free from bearing any responsibility before God or man
for the acts of any government established by men ... they
not only gave their votes but their bodies, blood and
souls, to the One and irreplaceable guardian of the souls
and hearts of men, the Lord Jesus Christ, thereby
attaining full freedom by passing from the slavery of
corruption into the glorious freedom of God's children.’
This declaration, which represented a withdrawal by
community Doukhobors from participation in civic affairs,
was revised and adopted by the Union of Spiritual
Communities of Christ in 1945
Involvement by the independents in public affairs has been
more complex. Because of its socialist platform and
support for human rights, they have tended to vote for the
Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and its successor, the
New Democratic Party (NDP). Federal and provincial
politicians of all parties have courted the Doukhobor vote
by providing grants for community projects, inviting a
choir to open the British Columbia legislature,
participating in commemorations, unveiling historic
markers, and nominating the Doukhobors as a group for the
1994 Nobel Peace Prize. Although the USCC still officially
supports the 1934
declaration, an examination of voting patterns in
provincial and federal constituencies with large
concentrations of Doukhobors shows that the majority,
including USCC members, cast ballots and favour the NDP.
John J. Verigin, the honorary chairman of the USCC, in
1976 urged members to exercise their franchise in a
forthcoming municipal election.
The Canadian Doukhobor Society takes no direct part in
Canadian politics, but its members often participate at
the municipal, provincial, or federal level. Most Sons of
Freedom, however, along with some other Doukhobors,
continue to oppose political involvement on the grounds
that they are personally responsible for their own
conduct. As well, they fear that if they vote they will be
forced into the armed forces. For these individuals, love,
the unifying principle of life, cannot be compromised by
the ritual of head counting in elections. They prefer to
participate in society in a different way from the current
confrontational political system.
Opposition to militarism under the tsar and in Canada has
been the central Doukhobor concern. Action in support of
this belief has taken the form of petitions and letters to
newspapers, provincial and federal governments, and the
United Nations, walks for peace and disarmament, choral
presentations, a staged burning of firearms in 1929, and
other public demonstrations. In February 1989 the USCC was
given official status as a non-government organization at
the United Nations, allowing it to lobby on behalf of
peace and disarmament. The furtherance of peace and the
building of bridges between East and West has been the
dominant form of political activity. Doukhobors believe
that, as members of the human race who recognize no
national boundaries, they have a particular responsibility
to promote international understanding and the creation of
a nonkilling society. Using their bilingual and
transcultural skills, they have been involved in panel
discussions, tours on behalf of peace, concert circuits,
home visits, and humanitarian aid. After years of lobbying
on the part of Doukhobors, military drills are no longer
held in the schools of Grand Forks and Castlegar, a
recognition by the wider society of their right to
practice their pacifist beliefs.
11. Inter-group Relations
Doukhobors' earliest contacts with the rest of the world
came through the Tolstoyans,
Quakers,
and Molokans (or
‘Milk-drinkers’, a kindred group in southern Russia).
Because mutual aid rather than competition was at the
heart of their philosophy, involvement in the cooperative
movement was a natural source of intergroup contact. In
Canada such interaction has included the Canadian Wheat
Board and the Saskatchewan Farmers' Union, as well as
cooperative retail and wholesale businesses in British
Columbia. The Canadian Wheat Board, the Saskatchewan Wheat
Pool, and the Farmers' Union brought Doukhobor farmers
into contact with others in the broader community at
harvest time and at annual meetings. As a result of this
experience, they became elevator agents in Blaine Lake,
Pelly, and Verigin.
From the beginning of the CCUB, the business operations of
the Doukhobor commune put its administrators in touch with
accountants, bankers, wholesalers, insurance agents, and
lawyers. After the collapse of the CCUB in 1938, its
spirit was channeled into consumer cooperatives
established in the Slocan valley and at Brilliant and a
large operation called the Sunshine Valley Cooperative in
Grand Forks. At first, only Doukhobors were admitted as
members and no meat, guns, or tobacco were sold, but by
the early 1970s membership had been extended to the
general public. The cooperative was twice destroyed by
arson, in 1949 and in 1975. After it was rebuilt in 1980,
however, it was no longer able to attract enough members
to compete with new shopping complexes and was forced to
close its doors.
Service clubs, such as Rotary International, Toastmasters
International the Optimist Club, the Kinsmen Club, the
Elks and the Order of the Royal Purple, Hospital
auxiliaries, Lions Club, Kiwanis Club, 4-H Club, and the
local Chambers of Commerce have all attracted Doukhobors,
and a number have held executive positions. John J.
Verigin served on the board of directors for the western
region of the Canadian
Council of Christians and Jews and with the Grand
Forks Society for Handicapped Children and the local
branch of the Red Cross. Young people participated in a
series of youth leadership conferences in Banff in the
1950s and 1960s, sponsored by the federal government,
which were aimed at dispelling prejudice and
discrimination in the country. In 1979 a consultative
forum, the Kootenay Committee on Intergroup Relations,
chaired by a senior administrator of the British Columbia
attorney general's office, began meeting irregularly with
representatives of the Doukhobor groups, provincial and
federal agencies, and local community resource people.
The peace, disarmament, and environment movements have
also brought Doukhobors together with other groups.
Independent, community, and, to a lesser extent, zealot
members have been active in such organizations as Project
Ploughshares (the USCC is a corporate member), the Fellowship
of Reconciliation, World
Federalists, War Resisters
International, the Canadian Voice
of Women for Peace,
the Canadian Peace Congress*, Operation Dismantle, the Canadian
Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian
Peace Alliance, the Coalition to Oppose Arms
Trade, and the Canadian United
Nations Association. Together with the Quakers and
Mennonites and Conscience Canada, the Doukhobors lobbied
the Canadian government to ensure that their status as
conscientious objectors would continue to be recognized.
In 1997 they worked together to help the Canadian
government organize an international meeting to ban land
mines. [* The Congress disbanded in 1990. During the 1980s
it was displaced by the much larger Canadian Peace
Alliance (founded in 1985).]
They have also been involved in organizations promoting
the preservation of Russian and Slavic culture. Since the
founding of the Federation of Russian Canadians in the
1930s, they have taken part in its cultural and peace
activities. Doukhobor academics have participated as
presenters and organizers at meetings of the Canadian
Slavic Association, and in 1974 a student youth choir
performed at the International Slavists Conference in
Banff. In 1994 the Learned Societies, meeting in Calgary,
hosted a forum on Doukhobor history, followed by cultural
events. The Canada-USSR Association, in which Doukhobors
have served as branch presidents in Grand Forks,
Castlegar, Saskatoon, Kamsack, and Ottawa, dates from the
1940s. Society Rodina and its predecessor, the Slavic
Committee, have since the 1960s enabled community and
independent Doukhobors to meet Soviet citizens, including
Doukhobors, in the areas of university education, cultural
exchange, and support for peace and the environment. The
Toronto-based Canada-USSR Association has facilitated
tours, the showing of Russian films, and presentations by
Russian speakers, as has the Association of Canadians of
Russian Descent and the Saskatoon Russian Cultural Club.
Since its formation at the University of Ottawa, the Slavic
Research Group, founded in 1998 and headed by Andrew
Donskov, has produced a number of studies on Lev Tolstoy
and the Doukhobors in both Russian and English.
Relations among the zealots, other Doukhobors, and
non-Doukhobors have at times been bitter. The group as a
whole has been subjected to vigilantism, police action,
repressive legislation, and royal commissions. The issues
that have divided Doukhobors, such as questions of
leadership and attitudes to politics, also alienate many
from the larger society. They oppose religious groups that
try to infiltrate their movement in order to proselytize,
politicians who seek their vote but fail to take account
the Doukhobor mistrust of the military, schools in which
the teaching of history glorifies war and rulers, social
programs that place a higher emphasis on money than on
health and social well-being, and anything that promotes
war as a solution to the world's problems.
Except for their continuing opposition to militarism, a
lingering sense of injustice about the loss of their land
in 1907 and 1938, and a desire to maintain their ancestral
language, community and independent Doukhobors have
generally accommodated to Canadian ways. The zealot
factions have tended to remain separate physically and
psychologically from the wider society. Until the
mid-1980s and the era of perestroika, with the attendant
lessening of Cold War tension and a growing recognition in
the West of the richness of Slavic culture, many
Doukhobors were unjustly branded as ‘nudists’ and ‘trouble
makers’. In recent years, journalists and the general
public have become more aware that individual acts of
zealotry cannot be blamed on the group as a whole.
12. Group Maintenance and
Ethnic Commitment
Continuity among the Doukhobors begins with the family,
which remains central to their culture. In the home they
learn the traditional ideology, music, crafts, food, and
hospitality. Today, many Doukhobors no longer find it
necessary to read the psalms, sing hymns, or attend
sobranie services on Sunday, provided that they
demonstrate in everyday life the basic values of the God
within, the commandment not to kill, and good
neighbourliness characterized by hospitality and
symbolized by bread, salt, and water. Others seek
enrichment through support of their co-religionists in
Canada and Russia. They find it in the Union of Spiritual
Communities of Christ, the voice of community Doukhobors,
and the Canadian Doukhobor Society, which represents
independent Doukhobor thinking but has members from all
the groups. Local, regional and youth organizations have
also provided continuity. Without such grass-roots
support, the future of the movement would be threatened.
The loss of their land in 1907, the Community Regulation
Act of 1914, denial of the right to vote for Doukhobors in
British Columbia until 1956, the foreclosure on CCUB
property in 1938, and such actions against the Sons of
Freedom as the seizure of their children in 1953-59
rallied the Doukhobors and alienated them from the rest of
Canadian society. The Cold War of the 1950s to mid-1980s
had a similar effect, leading some to change their names,
marry outside the group, join churches, and distance
themselves from their past. Recent developments have been
more positive. Museums at Castlegar
(established in 1971) and Grand Forks (1972) in British
Columbia and at Verigin
(1980) in Saskatchewan, all housed in reconstructed
Doukhobor dwellings, display heritage materials. The
Verigin facility features a two-story community home built
in 1918 and several pioneer dwellings in addition to the
museum and has been designated as a national heritage
village. The Doukhobor
Village Museum in Castlegar, located near a bridge
over the Kootenay River built by the Doukhobors in 1913
and designated to be refurbished in 2007 as a heritage
project, includes a restaurant and food centre. The Fructova
School in Grand Forks, constructed in 1929, was
restored in 1985. Designated as the Doukhobor Historical
Society of British Columbia, it carries out a broad
program of cultural and historical activities.
Other undertakings have contributed to the maintenance of
group identity. These include panel discussions and
seminars, tours by choirs across North America and Russia,
the commemoration of important anniversaries, language
studies in Russia, and the hosting of Russian- speaking
cultural groups in Canada. The first International
Doukhobor Intergroup Symposium was held in June 1982 in
cooperation with Society Rodina of Moscow. To commemorate
the contribution of Tolstoy to the Doukhobor migration,
the society, together with the ACRD, donated statues of
the Russian author to the communities of Verigin and
Castlegar in 1987. In conjunction with this event, the
USCC held a heritage festival in Saskatchewan and British
Columbia that featured a pageant depicting the Doukhobor
history of persecution, exile, and migration to Canada.
The ACRD, in cooperation with Selkirk College, in 1989
brought four prominent Soviet authors to Canada for a
speaking and reading tour in the west in the company of
Canadian authors. In exchange, individuals from Selkirk
College lectured in Moscow and Tula three years later.
Choral workshops have stimulated interest in the art of
acappella singing. During the mid-1950s they were
conducted in all the Doukhobor settlements in Saskatchewan
by Gabriel W. Vereschagin. Alexander S. Shirokov of the
Moscow academy of musicians came to Canada to assist
choirs in British Columbia to prepare for Expo 86 in
Vancouver. In 1991 Doukhobors in Saskatchewan made use of
singers Peter and Lucy Voykin, who worked with district
choirs, teaching them new hymns and psalms. Some eighty
vocalists then combined to give concerts in Verigin and
Saskatoon. The largest project was held during the 1995
centennial of the burning of firearms, when a sixty-member
Voices for Peace Choir, composed of members from all three
Doukhobor groups whose ages ranged from thirteen to
seventy-four, toured North America and Russia giving
bilingual concerts. Tours of Doukhobor villages and
cultural institutions in the former Soviet Union,
beginning in the 1970s, have stimulated return visits by
Russian Doukhobors, an increased correspondence between
the two communities, joint business ventures, and interest
in working together in preparation for the centennial
celebrations. Once the 1999 centennial was over, efforts
for unity began with the formation of the Council of
Doukhobors in Canada. Inspired by the Canadians, Russian
Doukhobors in 1991 established a united organization and a
youth group, produced an album of traditional singing, and
took steps to republish Bonch-Bruevich's book of life.
[See: Doukhobor
Song Library "Dedicated to the Preservation of
Doukhobor Singing", Over 300 complete songs, hymns,
folksongs online; and: Doukhobor
Village
Museum's Digital Jukebox — Click on "By Title" for
the album index, ~300 partial songs of ~600, on 55 albums
+ 30 cassettes indexed, since 1960s. Most in
Russian.]
Government resources have also helped the Doukhobors to
preserve their heritage. The multicultural policy of the
Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s, by
recognizing the value of heritage languages, supported the
teaching of Russian in the schools of Grand Forks and
Castlegar. The Canadian Museum of Civilization engaged the
services of ethnographer Koozma J. Tarasoff to edit a book
about the group that included contributions by Doukhobor
and non-Doukhobor authors and to prepare the background
materials for a major exhibition entitled ‘The
Doukhobors:
“Spirit Wrestlers”’ (1996-98). As well, several
documentary films, an exhibition of photographs, dramatic
productions, audiocassettes, CD-ROMS, Doukhobor Web Sites,
and books on the movement have been produced. Archival,
library, and photographic collections have all helped to
define the nature of the Doukhobor experience by
stimulating scholarly and popular research. The coming of
perestroika in the former Soviet Union also had an
indirect effect on the maintenance of group identity by
providing international recognition for the Russian
heritage, which the Doukhobors share. Last but not least,
the World Wide Web listing for Doukhobors has escalated
from less than a dozen in 1996 to over 76,400 items in
early 2006. That’s wide exposure!
13. Further Reading
The first important scholarly study of the Doukhobors was
O. Novitsky, Dukhobortsy
(Kiev, 1882), while the group's existence was
publicized to the world through V. Chertkov, Christian Martyrdom in
Russia (London, 1900). Leopold Sulerzhitskii, V Ameriku s Dukhoborami
(Moscow, 1905) — translated into English by Michael
Kalmakoff as To America
with the Doukhobors (Regina, 1982) — is an
outstanding account of the author's journey with the
Doukhobors and their early life in Canada.
Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, Zhivotnaia kniga
dukhobortsev, (English-language translation
by Victor Buyniak: The
Book of Life of Doukhobors, Saskatoon, 1978), is
the work of a Russian Marxist ethnographer who spent
several decades studying Doukhobor materials. This volume
continues to be the main oral source on Doukhobors.
Aleksandr I. Klibanov, Istoria
religioznogo
sektahstva v Rossii 60-e gody XIV v.-1917 g
(Moscow, 1965) — translated as History of Religious
Sectarianism in Russia, 1860s-1917 (New
York, 1982) by Ethel Dunn and edited by Stephen Dunn —
uses Soviet and Canadian sources for a conceptualization
of the Doukhobors as a ‘social movement’, an approach that
widened the scope for the study of the group.
C.A. Dawson, Group
Settlement: Ethnic Communities in Western Canada
(Toronto, 1936) is an excellent early study of Doukhobor
settlement with a focus on the push-pull forces that
contributed to the group's secularization and
assimilation. W. Blakemore, Report of the Royal Commission on Matters
Relating to the Sect of the Doukhobors in the Province
of British Columbia (Victoria, 1913), provides an
invaluable description of the Christian Community of
Universal Brotherhood during its period of vigorous
development. Vladimir Nicholas Snesarev [Harry W. Trevor],
‘The Doukhobors in British Columbia’ (unpublished
manuscript, Vancouver, 1931), is a study of Doukhobor
economic and social structure, agriculture, and history.
H.B. Hawthorn, ed., The
Doukhobors of British Columbia (Vancouver, 1955),
is an update of the Report
of the Doukhobor Research Committee (Vancouver:
University of British Columbia, 1952), which presents an
elaborate picture of communal disintegration and zealotry
and a diagnosis for a holistic solution.
George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, The Doukhobors
(Toronto, 1968), which generously used Koozma J.
Tarasoff's 1963 unpublished 3-volume manuscript 'In Search
of Brotherhood: The History of the Doukhobors', is a
well-written and balanced history of the Doukhobor
movement, while William Janzen, Limits on Liberty: The Experience of Mennonite,
Hutterite, and Doukhobor Communities in Canada
(Toronto, 1990), is a competent cross-cultural comparison
of Canadian communal landholding, education of children,
exemption from military service, and non-participation in
selected social-welfare programs. Koozma J. Tarasoff, Plakun Trava: The Doukhobors
(Grand Forks, BC, 1982), is a well-documented popular
history from an inside point of view, profusely
illustrated with photographs. The same author's Traditional Doukhobor Folkways: An
Ethnographic and Biographic Record of Prescribed
Behaviour (Ottawa, 1977) examines changes
in selected cultural values between 1900 and the 1970s.
The Summarized Report
of the Joint Doukhobor Research Committee Symposium
Meetings, 1974-1982 (Castlegar, BC), prepared and
translated by Eli A. Popoff, is a valuable compilation of
oral presentations and written submissions to this body.
Fourteen anthologies and studies published in the 1990s up
to 2005 provide regional, national, and international
perspectives on the Doukhobors. The first, Koozma J.
Tarasoff and Robert B. Klymasz's Spirit Wrestlers: Centennial Papers in Honour
of Canada's Doukhobor Heritage (Hull, Que.,
1995), a publication of the Canadian Museum of
Civilization, focuses on ideology, the song tradition,
material culture, and various historical subjects, while
also citing some rare bibliographical resources. The
second, ‘From Russia with Love: The Doukhobors’, a special
issue of Canadian Ethnic Studies,
vol.27, no.3. (1995), surveys one hundred years of
Doukhobor history and offers reflections on Russia-Canada
connections. The third, collected and edited by Koozma J.
Tarasoff, Spirit Wrestlers Voices
(Ottawa, 1998), explores the inner voices of the spirit
that inspired the Doukhobors' values of love, cooperation,
hard work, and international kinship. Fourth, Carl J.
Tracie's ‘Toil and
Peaceful Life’: Doukhobor Village Settlement in
Saskatchewan, 1899-1918 (Regina, 1996) is a work
of historical geography that analyses the unique cultural
landscape created by the Community Doukhobors in
Saskatchewan. Fifth, Andrew Donskov’s Leo Tolstoy — Peter Verigin
Correspondence (Ottawa, 1995) is a bilingual
collection of 38 letters between Tolstoy and Verigin [See
a
review, with "pop-up" ads.]. The sixth, edited by
Andrew Donskov is Sergej Tolstoy and the
Doukhobors: A Journey to Canada (Ottawa,
1998) of Tolstoy’s diary and letters home. Seventh, John
Woodsworth’s Russian Roots and Canadian
Wings (Ottawa, 1999) presents Russian
archival documents on the Doukhobor emigration to Canada.
The eighth and ninth publications by Svetlana
A.
Inikova on Bonch-Bruevich’s History of the Doukhobors in the Archives of
Vladimir D. Bonch-Bruevich 1886-1950s (vol.
I) and Doukhobor Incantations
Through the Ages (vol. II) (Ottawa, 1999)
are valuable works based on rare Russian archival
materials. The tenth, Andrew Donskov, et al, The Doukhobor Centenary in
Canada (Ottawa, 2000) is a
multi-disciplinary perspective on their unity and
diversity, as the proceedings of a conference held at the
University of Ottawa, 22-24 October 1999. Eleventh, Koozma
J. Tarasoff, Spirit Wrestlers: Doukhobor
Pioneers' Strategies for Living (Ottawa,
2002) is a full colour 500-page book with 700 select
images (and a separate multi-media CD-ROM) draws on 50
years of research on Doukhobor pioneers of the 20th
century with a valued contribution to society. Twelfth,
Julia Rak, Negotiated Memory:
Doukhobor Autobiographical Discourse
(Vancouver, 2004), examines the ways in which
autobiographical strategies have been employed by the
Doukhobors themselves in order to retell and reclaim their
own history in the face of these images. Thirteenth,
Nicholas B. Breyfogle's Heretics and Colonizers
(Cornell University, 2005) is a rich, agressively argued
book in which historians of late imperial Russia
conceptualize its society. The lives of Doukhobors,
Molokans and Subbotniks in the Caucasus are described in
detail. Fourteenth, Andrew A. Donskov's Leo Tolstoy and the
Canadian Doukhobors: an historic relationship
(Ottawa, 2005) is based on a variety of hitherto
unpublished documents and complemented by guest essays,
oral interviews and questionnaires, traces the evolving
relationship between one of Russia's greatest writers and
the Doukhobors.
The best archival and related materials on the Doukhobors
in Russia, their connection to Lev Tolstoy, and their
emigration to Canada are found in the Museum of the History
of Religion (St Petersburg), the Russian State
Library (Moscow) [before 1992, the Lenin State
Library] , and the Tolstoy
Literary
Museum (Moscow). The official correspondence
relating to the emigration to Canada is contained the
records of The
National Archives (formerly the Colonial Office and
Foreign Office in the Public Record Office, London). The Library
of
the Society of Friends in London contains a useful
collection of letters, diaries, minutes, and notes dealing
with relief work organized by the Quakers at the end of
the last century. The Friends'
Historical Library at Swarthmore College,
Philadelphia, contains other materials on relief and
educational work by Quakers on the western prairies.
The University
of
British Columbia Library has one of the largest
collections in North America of materials on the
Doukhobors, including newspaper clippings, correspondence,
and minutes going back to their first years of settlement
in the province. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library of
the University of Toronto holds the James Mavor Doukhobor
Papers and other papers dealing with the preliminary
negotiations on Doukhobor entry into Canada, as well as
miscellaneous correspondence dating to 1922.
The British
Columbia
Provincial Archives has materials similar to those
found in the University
of
British Columbia Library collections and also an
extensive and annotated collection of historical
photographs, including 1350 select images from the Tarasoff
Photo
Collectionon
Doukhobor History — An Annotated User Guide.
The Saskatchewan
Provincial
Archives has important materials as well, including
tape-recorded interviews and annotated collections by P.G.
Makaroff, K.J. Tarasoff, and other independent Doukhobors.
Finally, various holdings in the National
Archives
of Canada —
those dealing with Immigration (RG76), Dominion Lands
Branch (RG15), RCMP records from the turn of the century,
and so on —
should also be consulted.
Digital references on the Internet
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