New York Times shines spotlight on Doukhobors

By Greg Nesteroff, MyKootennayNow, June 6, 2023

Source URL: https://www.mykootenaynow.com/51384/featured/new-york-times-shines-spotlight-on-doukhobors/

Corrections and comments in red by Andrei Conovaloff. Updated June 16, 2023.

 
The Doukhobor Discovery Centre in Castlegar (left) is featured in a story from the New York Times this week. (Greg Nesteroff/Vista Radio)
A different photo (right) was used in the New York Times article.

A New York Times story published this week looks at the local Doukhobor community and Sons of Freedom and in particular how they have been affected by the war in Ukraine. It is the first feature about Doukhobors to appear in the newspaper in over 30 years.* We caught up with reporter Dan Bilefsky, who visited Castlegar and Grand Forks this spring, “speaking to members of the Doukhobor community over countless bowls of homemade borscht.”
*  A search of the New York Time archive "TimesMachine" finds 2 more recent articles:
How did you become interested in this story?
Several years ago, having spent three decades living in Europe, I returned back to Canada and started working as a correspondent for the New York Times. Someone in British Columbia in passing mentioned the Doukhobors to me, the interesting history of the community’s origins in Russia and of course invariably the small radical sect who were burning houses back in the 1920s.* I found the history of the community fascinating and became interested in writing about the Doukhobors and put it in my mental file cabinet for the future.
*  100 years ago!  Bilefsky and the New York Times apparently were most fascinated with Sons of Freedom, not Doukhobors, war or assimilation. 
Did the war in Ukraine bring it back to the fore, or why now?
Exactly. Every journalist, especially for a global newspaper, has to ask themselves “Why here, why now?” The war in Ukraine gave the story a new hook because historically there had always been a desire within the Doukhobor community among some members to return to Mother Russia. I was curious how the war in Ukraine, given the Doukhobors’ manifest pacifism, was influencing things and affecting the community.

When you got here who did you talk to and what did you find?
I tried to talk to as many people as possible from different generations, genders, and branches of the community. [USCC executive director] J.J. Verigin was incredibly welcoming to me and was my main go-to person for every aspect of this story. But I spoke to members of the older generation, to Russian teachers, to people who grew up in Castlegar and have since moved to Vancouver to become video game makers. I tried to get a real spectrum of views across the community to try and have a sense of some of the issues being raised by the war and modernity.

On the war, you heard some interesting things, and some unfortunate things.
Yes, J.J. told me some members of the community had been accosted verbally when they were out shopping because someone overheard them speaking Russian and thought they were Russians. He explained there had been some xenophobia against the Doukhobors because of the war in Ukraine and how this came across the backdrop of historical persecution against the Doukhobors going back decades, including against him.
 ... several Doukhobors in recent months had been denied service in local shops in Castlegar
I think you are the first person to report on the 2021 census figures that showed the number of people identifying as Doukhobors continues to decline.
The story mentioned there are an estimated 30,000 people in Canada of Doukhobor descent, or have Doukhobor roots, so the number is not insignificant. But the actual number of people who self-identified as Doukhobors on the last census was quite small. [1,675 in 2021, down from 2,290 in 2011 and a peak of 16,898 in 1941.] Again, that seems to be a reflection of historical discrimination that might make people wary of saying their origins.
Bilefsky is probably referring to census data listed in a table on the web page Doukhobors, Wikipedia. The table is copied below adding a graph to show the "peak" mentioned in 1941, and the steep linear decline of about 80% in the next 50 years.
Year    Doukhobor count
1921
1931 1941
1951
1961
1971
1981*
1991
2001
2011
2021
 12,674
14,978
16,898
13,175
13,234
9,170
g., 28%
4,820
3,800
2,290
1,675		 ||||| ||||| |||
||||| ||||| |||||
||||| ||||| ||||| ||  peak 
||||| ||||| |||
||||| ||||| |||
||||| ||||
?
|||||
|||   80% decline
||
||
* In 1981 the "Doukhobor" label (Religious Code Value) was divided into "Doukhobors, Orthodox" (USCC Doukhobors) and "Doukhobors, Reformed" (an offshoot of "Sons of Freedom"). These 2 new labels for "Orthodox" and "Reformed" leave out "Independent Doukhobors" and unaffiliated descendants of Canadian Doukhobors. (Appendix A-5: "Comparison of Religious Code Values 1981, 1971", 1981 Census Dictionary (Catalogue 99-901), Statistics Canada, page 121). Unfortunately "Sons of Freedom" was never a counted label in the Canadian Census.
The census counts in the table above do not show that descendants of Canadian Doukhobors are disappearing, which is impossible. They were increasing. The data shows that when asked by the government about their "ethnic and cultural origin" and "religion" after 1941, most descendants of Canadian Doukhobors are probably increasingly stating that they are "Canadian" and/or "Russian", and not using or adding the term "Doukhobor". The data does not show how many Canadian "Doukhobors" also identify as "Russian".

How Canadian Doukhobors and their descendants reported their ethnic and cultural origin to the census takers is probably similar to the behaviour of Canadian Jews, whose census counts also decreased significantly. See an analysis of what was found: "Technical report on changes in response related to the census ethnic origin question: Focus on Jewish origins, 2016 Census integrated with 2011 National Household Survey", by Trevor Smith and Scott McLeish, Statistics Canada, July 26, 2019.

There are over 500 different "ethnic and cultural origin" labels gathered in the censuses, and many people change their responses (identity) over time, which results in response bias over time. More than 450 ethnic or cultural origins were reported in the 2021 Census.

Once you collected your interviews, how did you figure out what angle to take?
Honestly, the history of the Doukhobors of is so extraordinary and fascinating it’s worthy of a Tolstoy novel or maybe several Tolstoy novels,* not an 1,100-word story.** But that’s the limit I was faced with. Faced with those constraints, the two things that popped out at me when I was reporting was one, how the war in Ukraine was affecting the community and causing soul searching.
 *  Dozens of books and 100s of articles and theses have been published about 'Doukhobors'.— Books online — about 500 items listed in Prior, Helen, An Inventory of the Doukhobor Files  collected by Maria Horvath (Krisztinkovich) for the Library of the University of B.C. And held in the Special Collections Division, 1980.

**  1,175 words counted. This story may have cost the New York Times about $5000 — salary, travel, hotel, meals, photographer, editors, etc. — about $5 per word.
And the second thing was how the Doukhobors are coping in the 21st century with the competing forces of assimilation, the desire of the younger generation to go to cities. As I put it in my story, the younger generation being more drawn to TikTok than Tolstoy. And the need and desire to preserve the Russian language. Those two themes jumped out at me. I decided to focus as much as possible on that.
Instead of the "war in Ukraine" and "assimilation", Bilefsky lead his story with "Doukhobor ... nude ... women."  Why?
What sort of reaction have you received?
I’ve received a lot of emails and Instagram messages. One thing that’s very striking is in Canada we’re such a regionalized country and I think a lot of people outside of British Columbia have never heard of the Doukhobors, including readers outside of Canada and the United States. I’ve had readers write to me saying “How absolutely fascinating to learn about this Russian sect with interesting origins.” People hadn’t heard of them before.
Mostly younger people have not heard of these Canadian nudist terrorists, so Biiefsky and the New York Times had to repeat the false history.
On a personal note, I was struck by the communitarian spirit among the Doukhobor community. Everyone was so welcoming. People invited me into their homes for dinners and lunches of borscht. I felt a real spirit of communitarianism that will stay with me long after I reported that story.
Now read the criticism.
The other thing that jumped out was the extraordinary talent of singing among the Doukhobor community, both in traditional psalms and hymns, but also Doukhobor choirs. There’s a particular rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah in Russian that the choir I met did which I posted on Instagram and Twitter. It is remarkable.* The singing side of the community is just amazing
*  So remarkable that he did not link to his video, rather to non-Doukhobor music on YouTube.

Back to New York Times article, June 2023