Russian Dukhobors in Canada

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Dukhobors are a historically Russian religious group that rejects the external ritualism of the church. One of a series of teachings collectively referred to as "spiritual Christians." The affairs of the community are governed by a meeting of elders. They are distinguished by their hardworking and moral life.

Story

Sent in 1801 to collect information about the Dukhobors, IV Lopukhin gave the best feedback about them. After that, a decree was issued on the resettlement of all Dukhobors to the Melitopol district of the Tauride province, on the banks of the Molochnaya River (modern Zaporozhye). With an abundance of land (79,000 dessiatines), they adopted many useful innovations from the Mennonites (Protestants) settled in their neighborhood.

The leader of the Dukhobors in Crimea, Savely Kapustin, introduced communist orders there - working the land together, dividing the crop equally. In 1818, Alexander I visited the village of Dukhobors Patience, stayed there for two days and ordered the release of all the Dukhobors and deliver them to the Crimea. In 1820 they were released from the oath. Since then, Alexander I has enjoyed exceptional veneration among the Dukhobors - a monument was even erected to him.

Under Nicholas I, the Dukhobors again lost the favor of the authorities. The Crimean lands mastered by the Dukhobors for the first time became safe and were quickly assimilated by Russian Orthodox peasants, because of which the government began to consider the Dukhobors as unwanted neighbors. In 1837, a decree followed on their resettlement from Milk Waters to the Transcaucasian Territory.

In 1841, the expulsion of the Dukhobors to Georgia and Azerbaijan began. Between 1841-1845, about 5,000 Dukhobors were resettled.

In 1887, general military service was introduced in the Caucasus. As a sign of protest, riots swept through the places where the Dukhobors were settled. In 1895, several thousand Dukhobors in the Elizavetopol and Tiflis provinces and in the Kars region, on the advice of Peter Verigin, declared to the authorities their complete renunciation of military service. On the night of June 28-29, they knocked down all their weapons in a heap, poured kerosene over them and burned them while singing psalms. To suppress the unrest in the villages of the Tiflis province, the government expelled the Cossacks, and after the execution, two hundred people were imprisoned. The families of the instigators, up to four hundred in number, were sent to the villages of the Tiflis province, in two or three families, without land and with a ban on communication with each other.

The Dukhobors who were called up and refused to serve were imprisoned in the Yekaterinograd disciplinary battalion. It was common practice to condemn the Dukhobors to 6-7 years of a disciplinary battalion not for the refusal itself, but for disobeying the orders of the commanders. In one village of the Tersk region, a large fortress was built to correct the recalcitrant and guilty soldiers, and in this fortress the Dukhobors were tortured with hunger and cold, beaten with fists and rifle butts, flogged with rods and put in cold punishment cells. Many of them have died. VG Chertkov in 1896 wrote an article about this "Vain cruelty", which was read to Nicholas II. After that, the refuseniks began to be exiled to Yakutia for 18 years.

See also: Old Believers in Bolivia. A shard of the Russian world

Protection of Leo Tolstoy and Tolstoyans

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy spoke up in defense of the Dukhobors. He and his followers organized one of the first mass campaigns in the domestic and international press, comparing the persecution of the Dukhobors in Russia with the persecution of the first Christians. VG Chertkov published details of the persecution of peasants in an English newspaper. Then V. G. Chertkov, P. I. Tolstoy supplemented the appeal with his epilogue and donated a thousand rubles to help the starving, and also promised to continue to give the starving peasants all the fees that he received in theaters for the performance of his plays. As a result of this action, V. Chertkov was expelled abroad, and Biryukov and Tregubov were sent into internal exile in the Baltic states.

Despite the wide public and international resonance of the events of 1895, no compromise was reached with the authorities on the issue of protecting the Dukhobors. With the initiative and financial participation of Leo Tolstoy and foreign Quakers, it was decided to emigrate the Dukhobors. Manchuria, Chinese Turkestan, Cyprus, Hawaii, etc. were considered as possible places for a new settlement.

In 1898-1899, approximately 8,000 Dukhobors emigrated to Canada, in the undeveloped areas of the province of Saskatchewan. To use the royalties to fund the resettlement, Lev Tolstoy specially completed the previously postponed novel Resurrection.

Although neither the Dukhobors nor the sympathizers were convinced of the need for emigration, along with support from abroad, they met with a markedly negative attitude from the authorities (for example, a ban on returning). The old men (community elders) prophesied:

Up to 30 thousand descendants of the Dukhobors now live in Canada. Of these, 5 thousand people have retained the faith, more than half - knowledge of the Russian language as their native language.

A modern traveler's note about the Canadian Dukhobors:

Doukhobors in Canada / Canadian Doukhobors

Now I have a little less time to travel, but in order not to launch the magazine at all, I will post the photos that I still have. About a year ago, I went to Canada, British Columbia. There are several small settlements of Russian Dukhobors there. Probably, first it is worth explaining who the Dukhobors are. The Dukhobors are a Christian sect that appeared in Russia in the 18th century. If we briefly describe the faith of the Dukhobors, we can probably say that they are Christian pacifists. They are not Orthodox and generally reject any clergy. In Tsarist Russia, they were often exiled and therefore at the end of the 19th century, with the help of Leo Tolstoy, they partially emigrated to Canada. Quite an unusual story, at least because there were almost no Russian emigrants who left Russia before the 20th century. Of course, when I read somewhere that there are such Russian settlements in Canada, I immediately decided to go there. It's not very far from Seattle, you can get there by car in 5 hours. The US-Canada border in these places is located in the countryside, there is nothing around at all. When I told the Canadians at the border that I was going to photograph Dukhoborov, I was detained for two hours and my car was thoroughly searched. It was even funny, who knows what the border guards thought at all. So, as I was released, I drove to the main village of Dukhoborov in British Columbia, Grand Forks. At the very entrance, there is such an inscription, for a small Canadian city it is completely unusual:

In the city, there are streets with the following names:

And there are quite a few such eateries:

The city itself is very picturesque, only 4000 people live there, but there are many different shops and cafes, everything is very well maintained.

In fact, this entire town was built by the Russian Dukhobors. Initially, the Dukhobors lived as a community in small villages, and the city was a center of trade. Here is one such old village that has survived to this day. It is located about a kilometer from the city:

There were over 90 such villages in total. Of course, in our time, the Dukhobors have basically assimilated and live like all other Canadians.

When I took a walk around the city, I went to the Dukhobor museum:

As I was told there, when the Dukhobors moved to Canada, everything did not work out right away. In those days, Canada had a Homestead Act, according to which it was possible to get free land if a person was obliged to work on it. The meaning of this law was to attract new settlers (mainly from Europe) so that they would settle in the unsettled western territories. When the Dukhobors arrived in Canada, they were able to obtain a significant amount of land and began to successfully cultivate this land. The problem was that the Dukhobors as a whole lived in a community, in many ways this is part of their faith, and in Canada, single farmers usually worked on the land. Although Canada formally had freedom of religion, Canadians did not really like the way the Dukhobors lived. The Homestead Act was specifically amended to take land from the Dukhobors and force them to abandon the community. Some of the settlers did so and left the community, while others were able to simply buy land in British Columbia with their own funds and continued to live according to their customs. Therefore, the Dukhobors named the new places where they moved for the second time the Valley of Consolation:

In general, despite the freedom of faith in Canada, Dukhoborov was still pressed until the 1970s. So the museum where I arrived is just an example of such a communal village. Here is the main house, where several families lived at once:

Inside the room they look like this:

and of course you can't do without a real Russian oven:

Further, everything that can be found in the village, the forge:

Bath:

Barn:

Elsewhere there was a large warehouse of all kinds of tools:

This is probably what surprised me most of all: the Russian people who found themselves on the ends of the earth, in wild places, and completely out of nothing, with their own hands and labor, were able to create a civilization.

Even the red brick from which almost all the buildings in the city are laid was baked by the Dukhobors in brick factories that they themselves founded. Before they appeared in these parts, there was nothing but wild nature and in a short time they were able to establish agriculture, laid roads, bridges, mills and even several factories. If you pick one photo that reflects all of this, perhaps this is it:

In the photo, Ivan Yakovlevich Ivashin, lived in Canada for over 70 years, one of the pioneers.

Finally, I want to upload a video of a very nice woman who showed me everything in the museum and talked about the Dukhobors. She is the director of this museum, Dukhoborka herself and is already in the third generation a Canadian. Nevertheless, she speaks excellent Russian, it was very pleasant to listen to the old Russian speech. Thanks a lot to her!