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The Doukhobors (Canadian spelling) or Dukhobors (; ) are a Spiritual Christian ethnoreligious group of Russians origin. They are known for their pacifism and oral tradition, hymn-singing, and verse. They reject the Russian Orthodox priesthood and associated rituals, believing that personal revelation is more important than the Bible. Facing persecution by the Russian government for their nonorthodox beliefs, about one-third migrated to Canada between 1899 and 1938, where most of them reside .
In Russia, Dukhobortsy were variously portrayed as "Folk religion", Spiritual Christians, sectarians, and Heresy. Among their core beliefs is the rejection of materialism. They also reject the Russian Orthodox priesthood, the Iconoclasm, and all associated church rituals. Doukhobors believe the Bible alone is not enough to reach divine revelation and that doctrinal conflicts can interfere with their faith. Biblical teachings are evident in much of the published Doukhobor , hymns, and beliefs. Since arriving in Canada, parts of the Old Testament, but more profoundly the New Testament, were at the core of most Doukhobor beliefs. There continue to be spiritually progressive thinkers who, through introspection and debate, search for divine revelation to improve the faith.
Even though the original basis of Doukhobor theology is "Christianity", as portrayed in much of the original psalms, hymns, and theological foundations, these writings have slowly and subtly been revised by some Doukhobors over the last century to align with what can be said to be a living organic mixture of religious theologies. The complexity of navigating a peaceful existence on earth is not for the faint at heart, especially when the message of the Biblical gospels has, through political and theocratic means, been aligned to justify war through history. For example, if Jesus' teachings of love and a peaceful existence are the essence of God's will, then how can we make this a reality on earth. This noble pursuit has resulted in a very difficult existence, as many Doukhobors will avow. Alongside the Protestant and Baptist essence of grace and personal salvation through Jesus, many Doukhobors currently align neatly with the Biblical truths of Jesus' resurrection and message of salvation. The overarching enigma remains with the seemingly impossible task of attaining Jesus Christ's will for all people on earth. Firstly, the pursuit of peace or an absence of conflict and hence the enigma, as wars continue to this day. Secondly, a deep inner peace, a life of love, forgiveness, and compassion that all come from a relationship with God. Peace, whether it is inner peace or the absence of worldly conflict, has always been at the core of Doukhobor existence and will remain so as long as Doukhobors exist.
The Doukhobors have a history dating back to at least 1701 (though some scholars suspect the group has earlier origins).. Doukhobors traditionally lived in their own villages and practiced Communal work. The name Doukhobors, meaning "Spirit-wrestlers", derives from a Pejorative made by the Russian Orthodox Church that was subsequently embraced by the group.
Before 1886, the Doukhobors had a series of leaders. The origin of the Doukhobors is uncertain; they first appear in first written records from 1701.
The Doukhobors traditionally ate bread and borsch. Some of their food-related religious symbols are bread, salt, and water.
The first-known Doukhobor leader was Siluan (Silvan) Kolesnikov (), who was active from 1755 to 1775. Kolesnikov lived in the village Nikolskoye, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, in modern-day south-central Ukraine. Kolesnikov was familiar with the works of Western Mysticism such as Karl von Eckartshausen and Louis Claude de Saint-Martin.
The early Doukhobors called themselves "God's People" or "Christians." Their modern name, first in the form Doukhobortsy (, dukhobortsy ("Spirit wrestlers")) is thought to have been first used in 1785 or 1786 by Ambrosius the Archbishop of Yekaterinoslav or his predecessor Nikifor (Nikephoros Theotokis).; Doukhobor Genealogy Website (www.doukhobor.org). The archbishop's intent was to mock the Doukhobors as heretics fighting against the Holy Spirit (, Svyatoy Dukh) but around the beginning of the 19th century, according to SA Inikova, the dissenters adopted the name "Doukhobors" usually in a shorter form Doukhobory (, dukhobory), implying they are fighting alongside rather than against the Holy Spirit. The first known use of the spelling Doukhobor is in a 1799 government edict exiling 90 of the group to Finland; presumably the Vyborg area, which was part of the Russian Empire at the time, for producing anti-war propaganda.
The early Doukhobors were pacifists who rejected military institutions and war and were thus oppressed in Imperial Russia. Both the state and church authorities were involved in the persecution and deprivation of the dissidents' normal freedoms.
In 1802, Tsar Alexander I encouraged the resettlement of religious minorities to the "Milky Waters" ( Molochnye Vody) region around the Molochna River around Melitopol in modern-day southern Ukraine. This was motivated by the desire to quickly populate the rich steppe lands on the north shore of the Black Sea and , and to prevent the "heretics" from contaminating the population of the heartland with their ideas. Many Doukhobors, as well as Molotschna, accepted the Emperor's offer and travelled to the Molochnaya from other provinces of the Empire over the next 20 years.
In 1844, Doukhobors who were being exiled from their home near Melitopol to the village of Bogdanovka carved the Doukhobor Memorial Stone, which is held in the collection of the Melitopol Museum of Local History.
After Russia's conquest of Kars and the Treaty of San Stefano of 1878, some Doukhobors from Tiflis and Elisabethpol Governorates moved to the Zarushat and Shuragel uyezds of the newly created Kars Oblast to the north-east of Kars in the modern-day Republic of Turkey. The leader of the main group of Doukhobors, who arrived in Transcaucasia from Ukraine in 1841, was Illarion Kalmykov (). He died in the same year and was succeeded as the community leader by his son Peter Kalmykov (?–1864). After Peter Kalmykov's death in 1864, his widow Lukerya Vasilyevna Gubanova (? – December 15, 1886; (); also known as Kalmykova) took his leadership position.
The Kalmykov dynasty lived in the village of Gorelovka, a Doukhobor community in Georgia.. Lukerya was respected by the provincial authorities, who had to cooperate with the Doukhobors. At the time of her death in 1886, there were around 20,000 Doukhobors in Transcaucasia. By that time, the region's Doukhobors had become vegetarian and were aware of Leo Tolstoy's philosophy, which they found quite similar to their own traditional teachings.
While the Large Party was a majority, the Small Party had the support of the older members of the community and the local authorities. On January 26, 1887, at a community service at which the new leader was to be acclaimed, police arrived and arrested Verigin. He, along with some of his associates, was sent into internal exile in Siberia. Large Party Doukhobors continued to consider Verigin their spiritual leader and to communicate with him, by mail and via delegates who travelled to see him in Salekhard. An isolated population of exiled Doukhobors, a third "party", was about east in Amur Oblast.
At the same time, the Russian government applied greater pressure to enforce the Doukhobors' compliance with its laws and regulations. The Doukhobors had resisted registering marriages and births, contributing grain to state emergency funds, and swearing oaths of allegiance. In 1887, Russia extended universal military conscription, which applied to the rest of the empire, to the Transcaucasian provinces. While the Small Party cooperated with the state, the Large Party, reacting to the arrest of their leaders and inspired by their letters from exile,, quoted in felt strengthened in their desire to abide by the righteousness of their faith. Under instructions from Verigin, the Large Party stopped using tobacco and alcohol, divided their property equally among the members of the community, and resolved to adhere to the practice of pacifism and non-violence. They refused to swear the oath of allegiance required in 1894 by the newly ascended Tsar Nicholas II.
Under further instructions from Verigin, about 7,000 of the most zealous Doukhobors—about one-third of all Doukhobors—of the three Governorates of Transcaucasia destroyed their weapons and refused to serve in the military. As the Doukhobors gathered to burn their guns on the night of June 28/29 (July 10/11, Gregorian calendar) 1895, while singing psalms and spiritual songs, government Cossacks arrested and beat them. Shortly after, the government billeted Cossacks in many of the Large Party's villages; around 4,000 Doukhobors were forced to disperse to villages in other parts of Georgia. Many died of starvation and exposure.
Emigrants initially attempted to settle in Cyprus. Cyprus was, at the time, recognized as a possession of the Ottoman Empire, but in the wake of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), the Ottoman Empire had granted the United Kingdom the right to administer the island in exchange for support in its continuing conflict with the Russian Empire. This fact made the potential settlement of the Russian Doukhobors a politically-sensitive question among some in the British government, but after Quaker supporters both made assurances of the Doukhobors' political inoffensiveness and provided financial guarantees against their potential indigency, officials permitted over 1,000 Doukhobors to establish farming settlements in several locations on the island beginning in the second half of 1898. However, the Cyprus experiment soon proved to be disastrous: beset by disease (made worse by insufficient food that met the Doukhobors' religious requirements) as well as internal disagreements over community organization, nearly ten percent of the colony died by early 1899.
Canada offered more land, transportation, and aid to resettle in the Saskatchewan area. Around 6,000 Doukhobors emigrated there in the first half of 1899, settling on land granted to them by the government in modern-day Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The Cyprus colony and others joined them, and around 7,500 Russian Doukhobor emigrants—about a third of their number in Russia—arrived in Canada by the end of the year.. Several smaller groups joined the main body of emigrants in later years, coming directly from Transcaucasia and other places of exile. Among these latecomers were 110 leaders of the community who had to complete their sentences before being allowed to emigrate. By 1930, about 8,780 Doukhobors had migrated from Russia to Canada.
The Quakers and Tolstoyan movement covered most of the costs of passage for the emigrants; writer Leo Tolstoy arranged for the royalties from his novel Resurrection, his story Father Sergei, and some others to go to the emigration fund. Tolstoy also raised money from wealthy friends; his efforts provided about 30,000 , half of the emigration fund. The anarchist Peter Kropotkin and professor of political economy at the University of Toronto James Mavor also helped the emigrants..
The emigrants adapted to life in agricultural communes; they were mostly of peasant origin and had low regard for advanced education. Many worked as loggers, lumbermen, and carpenters. Eventually, many left the communal dormitories and became private farmers on the Canadian plains. Religious a cappella singing, pacifism, and passive resistance were markers of the sect. One subgroup occasionally demonstrated naked, typically as a protest against compulsory military service. Their policies made them controversial. The modern descendants of the first wave of Doukhobor emigrants continue to live in southeastern British Columbia communities such as Krestova, and in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. , the estimated population of Doukhobor descent in North America was 40,000 in Canada and about 5,000 in the United States.
The land for the Doukhobor immigrants, in total within what was to soon become the Province of Saskatchewan, came in three block settlement areas or "reserves", and an annex:
North and South Colonies, and Good Spirit Lake Annex, were located around Yorkton near the modern-day border with Manitoba; the Saskatchewan (Rosthern) Colony was located north-west of Saskatoon, a significant distance from the other three reserves.
In 1899, all four reserves formed part of the Northwest Territories: Saskatchewan (Rosthern) Colony in the territories' provisional District of Saskatchewan. North Reserve straddled the boundary of Saskatchewan and Assiniboia districts, and the other reserves were entirely in Assiniboia. After the establishment of the Province of Saskatchewan in 1905, all reserves were located within that province.
Verigin persuaded his followers to free their animals, and pull their wagons and plows themselves. On the lands granted to them in the prairies, the settlers established Russian-style villages, some of which received Russian names after settlers' home villages in Transcaucasia; for example Spasovka, Large and Small Gorelovka, and Slavianka; while others gained more abstract "spiritual" names not common in Russia, such as Uspeniye (Dormition), Terpeniye (Patience), Bogomdannoye (Given by God), and Osvobozhdeniye (Liberation). The settlers found Saskatchewan winters much harsher than those in Transcaucasia, and expressed disappointment the climate was not as suitable for growing fruits and vegetables. Women greatly outnumbered the men; many women worked on the farms tilling the land while many men took non-farm jobs, especially in railway construction. The earliest arrivals came from three backgrounds, had varying commitments to communal life, and lacked leadership. Verigin arrived in December 1902, was recognized as the leader, and reimposed communalism and self-sufficiency. The railway arrived in 1904 and hopes of isolation from Canadian society ended.
The "oath" issue resulted in a three-way split of the Doukhobor immigrants in Canada:
Of these groupings, the Independents integrated the most readily into Canadian capitalist society. They had no problem registering their land groups and largely remained in Saskatchewan. In 1939, they definitely rejected the authority of Peter Verigin's great-grandson John J. Verigin, Sr.
On October 29, 1924, Peter V. Verigin was killed in a bomb explosion on a scheduled passenger train en route to British Columbia. The government had initially stated the bombing was perpetrated by people within the Doukhobor community, although no arrests were made because of the Doukhobors' customary refusal to cooperate with Canadian authorities due to fear of intersect violence. It is still unknown who was responsible for the bombing. While the Doukhobors were initially welcomed by the Canadian government, this assassination, as well as Doukhobors' beliefs regarding communal living, their intolerance for schooling, and other beliefs considered offensive or unacceptable, created a decades-long mistrust between government authorities and Doukhobors.
Peter V. Verigin's son Peter P. Verigin, who arrived from the Soviet Union in 1928, succeeded his father as leader of the Community Doukhobors. He became known as "Peter the Purger" ( Chistiakov) and worked to smooth relations between the Community Doukhobors and wider Canadian society. The governments in Ottawa and the western provinces concluded he was the closet leader of the Sons of Freedom and was perhaps a dangerous Bolshevik. The governments decided to deport him, use the justice system to impose conformity to Canadian values on the Doukhobors, and force them to abide by Canadian law and repudiate unacceptable practices. With a legal defence managed by Peter Makaroff, the deportation effort failed in 1933. The Sons of Freedom repudiated Verigin's policies as ungodly and assimilationist, and escalated their protests. The Sons of Freedom burnt Community Doukhobors' property and organized more nude parades. In 1932, the Parliament of Canada responded by criminalizing public nudity. Over 300 radical Doukhobor men and women were arrested for this offence, which typically carried a three-year prison sentence.
During 1947 and 1948, Sullivan's Royal Commission investigated acts of arson and bombing attacks in British Columbia and recommended several measures intended to integrate the Doukhobors into Canadian society, notably through the education of their children in public schools. Around that time, the provincial government entered into direct negotiations with the Freedomite leadership. W. A. C. Bennett's Social Credit government, which came to power in 1952, took a harder stance against the "Doukhobor problem." In 1953, 174 children of the Sons of Freedom were forcibly interned by government agents in a residential school in New Denver, British Columbia. Abuse of the interned children was later alleged.
In less than fifty years, the Sons of Freedom committed 1,112 separate acts of violence and arson, costing over $20 million in damages; these acts include bombing and arson attacks on public schools, bombings of Canadian railway bridges and tracks, the bombing of a courthouse at Nelson, and the destruction of a power transmission tower servicing East Kootenay district, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Many of the independent and community Doukhobors believed the Sons of Freedom's arson and bombings violated the Doukhobor central principle of nonviolence, and that they did not deserve to be called Doukhobors.
Those who remained Doukhobors were required to submit to the state. Few protested against military service; of 837 Russian court-martial cases against conscientious objectors recorded between the beginning of World War I and April 1, 1917, 16 had Doukhobor defendants, none of whom hailed from the Transcaucasian provinces. Between 1921 and 1923, Verigin's son Peter P. Verigin arranged the resettlement of 4,000 Doukhobors from the Ninotsminda (Bogdanovka) district in south Georgia to Rostov Oblast in southern Russia, and another 500 into Zaporizhzhia Oblast in Ukraine.
The Soviet reforms greatly affected the lives of the Doukhobors, both in their old villages in Georgia and in the new settlement areas in southern Russian and Ukraine. State anti-religious campaigns resulted in the suppression of Doukhobor religious tradition, and the loss of books and archival records. Many religious leaders were arrested or exiled; for example, 18 people were exiled from Gorelovka in 1930. Communists' imposition of collective farming did not contradict the Doukhobor way of life. Industrious Doukhobors made their kolkhoz prosperous, often specializing in cheesemaking.
Of the Doukhobor communities in the Soviet Union, those in South Georgia were the most sheltered from outside influence because of their geographic isolation in mountainous terrain, their location near the international border, and concomitant travel restrictions for outsiders.
During the Canada 2011 Census,. The census numbers are actually based on extrapolating a 20% sample. 2,290 persons in Canada—of whom 1,860 in British Columbia, 200 in Alberta, 185 in Saskatchewan, and 25 in Ontario—identified their religious affiliation as "Doukhobor". The proportion of older people among these self-identified Doukhobors is higher than among the general population.
Twenty-eight percent of the self-identified Doukhobors in 2001 were over 65 (born before 1936), as compared to 12% of the entire population of Canadian respondents. The aging of the denomination is accompanied by its shrinkage, starting in the 1960s:
The number of Canadians with Doukhobor heritage is much higher than the number of those who consider themselves members of this religion. In 2012, Doukhobor researchers estimated there were "over 20,000" people "from Doukhobor stock" in Canada and over 40,000 Doukhobors by "a wider definition of religion, ethnicity, way of life, and social movement".
Canadian Doukhobors no longer live communally. Doukhobors do not practice baptism, neither wet nor dry, nor require one to be "born again". They reject several items considered orthodox among Christian churches, including church organization and liturgy, the inspiration of the scriptures, the literal interpretation of resurrection, the literal interpretation of the Trinity, and heaven and hell. Some avoid the use of alcohol, tobacco, and veganism, and eschew involvement in partisan politics. Doukhobors believe in the goodness of man and reject the idea of original sin.
A Doukhobor museum known as "Doukhobor Discovery Centre" (formerly, "Doukhobor Village Museum") operates in Castlegar, British Columbia. It contains over 1,000 artifacts representing the arts, crafts, and daily lives of the Doukhobors of the Kootenays in 1908–38.
Although most of the early Doukhobor village structures in British Columbia have vanished or been significantly remodelled by later users, a part of Makortoff Village outside Grand Forks, British Columbia has been preserved as a museum by Peter Gritchen, who purchased the property in 1971 and opened it as Mountain View Doukhobor Museum on June 16, 1972. The site's future became uncertain after his death in 2000 but in March 2004, in cooperation with local organizations and concerned citizens, The Land Conservancy of British Columbia purchased the historical site known as Hardy Mountain Doukhobor Village while Boundary Museum Society acquired the museum collection and loaned it to TLC for display.
The Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa has a collection of Doukhobor-related items. A special exhibition there was run in 1998–99 to mark the centennial anniversary of the Doukhobor arrival in Canada.
Starting in 1841, the Doukhobors and others were resettled from southern Ukraine to Transcaucasia, where they founded several villages surrounded by mostly non-Russian speaking neighbours—primarily Azerbaijanis in Elisabethpol Governorate, ArmeniansTiflis Governorate was in Georgia, it is ethnic Armenians who populated its Samtskhe-Javakheti area, where the Doukhobor villages were in Tiflis Governorate, and likely a mix of both in the later post-1878 settlements in Kars Oblast. These conditions allowed the dialect to develop in comparative isolation from mainstream Russian.
With the migration of 7,500 Doukhbors from Transcaucasia to Saskatchewan in 1899, and some smaller latecomer groups from both Transcaucasia and from places of exile in Siberia and elsewhere, the dialect spoken in the Doukhobor villages of Transcaucasia was taken to the plains of Canada. From that point, it experienced influence from Canadian English and, during the years of Doukhobor stay in Saskatchewan, the speech of their Ukrainian neighbours.
A split in the Doukhobor community resulted in a large number of Doukhobors moving from Saskatchewan to south-eastern British Columbia around 1910. Those who moved, the so-called Community Doukhobors—followers of Peter Verigin's Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood—continued living communally for several decades, and had a better chance to preserve their Russian language than the Independent Doukhobors, who stayed in Saskatchewan as individual farmers.
By the 1970s, as most Russian-born members of the community died, English became the first language of the great majority of Canadian Doukhobors.Dr. John I. Postnikoff Doukhobors: An Endangered Species MIR magazine, No. 16 (Grand Forks, BC: MIR Publication Society, May 1978) (Doukhobor Genealogy Website). Their English speech is not noticeably different from that of other English-speaking Canadians of their provinces. Russian still remains in use, at least for religious purposes, among those who practice the Doukhobor religion.
Features characteristic of many locales in the East Slavic language space were noted, reflecting the heterogeneous origin of the Doukhobors' settlements in Molochna River after 1800; for example, like Belarusians, Doukhobor speakers do not palatalize r in "редко" ( redko, 'seldom'). Remarkable was the dropping of the final -t in the third-person singular form of verbs, which can be considered a Ukrainian feature and is also attested in some Russian dialects spoken in Southern Ukraine (e.g., Mykolaiv Oblast near the Doukhobors' former homeland on the Molochna). As with other immigrant groups, the Russian speech of the Doukhobors uses English loanwords for some concepts they had not encountered until moving to Canada.
Transcaucasian exile
When Nicholas I succeeded Alexander as Tsar, on February 6, 1826, he issued a decree intending to force the assimilation of the Doukhobors through military conscription, prohibiting their meetings, and encouraging conversions to the established church. On October 20, 1830, another decree followed, specifying all able-bodied members of dissenting religious groups engaged in propaganda against the established church should be conscripted and sent to the Russian army in the Caucasus while those not capable of military service, and their women and children, should be resettled in Russia's recently acquired provinces. With other dissenters, around 5,000 Doukhobors were resettled in Georgia between 1841 and 1845. Akhalkalaki uyezd (district) in the Tiflis Governorate was chosen as the main place of their settlement. Doukhobor villages with Russian names appeared there; Gorelovka, Rodionovka, Yefremovka, Orlovka, Spasskoye (Dubovka), Troitskoye, and Ninotsminda. Later, other groups of Doukhobors were resettled by the government or migrated to Transcaucasia of their own accord. They also settled in neighbouring areas, including the Marneuli uyezd of Tiflis Governorate and the Kedabek uyezd of Elisabethpol Governorate.
Religious revival and crises
The death of Lukerya, who had no children, was followed by a leadership crisis that divided the Dukhobortsy in the Caucasus into two major groups, which disputed their next leader. Lukerya wanted leadership to pass to her assistant Peter Vasilevich Verigin. Although most of the community—"the Large Party" —accepted him as the leader, a minority faction known as "the Small Party" (Малая сторона Malaya Storona) rejected Verigin, and sided with Lukerya's brother Michael Gubanov and the village elder Aleksei Zubkov.
Migration to Canada
First emigrants
The resistance of the Doukhobors gained international attention and the Russian Empire was criticized for its treatment of this religious minority. In 1897, the Russian government agreed to let the Doukhobors leave the country, subject to conditions:
Canadian prairies
In accordance with the Dominion Lands Act of 1872, for a nominal fee of , the Canadian government would grant of land to any male homesteader who was able to establish a working farm on that land within three years. Single-family homesteads would not fit the Doukhobors' communitarian tradition but a "Hamlet Clause" within the Act had been adopted 15 years earlier to accommodate other communitarian groups such as Mennonites. The clause allowed beneficiaries of the Act to live in a hamlet within from their land rather than on the land itself. This allowed the Doukhobors to establish a communal lifestyle similar to that of the . Also, by passing Section 21 of the Dominion Military Act in late 1898, the Canadian Government exempted the Doukhobors from military service.
Popular distrust
Canadians, politicians, and the media were deeply suspicious of the Doukhobors. Their communal lifestyle seemed suspicious, their refusal to send children to school was considered deeply troubling, while pacifism caused anger during the First World War. The oppression of the Russian Tsarist regime had entrenched its resulting pacifist beliefs into the Doukhobor tenets and they did not waver with the onset of either World War. Some Canadians who were willing to go to war did not respect a sect of people that were excused from military service. This difference in perspective produced much political prejudice towards the Doukhobors. Tumultuous political posturing and years of polarized social disagreements eventually brought some Doukhobors to the point of protests aimed at maintaining their simple, non-materialistic, and autonomous communal living. The break-away faction of svobodniki, later called Freedomites, conducted nude marches and carried out night-time arson attacks, which was considered unacceptable and offensive. Canadian magazines showed strong curiosity, giving special attention to women's bodies and clothing. Magazines and newspapers carried stories and photographs of Doukhobor women engaging in hard farm labour, doing "women's work", wearing the traditional ethnic dress, and in partial or total states of undress. Doukhobors received financial help from Quakers. Clifford Sifton, the Minister of the Interior, wanted the Doukhobors in Canada; he arranged financial subsidies to allow them to migrate.
Loss of land rights
Due to the community's aversion to private ownership of land, Verigin had the land registered in the name of the community. By 1906, the Canadian Government's new Minister of the Interior Frank Oliver started requiring the registration of land in the name of individual owners. Many Doukhobors refused to comply, resulting in 1907 in the reverting of more than a third () of Doukhobor lands back to the Crown. The loss of legal title to their land became a major grievance.
Schism
Ten years after the Russian conscription crisis, another political issue arose because the Doukhobors would have to become naturalized British citizens and swear an Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown—something that had always been against their principles. They did not know that they could have submitted an "affirmation" instead of an "oath".
Koozma J. Tarasoff (2025). 9781896031125, Legas and Spirit Wrestlers Publishing. . ISBN 9781896031125
British Columbia and Verigin's assassination
In 1908, to remove his followers from the corrupting influence of non-Doukhobors and edinolichniki (individual owners) Doukhobors, and to find better conditions for agriculture, Verigin bought large tracts of land in south-eastern British Columbia. His first purchase was around Grand Forks near the US border. He later acquired large tracts of land further east in the Slocan Valley around Castlegar. Between 1908 and 1912, about 8,000 people moved from Saskatchewan to these British Columbia lands to continue their communal way of living. In the milder climate of British Columbia, the settlers were able to plant fruit trees and within a few years became renowned orchardists and producers of fruit preserves. As the Community Doukhobors left Saskatchewan, the reserves there were closed by 1918.
Voting
Doukhobors could not vote in British Columbia until 1952. They were the last ethnic or religious community to be granted suffrage in the province.
Nudism and arson
The Sons of Freedom, a break away protest sect identifying as svodoniki (sovereign, free people) in 1902, used nudism and arson as visible methods of protest.Simma Holt, Terror in the Name of God (McClelland and Stewart, 1964) is a study of the Sons of Freedom They protested against materialism, the land seizure by the government, compulsory education in government schools, and Verigin's assassination in 1924. This led to many confrontations with the Canadian government and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which continued into the 1970s. Nudism was first used after the Doukhobors' arrival in Canada. They used violence to fight modernity, and destroyed threshing machines and other signs of modernity. The group conducted night-time arson attacks on schools built by the Doukhobor commune and Verigin's house. The highly publicized acts by the Sons of Freedom were repeatedly mislabeled with the word "Doukhobor", confusing the different groups and anguishing many law biding assimilated descendants of Canadian Doukhobors.Koozma J. Tarasoff (2025). 9781896031125, Legas and Spirit Wrestlers Publishing. . ISBN 9781896031125
Doukhobors remaining in Russia
After the departure of the more zealous and uncompromising Doukhobors, and many community leaders, to Canada at the close of the Elisabethpol Governorate in the Caucasus Viceroyalty (now Azerbaijan), the former Doukhobor villages became mostly repopulated by Baptists. Elsewhere, some Doukhobors joined nearby Spiritual Christian groups.
Hymnody
Doukhobor oral holy hymns, which they call the "Book of Life" (Russian: Zhivotnaya kniga), de facto replaced the written Bible. Their teaching is founded on this tradition. The Book of Life of the Doukhobors (1909) is the first printed hymnal containing songs in the Southern Russian dialect, which were composed to be sung aloud. Their prayer meetings and gatherings are dominated by the singing of a cappella psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
Population
In 2001, an estimated 20,000–40,000 people of Doukhobor heritage lived in Canada, 3,800 of whom claimed "Doukhobor" as their religious affiliation. An estimated 30,000 people of Doukhobor heritage live in Russia and neighbouring countries. In 2011, there were 2,290 Canadians who identified their religious affiliation as "Doukhobor"; in Russia there were 50 such persons by the mid-2000s.
Canada
CCUB, the Orthodox Doukhobors organization or Community Doukhobors, was succeeded by the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ (USCC) formed by Peter P. Verigin, Peter V. Verigin's son, in 1938. The largest and most active formal Doukhobor organization, it is headquartered in Grand Forks, British Columbia.
All Canadians, 2001 29,639,035 5,737,670 3,988,200 9,047,175 7,241,135 3,337,435 287,415 Self-identified Doukhobors, 2001 3,800 415 345 845 1,135 950 110 Self-identified Doukhobors, 1991 4,820 510 510 1,125 1,400 1,175 100 1921 12,674 1931 14,978 1941 16,898 1951 13,175 1961 13,234 1971 9,170 1981.g., 28% ? coded as "Doukhobor, Orthodox" and "Doukhobor, Reformed" 1991 4,820 2001 3,800 2011 2,290 2021 1,675
Georgia and Russia
Since the late 1980s, many of the Doukhobors of Georgia started emigrating to Russia. Various groups moved to Tula Oblast, Rostov Oblast, Stavropol Krai, and elsewhere. After the 1991 independence of Georgia, many villages with Russian names received Georgian names; Bogdanovka became Ninotsminda, Troitskoe became Sameba. According to various estimates, in Ninotsminda District, the Doukhobor population fell from around 4,000 in 1979 to between 3,000 and 3,500 in 1989, and around 700 in 2006. In Dmanisi district, it fell from around 700 Doukhobors in 1979 to no more than 50 by the mid-2000s. Most of those who remain in Georgia are older people; the younger generation found it easier to relocate to Russia. The Doukhobor community of Gorelovka in Ninotsminda District, the former "capital" of the Kalmykov family, is thought to be the best-preserved in all former Soviet Union countries.
Ecumenical relations
The Doukhobors have maintained a close association with Mennonites and Quakers due to similar religious practices; all of these groups are collectively considered to be peace churches due to their belief in pacifism.
Historical sites and museums
In 1995, the Doukhobor Suspension Bridge spanning the Kootenay River was designated a National Historic Site of Canada. The site of Community Doukhobors' headquarters in Veregin, Saskatchewan, was designated a National Historic Site in 2006, under the name "Doukhobors at Veregin".
Linguistic history and dialect
The Doukhobors took with them to Canada a Southern Russian dialect, which in the following decades changed under the influence of Canadian English and the speech of the Ukrainian settlers in Saskatchewan. Over several generations, this dialect has been mostly lost because the modern descendants of the original Doukhobor migrants to Canada are typically native English speakers; when they speak Russian, it is typically a fairly standard variety.
Linguistic history
In 1802, the Doukhobors and other spiritual Christian tribes were encouraged to migrate to the Molochna River region around Melitopol near Ukraine's Sea of Azov coast, within the Pale of Settlement neighbouring settlements of anabaptists from Germany. Over the next 10 or 20 years, the Doukhobors and others, mostly speaking a variety of Southern Russian dialects, arrived at the Molochna from several provinces, most of which are located in modern-day eastern Ukraine and south-central Russia. In the settlers' villages, an opportunity for the formation of a dialect koiné based on Southern Russian and Eastern Ukrainian dialects arose.
Features of the Doukhobor Russian dialect in Canada
Research into the Russian spoken by Canada's Doukhobors has not been extensive but several articles, mostly published in the 1960s and 1970s, noted a variety of features in Doukhobors' Russian speech that were characteristic of Southern, and in some cases Central Russian dialects; for example, use of the Southern h where Standard Russian has g.
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Categories: Nudity In Religion, Ethnoreligious Groups In Russia, Ethnoreligious Groups In Canada, Christian Ethnoreligious Groups, Kootenays, Boundary Country, Eastern Christianity In Canada, Christian Vegetarians, Christian Radicalism, Religion In The Pacific Northwest, Russian Sub-ethnic Groups, Utopian Communities, Spiritual Christianity
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