Tag: communalism

A Place called Skalistoye (and other Names)

By Jonathan Kalmakoff and Greg Nesteroff

Although Grohman Narrows Provincial Park west of Nelson, British Columbia is a well-known destination for local outdoor recreation and nature appreciation, its storied past has largely slipped from collective memory. The following article examines the property’s many different owners, occupiers, names and uses over its 150-plus years of recorded history.

Prehistory

The property covers the river flats on the left (south) bank of the Kootenay River at what was once called the Narrows,[1] a natural constriction of the river at the downstream end of the West Arm formed by beds of uneroded hard rock. During periods of high inflow into Kootenay Lake, the constriction raised water levels upriver, causing flooding. The rich alluvial material deposited over millennia enriched the lower portions of the flats, yielding fertile soil, while the higher, unflooded portions remained largely exposed rock.

For centuries before white settlers capitalized upon its agricultural potential, First Nations encamped on the flats,[2] as the Narrows created an ideal location for trapping fish. Its importance as fishing grounds also made it highly sought after, and it is thought to have been the site of a 19th century battle between the Sinixt and Ktunaxa over its control.[3] In the early 20th century, many First Nations artifacts were recovered along the flats.[4]

Baillie-Grohman’s 1886 map (The Kootenay valleys in Kootenay district, British Columbia. London: Witherby, 1886) showing the flats and narrows, here described as “rapids to be widened and deepened.” Note the railway at that point was surveyed on the north bank but was actually built on the south bank of the river five years later.

W.A. Baillie-Grohman

In October 1886, 50 acres of the flats were conceded to the Kootenay Lake Syndicate led by Anglo-Austrian author and hunter William Adolph Baillie-Grohman as part of a plan to blast out the Narrows, thereby lowering the lake level in order to drain and reclaim Creston Valley and Kootenay Flats for colonization and agriculture.[5] In 1889, Grohman’s engineer Leslie Hall and his crew set up camp on the flats, detonating tons of dynamite against the obstructing rock at the Narrows, but the rock did not yield.[6] By 1894, the scheme was a bust and the land reverted to the Crown. More enduring were the names left behind in the form of Grohman Narrows and Grohman Creek, opposite the property.

W.A. Baillie-Grohman (1851-1921), writer, big game sportsman and pioneer of the Kootenay region, 1885. Wikipedia Commons.

Early Miners & Ranchers

In 1891, the CPR’s Columbia and Kootenay Railway line was built through the north edge of the property, close to the river, opening it up for mining and later agricultural development.

By November 1898, Dr. E.C. Arthur of Nelson staked the Recluse Mine claim on the property, receiving certificates of work in November 1903 and a grant of mineral rights in February 1905 as Lot 4228; Dr. Arthur still owned the claim as of October 1908, but it was sold for unpaid taxes soon thereafter.[7] A brickyard also reportedly existed in the vicinity, but it’s not clear who operated it.[8]

The original 125-acre Crown grant for Lot 5180 including the Recluse mine.

Meanwhile, in July 1901, New Brunswick native Alfred Bunker (1855-1937) received a Crown grant for the 50.6-hectare (125-acre) property (Lot 5180), subject to the mining claim, for $125.[9] It thereafter became known as the Bunker Ranch. By April 1902, Bunker had cleared some 10-12 acres and planted about 1,000 fruit trees on the ranch, including cherry and pear, and cultivated a large piece for strawberries and other small fruits, making it the acknowledged oldest fruit farm in the Nelson district.[10]

The ranch was accessible by various means. The CPR built Quarry Siding on the property in May 1902 to serve its quarry on the adjacent east lot, which Bunker also used for loading cars with fruit and agricultural products.[11] The ranch was also accessible by boat or via a road at its southern boundary that connected to a wagon road (soon to be known as Granite Road) that led to the City of Nelson power plant on the Kootenay River.[12]

In addition to farming, Bunker was active in the Kootenay Fruit Growers’ Association as vice-president.[13] He was involved in a proposal to assume the assets of the Nelson streetcar service.[14] He bought and sold lots, cottages, and mining claims.[15] And he ran unsuccessfully for Nelson city council in 1912.[16]

In June 1907, Bunker sold his ranch to Robert W. Hulbert, former editor of the North Battleford News, who registered it under his wife Rose Elizabeth Hulbert.[17] Hulbert renamed the property the Durban Ranch, after the South African city where Rose was born and the couple married in 1902.[18] Besides ranching, he served as a delegate of the Kootenay Fruit Growers’ Association, proprietor of the Empire Moving Picture Theatre in Nelson, a founding director of the Nelson branch of the YMCA and compiler of the 1909 Nelson telephone directory.[19]

However, Hulbert soon ran into financial difficulty and by March 1908 advertised the ranch for sale through Regina realtors McCallum Hill & Co.[20] By this time, 25 acres of the property had been cleared and planted into apples, cherries, plums, peaches, pears and other small fruits, with 1,000 trees in bearing, 1,200 more soon to bear, and 500 in nursery. 

Nelson Daily News, March 29, 1908 ad for the sale of the ranch then owned by R.W. Hulbert.

Despite the advert running in over 105 issues of the Nelson Daily News, the ranch failed to sell. Undoubtedly, a significant deterrent was the fact that half of the ranch was rocky outcropping, of little use for anything except quarrying.[21]

Under pressure from creditors, Hulbert sold the Durban ranch to McCallum Hill & Co. in August 1908, staying on as ranch manager until 1911.[22] In the interim, the realtors satisfied many of Hulbert’s local debts, although he lost his theatre to foreclosure in February 1910.[23]   

As McCallum Hill & Co. purchased the ranch under an agreement for sale, title did not transfer until all outstanding payments were made in January 1910. At that time, it was registered in the names of company principals Ernest A. McCallum, Walter H.A. Hill and Edgar D. McCallum.[24] The realtors never lived at the property, having bought it purely on speculation. For three years they collected revenues from ranch fruit sales before placing it back on the market in 1911.

Nelson Daily News, April 5-6, 1911 half-page ad for the sale of the ranch then owned by McCallum Hill & Co.

This time, they used a more creative marketing strategy. On 5 and 6 April 1911, they took out an eye-catching, half-page advertisement in the Nelson Daily News[25]which painted the ranch in colourful, hyperbolic terms, emphasizing its overall acreage, fertile soil, number and type of fruit trees along with its development potential, accessibility and nearness to Nelson, while downplaying the limited cleared acreage and rocky portions. Indeed, the rock was euphemistically described as “extremely picturesque,” “suitable for quarrying,” with the granite “being considered the finest in the district.” To create a sense of urgency, the ad stressed a “price for quick sale,” “at great sacrifice” and imposed a five-day deadline for offers. The two-day listing worked and the following day, on 7 April 1911, the Durban ranch sold for the $10,000 asking price.[26]   

The Doukhobors, 1911-61

The purchaser under agreement for sale was Russian revolutionary-turned-Nelson real estate agent Konstantine Popoff via the local firm of McQuarrie and Robertson.[27] Only four days earlier, Popoff had sold his 30-acre ranch two miles downriver at Taghum to Peter V. Verigin on behalf of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (CCUB) for $15,000. Evidently Popoff used the sale proceeds to finance the purchase of the Bunker/Durban Ranch.

Russian revolutionary turned Nelson realtor, Konstantine Popoff, c. 1911. Slocan Valley Historical Society.

Popoff immediately put some men to work pruning the 2,200 fruit trees on the ranch in preparation for the season’s operations.[28] However, he had no intention of keeping the property for long. Four days later, Popoff resold it to a second buyer, none other than Peter V. Verigin, again via McQuarrie and Robertson.[29]

Doukhobor leader Peter, V. Verigin, Nelson BC, 1912. BCA B-03946.

Verigin assumed Popoff’s interest under the agreement for sale with McCallum Hill & Co., whereby the Durban Ranch would be paid for in $1,000 annual installments over a 10-year period.[30] In addition, Verigin paid Popoff a $3,000 ‘commission’ for his troubles, with the Daily News aptly reporting that, Popoff had “made a substantial profit over the price he paid for the ranch.”[31]

Verigin’s reasons for purchasing the ranch seem to be have been two-fold. First, he had already bought up all the available large blocks in the Kootenay, Columbia and Slocan valleys, such as those at Brilliant and Ootischenia, Champion Creek, Pass Creek and Crescent Valley. Going forward, he was limited to purchasing small ranches and farms on the upper reaches of the Kootenay and Slocan Rivers on which to settle his people.

Assignment of agreement for sale of Durban Ranch from Kanstantan (sic) Popoff to Peter V. Verigin, 1911.

Second, the CCUB had just purchased the jam factory at Nelson and formed the Kootenay-Columbia Preserving Works to operate it.[32] As the Doukhobors’ earliest planted orchards were only beginning to bear and would not be fully bearing for several years, they required mature, producing orchards to supply their jam factory with fruit and the Bunker Ranch was “one of, if not the most highly developed, fruit ranches in the Kootenays”[33] at the time.

At the time of the Doukhobor purchase, the ranch had 25 acres set out in 2,200 fruit trees, 1,500 of which were apple, including 360 that were already bearing; 60 pear, of which 25 were bearing; 100 plum in bearing, 500 cherry, of which 125 were bearing, and 40 peach, with eight bearing.[34] About 13 acres was under cultivation for small fruits and vegetables, including one acre of strawberries and raspberries, and half an acre of gooseberries and currants.[35]  

Buildings on the property consisted of two small houses (one of two stories, measuring 12 by 23 feet and another of a single story, 10 by 23 feet). There was also a small packing shed, stable, large hay barn, pig and chicken house and root cellar. The buildings were collectively valued at about $1,500.[36]

Rare photo of the two-storey ranch house and outbuildings lent by Nelson realtor M.R. McQuarrie to J.T. Bealby for publication in his book, Fruit Ranching in British Columbia. (Toronto: Macmillan, 1909). The original caption read “A successful orchard amongst the stones, near Nelson.”

Verigin forthwith “arranged to put a large staff of men at work on the ranch”[37] to manage the orchard and develop the remaining arable land. By 1913, the Daily News reported the Doukhobors had made “extensive improvements” in clearing and planting the property into orchard and small fruit.[38]

The Doukhobors named the ranch Skalistoye (Скалистое),meaning “rocky” or “craggy” in Russian.[39] The name reflected the fact that despite its rich, fruit-growing soil in places, a large portion of the ranch was barren and unusable for agricultural purposes.

In November 1917, Peter V. Verigin transferred his interest under the agreement for sale to the newly-incorporated CCUB with $3,000 owing.[40] In September that same year, McCallum and Hill assigned their respective interests to John Allen Wetmore, former accountant of the Imperial Bank at Nelson, now Imperial Bank manager at Regina, in September 1917.[41] In January 1920, after paying the balance owing to Wetmore, the CCUB received legal title to the Skalistoye property.[42]   

Transfer of the Skalistoye ranch from Peter V. Verigin to the CCUB, 1917.

Typically, one or two Doukhobor families was stationed at Skalistoye at a time; often for a period of three or four years before they were rotated back to larger Doukhobor settlements and another family was brought in to take their place.

When the census was taken in June 1911, no Doukhobor families were yet permanently living on the ranch.

By the taking of the 1921 census (which referred to the property as “Quory” after its railway siding), the Famenoff (or Fominoff) family of 13, originally from Ootischenia, were living there. John and his wife Ahaphia, both 55, were listed along with their four sons and their families, namely Larion, 34, and wife Oprosia, 33, with sons Brilliant, 12, and Fred, 3; Wasil, 29, and wife Fedosia, 34, with daughters Mary, 10, and Polly 3; John, 25, and his son John, 5; and Savely, 16.[43]

Savely married Florence (Fenya) Chigmaroff in Krestova in 1923. Their son, Cecil Fominoff of Winlaw, says the Chigmaroffs briefly joined the Fominoffs at Skalistoye before the families later moved to Porcupine, near Salmo, then to Claybrick, near Winlaw, where Cecil was born.[44]

Savely and Fenya Fominoff’s wedding photo, taken during their time at Skalistoye (1923). (Courtesy Valentina Loukianoff and Galena Hadikin)
Savely and Fenya Fominoff with son Tim, taken a few years after their stay at Skalistoye. (Courtesy Valentina Loukianoff and Galena Hadikin)

In 1924, the family of George J. (32) and Polly (30) Rozinkin, along with their son Peter (7) and daughter Lucy (4), were re-stationed from Brilliant to Skalistoye.[45]  They remained on the ranch for five years until 1929. 

In August that year, the couple were swept up in a peace protest of several hundred former CCUB members from Thrums who marched past Skalistoye. George and Polly joined them, leaving their children at the ranch house while they trekked to Nelson.[46] Their granddaughter Sharon Hoodicoff recalls that her mother Lucy and brother Peter had no idea if their parents would return and, out of a sense of survival, began planting potatoes, although it was the wrong season.[47] Their aunt soon came and took them to their parents. Sadly, the family never returned to the ranch, being subsequently confined with 530 other protestors at Porto Rico, an abandoned CCUB lumber camp, until July 1930.[48]  

Polly, Lucy, George and Peter Rozinkin with unknown man in front, taken at Skalistoye in 1924. (Courtesy Sharon Hoodicoff)

By late 1929, another family was place at Skalistoye, that of Fred A. (23) and Poly W. (20) Konkin and their son Phillip (1), formerly of Brilliant.[49] The family tended the ranch for two years before leaving the CCUB and resettling in Thrums as Independent Doukhobors in 1931.[50]  

Life at Skalistoye was communal and revolved around the agricultural seasons. In spring, the men pruned the orchard fruit trees, while on the cultivated land, the women planted annual vegetables and small fruit where perennial berries were not already established. Throughout the summer, the men laboured to clear and break additional land on the property. By late summer, the entire family picked the fruit and berries grown at the ranch. These were shipped from the siding, initially to Nelson and after 1915 to Brilliant for processing in the CCUB jam factories. A portion of the vegetables grown were retained by the ranch families for their own use, with the bulk redistributed among other Doukhobor settlements as needed or else sold at the Doukhobor market in Nelson. Over late fall and winter, the men worked at the CCUB sawmills or else sought employment from local ranchers.    

The farm also served as an important stopping place for Doukhobor wagon teamsters travelling from outlying settlements. Steve Hoodicoff says that his grandmother Mary S. Hoodicoff often mentioned how her parents Stepan and Marfa Samorodin of Koch Siding, near Slocan Park, and other Doukhobors would regularly stop at Skalistoye to rest, water and feed their horse teams before heading out to Nelson.[51]  

Looking west toward Grohman Narrows, 1928. The Skalistoye ranch buildings are faintly visible within the white circle. National Archives and Records Administration.

By January 1931, after 20 years of communal ownership and operation, the Doukhobors had more than doubled the amount of cleared land, with 30 acres in orchard at Skalistoye and another 30 acres under cultivation, with the remaining 65 acres of rocky outcropping used for pasture.[52]

For all its rocks, the ranch generated significant produce and income for the CCUB during this period from the produce grown there, with the orchard yielding approximately 240 to 450 tons of fruit per year, and the cultivated land yielding about 2,000 cases of berries and 180 tons of potatoes and other vegetables per year.[53]

As for the property itself, the Doukhobors do not appear to have made any substantial improvements or additions to the buildings over this period, their value depreciating from $1,500 in 1911 to $800 in 1931. An inventory conducted in the latter year listed “Two dwelling houses, one barn and other small buildings,” valued at $800.[54] And despite significant improvements made to the land in terms of clearing, the property value increased only modestly after 20 years from $10,000 in 1911 to $15,450 in 1931.[55]

However, by this time, Skalistoye no longer held the strategic and locational value to the CCUB it once had, with the organization owning over 3,500 acres of bearing orchard and another 10,000 acres of small fruit and vegetables at larger, more centralized tracts elsewhere in the Kootenay and Boundary. Accordingly, then-president Peter P. (Chistyakov) Verigin arranged to sell the isolated and remote ranch to Doukhobor John George Evin in March 1931.[56]

Evin was a founding member of the board of directors of the CCUB following its federal incorporation in April 1917.[57] By 1921, he relocated from Brilliant to the CCUB colony at Cowley, Alta. where he remained until at least 1926.[58] However, by 1930, he left the CCUB to live and farm as an Independent Doukhobor at Blaine Lake, Sask.[59]

John G. Evin, photographed in Cowley, Alta., circa 1926. (Jonathan J. Kalmakoff collection)

Evin subsequently returned to the Kootenay with his family of five. However, if they lived at Skalistoye, it was exceedingly brief, as from 1933 on they were living at Slocan Park although they continued to own the property.[60]      

The East Half

What is known is that by September 1938, the West Kootenay Power and Light Company had its corporate eye on Evin’s property. At that time, it applied to the International Joint Commission to make certain river improvements upstream from its Corra Linn dam; namely dredging the Kootenay River at Grohman Narrows and excavating rock on the south side of the narrows at Evin’s property to improve river flow for flood control and hydroelectric power generation.[61] The Commission green-lit the project in December 1938.[62]

Within weeks, the West Kootenay Power and Light Company acquired the east half of Evin’s Lot 5180 consisting of 24.3 hectares (60 acres); however, it is unclear whether it did so by purchase or expropriation.[63] Presumably, Evin would have been a willing seller, since the east half contained the rockiest portions of his ranch.

Between April and October 1939, the utility excavated some 500,000 cubic feet of rock, boulders and gravel from the shore of the east half of Lot 5180, along with nine million cubic feet dredged on either side of Narrows Island, thus successfully deepening and widening the narrows where Baillie-Grohman had failed 50 years earlier.[64]

Dredging and excavation work adjacent to Lot 5180, April 1939. (Fred Fransen photo, courtesy Thor Fransen)

Once the river improvement project was completed, the east half of Lot 5180 apparently reverted to the Crown. Four years later, a reserve was placed over it on 9 Dec 1943, as part of an order-in-council securing all vacant Crown land in the province.[65]  

However the land wasn’t actually vacant. At some point prior to 1939, Evin rented out his Skalistoye ranch to William George Hadikin who occupied it with his family. Owing to some mix-up, Hadikin continued to pay rent for the entire Lot 5180 after the east half was transferred to the West Kootenay Power and Light Company. This only became apparent in May 1946 after Evin died.

In order to validate his occupancy of the land and protect the improvements he had made, Hadikin applied to purchase the east half of Lot 5180, now subject to the Crown reserve. The government approved his purchase request on 8 May 1946 by order-in-council at a price of $5.50 per acre for a total of $330.[66]

The reserve was cancelled but the property transfer wasn’t completed until 12 Jul 1947.[67] William Hadikin died at his home on 10 Nov 1948 at age 73 and his wife Mary followed a year later.[68] The property passed to their son Bill W. Hadikin in 1948,[69] who in turn, sold it to Louis H. Skapple in 1952.[70]

The Andersons & Creation of Grohman Narrows Provincial Park

In 1950, Donna and Wilbert Anderson bought the west half of Lot 5180 from the Evin estate and began farming, although the property was not actually transferred into their name until August 1954.[71] By 1961, they also purchased the east half of Lot 5180 from Louis Skapple.[72]

In 1966, the Department of Highways bought 19 acres of the Anderson Ranch as part of a project to reroute Highway 3A through the middle of the property. The purchase saved the government the trouble of building an underpass and fence for the Andersons’ cattle.

However, the Andersons only agreed to the sale on the condition that the northerly portion of the land, now cut off by the highway, be developed as a park. The government paid for the property but for some reason it was never properly conveyed. Officials tried to rectify this oversight in 1971, minus the conditions of the 1966 agreement. The Andersons refused.[73]

Incidentally, one of the workers rerouting Highway 3A through the ranch in 1967 was John N. Derhousoff, who, according to his daughter Joyce Tucker, recalled that it was a former Doukhobor orchard.[74] John approached Wilbert Anderson about picking the fruit from the orchard trees, now gone to wild. Anderson agreed, and for the next 15 years, the Derhousoff family went to Skalistoye, as they still called it, to pick fruit each fall.[75] 

Meanwhile, in 1971, the Department of Highways let the City of Nelson build a road through the north part of the property to access its new sewage treatment plant, built on adjoining Crown land. This violated the agreement with the Andersons, who still held title to the property.[76]  The access road was constructed directly through the original two-storey ranch house and outbuildings, resulting in their demolition.  

In 1978, the City of Nelson asked the Andersons to let them use part of the property for an incinerator. They declined. The provincial government then tried to clear the way for the incinerator by establishing the entire 19 acres as a highway and obtaining title. But it became a moot point when Nelson residents defeated the proposed incinerator in a referendum.[77]

The BC Ombudsman’s office investigated the matter, concluding the actions of the highways ministry were “unjust and improper.” The Ombudsman also helped find a solution that gave the City of Nelson continued access to their sewage treatment plant while converting the remaining property to a park.[78]

District Lot 5180, showing original ranch building locations and Grohman Narrows Provincial Park boundaries.

Grohman Narrows Provincial Park was finally established on 21 May 1981 containing 13.23 hectares (33 acres), but a few months later, it was reduced to 10.23 hectares (25 acres). It may have simply been the correction of a typo, but the order-in-council didn’t provide a reason. The park consists of the northerly Lot 1 of District Lot 5180 and an adjacent unsurveyed mid-channel island, known as Narrows Island.[79]

The park wasn’t formally dedicated until a year after its creation. The BC Ombudsman, Karl Friedmann, was present at the opening with other officials and the Andersons.[80] Friedmann previously noted in his annual report: “Although the Parks Branch has decided to give the park a rather dry name for historical reasons, to me it will always be the Anderson Provincial Park.”[81]

A monument in the park recognizes the Andersons, but otherwise it’s devoid of interpretive signage. No acknowledgement was made during the park process that Lot 5180 was a Doukhobor farm for over 40 years, although Donna Anderson briefly mentioned this fact in a family history she contributed to Granite Road Memories, a local history book published in 1985 and reprinted in 2020.

BC Ombudsman Karl Friedmann poses with Donna and Wilbert Anderson at the opening of Grohman Narrows Provincial Park in 1982, as seen in the Nelson Daily News. The plaque is also seen below in 2020.

The Andersons retained the southerly portion of the property, Lot A of District Lot 5180, containing 46.3 hectares (114.41 acres) for several more decades. Today, it is the site of a mini-storage facility and surplus store development, which stand across the highway from the park.

Over the course of the past half-century, subdivision, highway construction and new development have made it difficult to imagine what the Skalistoye ranch originally looked like in full bloom. However, vestiges are still visible today to those who look for it.  The foundations of the one-storey ranch house lie just south of the head of the loop trail at the parking lot. The barn foundations can be found on the lakeside of the trail, half-way between the parking lot and the road to the sewage treatment plant. A row of fruit trees stand along the sewage treatment plant access road itself, while others can be found near the mini-storage facility. These, and the memories held by descendants of the ranch families, all bear witness to its communal fruit-growing past.

Foundations of the one-storey ranch house near the head of the trail loop at the parking lot. (Courtesy Stan Sherstobitoff)
Foundations of the large barn on the lake side of the trail loop, halfway between the parking lot and waste treatment plant access road. (Courtesy Stan Sherstobitoff)
Orchard trees along the road between Grohman Narrows Park and the City of Nelson sewage treatment plant, 2021.

After Word

Special thanks to Stan Sherstobitoff, Sharon Hoodicoff, Valentina Loukianoff, Galena Hadikin, Steve Hoodicoff, Cecil Fominoff, Bill W. Evin, Vera Maloff, Sierra Dante and Steve Cleary for sharing their information and photographs.

This article was originally published on Greg Nesteroff’s Kutne Reader blog site on April 1, 2021; updated on May 17, 2021.

It was subsequently republished as a five-part series in the West Kootenay Advertiser as follows:

Place Names Associated With D.L. 5180Dates
The Narrows1882-86
Recluse Mine1898-1908
Quarry Siding1902-at least 1911
Bunker Ranch1901-07
Durban Ranch1907-11
Skalistoye1911-54/61
Anderson Ranch1950/54-66
Grohman Narrows Provincial Park1981-present

End Notes

[1] Mabel E. Jordon, “The Kootenay Reclamation and Colonization Scheme and William Adolph Baillie-Grohman” in British Columbia Historical Quarterly, (Vol XX, Nos. 3 and 4, July-October 1956) at 187-220.

[2] The Daily News (Nelson), 28 Jul 1910 reported that Granite rancher Frank Phillips “brought in a number of Indian curious … He found them in an Indian mound which is supposed to have been an old Indian battle ground …”

[3] First Nations’ Ethnography and Ethnohistory in British Columbia’s Lower Kootenay/Columbia Hydropower Region, Randy Bouchard and Dorothy Kennedy (Castlegar: Columbia Power Corporation, 2000) at 229-30.

[4] Supra, note 2.

[5] The property was legally described as “50 acres on the left bank at the Narrows”: Jordon, supra, note 1; “Lease: Kootenay Reclamation and Colonization,” British Columbia Sessional Papers, 1887, at 315-32.  See also International Kootenay Lake Board of Control, 2005 Annual Report to the International Joint Commission (Vancouver, 2005) at 6.

[6] Jordon, ibid.

[7] The Miner (Nelson), 19 Nov 1898; The Daily News (Nelson), 12 Nov 1903 and 15 Oct 1908; Crown Grant No. 1212 dated 27 Feb 1905.

[8] David Norcross writing in Granite Road Memories (Granite Road Women’s Institute, 1985) at 12.

[9] Crown Grant No. 1458 dated 3 July 1901, viewed at: http://a100.gov.bc.ca/pub/gator/crowngrantdetail.do?grantId=014785.

[10] The Daily News (Nelson), 25 Apr 1902, 10 Oct 1902, 29 Mar 1908 to 02 Aug 1908.

[11] The Daily News (Nelson), 24 Apr 1902, 27 Jul 1907.

[12] The Daily News (Nelson), 5-6 April 1911.

[13] The Daily News (Nelson), 20 Jan 1904.

[14] The Daily News (Nelson), 15 Dec 1908.

[15] The Daily News (Nelson), 15 Jun 1905, 26 Aug 1906, 7 Nov 1908, 17 Jun 1909, 12 Feb 1910, 12 Apr 1910, 11 Apr 1911. 

[16] The Daily News (Nelson), 8 Jan 1912.

[17] The Daily News (Nelson), 14 Jun 1907; AFB 24/387 No. 7288a registered 26 Jul 1907.

[18] The Daily News (Nelson), 10 Aug 1907, and 10 Apr 1911. See also: Robert William Hulbert Family Tree by Dave May on Ancestry.ca. Hulbert moved to the Lower Mainland and founded the Coquitlam Star.

[19] The Mail Herald (Revelstoke) 2 Aug 1908; The Daily News (Nelson), 11 and 15 Dec 1908 and 1 Jun 1910; Creston Review 10 Jun 1909.

[20] The Daily News (Nelson), 29 Mar 1908 to 2 Aug 1908.

[21] The Daily News (Nelson), 5 April 1911.

[22] The Daily News (Nelson), 2 Aug 1908, 6 Jan 1909, 16 Mar 1910.

[23] The Daily News (Nelson), 2 Aug 1908, 6 Jan 1909, 16 Mar 1910.

[24] AFB 27/256 No. 11954a registered 5 Jan 1910.

[25] The Daily News (Nelson), 5-6 April 1911.

[26] Agreement for Sale dated 7 April 1911 between Ernest A. McCallum, Walter H.A. Hill and Edgar D. McCallum and Kanstantan (sic) Popoff appended to Certificate of Title 7275-I dated 17 April 1920; The Daily News (Nelson), 10 Apr 1911. The realtors went on to become two of the most successful businessmen and real estate developers in Regina’s history: https://tinyurl.com/fwjbv4a9.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Assignment of Agreement for Sale dated 15 April 1911 between Kanstantan (sic) Popoff and Peter Verigin appended to Certificate of Title 7275-I dated 17 April 1920; “Quick profits in Bunker ranch,” The Daily News (Nelson), 17 Apr 1911. 

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, “The Doukhobor Jam-Making Enterprise” in West Kootenay Advertiser, 23-30 April and 7, 14, 21 May 2020: https://tinyurl.com/7938yz47; https://tinyurl.com/4h7ka3kk; https://tinyurl.com/43axfdjk; https://tinyurl.com/pr8f6yc5; https://tinyurl.com/vjj9pcuj.

[33] The Daily News (Nelson), 5 April 1911.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid.

[38] The Daily News (Nelson), 6 Jan 1913.

[39] William Rozinkin, correspondence to Jonathan J. Kalmakoff dated 3 Jun 2003; Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, “Doukhobor Place Names” in ISKRA No. 1951-1965 (USCC, 2002).

[40] Indenture dated 1 Nov 1917 between Peter Verigin and the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, Limited appended to Certificate of Title 7275-I dated 17 April 1920.

[41] AFB 33/2 No. 22290a registered 18 Sept 1917.

[42] Certificate of Title 7275-I dated 17 April 1920.

[43] 1921 Canada census, viewed at https://tinyurl.com/yxrv28hf and https://tinyurl.com/y6997qcv. Note Brilliant Fominoff was reportedly the first Doukhobor child born in BC. When leader Peter V. Verigin heard of his birth, he visited, offered a blessing, and asked to name the newborn Brilliant. In his late teens, Brilliant contracted tuberculosis and at Verigin’s recommendation, he went to Arizona for treatment, dying there in 1928 age 19: ISKRA, 3 Mar 2008.

[44] Cecil Fominoff, interview with Greg Nesteroff, 26 Mar 2020.

[45] Sharon Hoodicoff, interview with Jonathan Kalmakoff, 3 Apr 2021.

[46] Ibid.

[47] Ibid.

[48] List of Doukhobors Camped at Porto Rico, November 24, 1929 (GR 1725 – Attorney General Correspondence – [B-7621] – File P291-17 – 1929-1930 – pp. 109 to 111); https://tinyurl.com/zauddbmp.  

[49] Ann Malahoff, interview with Sharon Hoodicoff for Jonathan Kalmakoff, 3 Apr. 2021.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Steve Hoodicoff, interview with Jonathan Kalmakoff, 3 Apr 2021.

[52] The Doukhobors in British Columbia, Vladimir N. Snesarev (Harry W. Trevor), 1931, Appendix 1, List 3 at 9.

[53] For average fruit yields at Nelson and elsewhere in the Kootenay at the time, see Bealby, supra, note 38.

[54] Snesarev, supra, note 48.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Certificate of Title 32075-I dated 30 March 1931.

[57] Minutes of the first meeting of The Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood dated 8 Sept 1917, Doukhobor Collection of James Mavor, viewed at: https://tinyurl.com/583dz2ut.

[58] 1921 Canada Census viewed at: https://tinyurl.com/ddv7hs6b; 1926 Census of Prairie Provinces viewed at: https://tinyurl.com/7rw425jf.

[59] Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, The Society of Named Doukhobors, 1930 Saskatchewan Membership List (Regina: 2004) viewed at https://tinyurl.com/eeasmpk7.

[60] John W. Evin, interview with Jonathan J. Kalmakoff, 16 Mar 2021, Red Deer, Ab.

[61] International Joint Commission, Kootenay Lake Order, dated in New York on 11 Nov 1938 viewed at: https://tinyurl.com/6uycftrb.

[62] Ibid.

[63] Supra, note 48.

[64] BC Hydro, Grohman Narrows Channel Improvement Project, September 12, 2013 viewed at: https://tinyurl.com/vsnj8n9.

[65] British Columbia Order-in-Council 1653, 9 Dec 1943, viewed at: https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/oic/arc_oic/1653_1943.

[66] British Columbia Order-in-Council 963, 8 May 1946, viewed at: https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/oic/arc_oic/0963_1946.

[67] Crown Grant No. 2240 dated 12 July 1947 viewed at: https://tinyurl.com/y4mn6gm7.

[68] The Province (Vancouver), 19 Nov 1948.

[69] Certificate of Title 74252-I dated 1948.

[70] Certificate of Title 91205-I dated 1952.

[71] Donna Anderson writing in Granite Road Memories (Granite Road Women’s Institute, 1985) at 59; Certificate of Title 99407-I dated 6 Aug 1954.

[72] Certificate of Title 125191-I dated 1961.

[73] 1980 Annual Report of the Ombudsman to the Legislature of British Columbia, supra at 55-56.

[74] Joyce Tucker, interview with Jonathan Kalmakoff, 3 Apr 2021.

[75] Ibid.

[76] Ibid, p. 56.

[77] Ibid; “Couple win a 15-year wrangle,” Nelson Daily News, Rita Moir, 5 Jun 1981.

[78] Ibid.

[79] Grohman Narrows Park in BC Geographic Names, viewed at

http://apps.gov.bc.ca/pub/bcgnws/names/37697.html; and British Columbia Order-in-Council 1220, 21 Jul 1981, viewed at https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/oic/arc_oic/1220_1981.

[80] “Local park area is dedicated,” Nelson Daily News, 25 May 1982.

[81] 1980 Annual Report of the Ombudsman to the Legislature of British Columbia (Victoria: Queen’s Printer for British Columbia, 1979) at 57.

Categories
Historical

The Doukhobor Trading Store in Blairmore, Alberta

By Jonathan J. Kalmakoff

Although the historical Doukhobor connection to Cowley and Lundbreck, Alberta is well known, few would associate them with the Crowsnest Pass.  Yet for decades in the Teens, Twenties and Thirties, the Pass was an important market for Doukhobor communally-grown field and garden products. And for a brief time, they even established a commercial retail outlet there. This article traces the forgotten history of the Doukhobor trading store in Blairmore.

Background

Beginning in 1915, the Doukhobor enterprise known as the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (‘CCUB’) purchased land near Cowley and Lundbreck for a new agricultural colony.[1] Within several years, it acquired over 14,000 acres of some of the best grain-growing and grazing land in the foothills, on which over 250 Doukhobors established a dozen settlements.

The Russian-speaking settlers lived communally. All goods, livestock and land were held in common, all fieldwork and animal husbandry was done jointly and all income was deposited in a central treasury. They did not receive wages for their labour, but were provided with all basic necessities by the organization. Sober-minded, industrious and simple-living, they embodied their motto of ‘Toil and Peaceful Life.’

A Doukhobor communal home north of Lundbreck, AB, c. 1920. Courtesy Koozma J. Tarasoff.

To bring their land to peak production, the Doukhobors practiced irrigation and worked it with heavy machinery, running six steam engines. To store their grain, they built a 35,000-bushel grain elevator at Lundbreck in 1915[2] and a 70,000-bushel elevator at Cowley in 1916,[3] along with large warehouses at each point to store and distribute their purchased supplies. And in 1922, they moved the Pincher Creek flour mill to Lundbreck to commercially mill the wheat they grew and that of their neighbors.[4] 

In addition to grain-growing, the CCUB members raised several hundred head each of horses, shorthorn cattle and sheep.[5] Being strict vegetarians, they did not raise the animals for meat; rather the horses were used for draft labour, the cattle to produce hundreds of pounds of milk, cheese and other dairy products, and the sheep for their wool. For livestock feed, they produced enormous quantities of hay, alfalfa, clover, timothy and other forage.

The Doukhobors also grew huge truck gardens of assorted vegetables, including potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, carrots, cucumbers and more.  

The colonists were largely self-sufficient, consuming what they produced. They also produced a large surplus of farm products, much of which was shipped by railcar load to CCUB settlements in B.C. in exchange for fresh fruit, jams and other goods communally produced there. Excess grain was marketed by rail. Excess feed, flour and vegetables were sold locally or else conveyed by wagon-load up the Crowsnest Pass.[6]

Trading at towns along the Pass, the Doukhobors found a ready market among the ranchers and miners living there, who paid a premium for their fresh farm products. Indeed, this trade proved lucrative enough that in 1924, the Doukhobors decided to establish a permanent commercial presence in the Crowsnest.    

From at least 1917 to 1937, the Doukhobors marketed their farm and field products along the 25-mile route between Cowley and Sentinel, AB. Mundy’s Map of the Province of Alberta, 1912.

Store Purchase

In February 1924, the CCUB purchased the former Poggiali store premises in the village of Blairmore from local realtor and insurance agent Chrystom J. Tompkins and CPR agent James J. Murray of Frank.[7] The $4,000.00 purchase was made under an agreement for sale whereby payment was made in three yearly installments, with title transferring to the purchasers upon payment in full.[8]

Notice of Blairmore store acquisition by the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, Blairmore Enterprise, February 7, 1924.

The 25,000-square foot pie-shaped lot (Lots 10, 11 and Pt A of Block 2) was located at the east end of Blairmore on Victoria Street (now 20th Avenue), the town’s main thoroughfare, near the corner of 13th Avenue (now 135th Street) at the present site of 13601 and 13609 20th Avenue.

The store (on Lot 10) was of a typical boomtown design – a two-story, rectangular 35 x 45 foot wood-frame structure with whitewashed clapboard exterior and a rectilinear false façade attached to a gable roof to given an impression of a larger size from the street.[9] The façade had large display windows and a bracketed cornice. The main floor housed the store and upper floor contained office/living quarters.  

It was built in 1910 or early 1911 by Italian immigrants Antonio and Angelina Poggiali who ran a grocery and dry goods store there (as part of a chain of three stores in Blairmore, Bellevue and Frank) in conjunction with their next door residence/rooming house until May 1922, when they sold out to Tompkins and Murray and moved to the Bronx, New York.[10]

Fire insurance map of the Doukhobor store property (marked in red) at Blairmore, AB. This September 1931 patch covers the original October 1925 map, which had the words ‘Flour and Feed’ superimposed over the buildings. Western Canada Fire Underwriters Association.

A 20 x 20 foot post-frame barn with hip roof (Lot 11) and a 20 x 25 foot log stable with hip roof (Lot A) at the rear of the property housed up to four horses used to pull the store drays (low, flat delivery wagons without sides used to haul freight).[11]

Retail Operations

The CCUB assigned Nicholas J. Verigin (1866-1950) to manage the new store, assisted by his son-in-law Alex M. Salekin (1885-1957). A nephew of Doukhobor leader Peter V. Verigin, Nicholas was regarded for his integrity and knowledge of basic business principles. Alex, a kucher (‘coachman’) for the Doukhobor leader when he visited the locality,[12] shared these qualities and also possessed basic fluency in English. Relocating from Lundbreck, they took up residence above the store with their combined family of eight.

Reporting to the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood of Alberta (the CCUB’s Alberta subsidiary) branch office in Cowley, the men were responsible for all aspects of store inventory management and sales.  

When a freight load of Doukhobor farm products arrived at the Canadian Pacific Railway station in Blairmore, the men drove the store drays and teams down Victoria Street to the depot, where they transferred sacks, boxes, bales and pallets from the standing railcar to the station platform, and from the platform to the dray. It sometimes took several wagon-loads to haul away the entire shipment.

Blairmore, east main street, about 1925. Doukhobor store marked in red. Crowsnest And Its People.

The stock was then hauled back to the store, unloaded, sorted and stored until it was needed. To accommodate greater storage, Verigin and Salekin erected a one-story 52 x 45 foot wood-frame warehouse on a concrete slab foundation with flat slanted roof (Lot 11) adjoining the east side of the store in mid-1924[13] using lumber shipped from the CCUB’s Kootenay sawmills. Samples of merchandise were prominently displayed in the store windows.

The store primarily sold local communally-produced flour (100 lb sacks), livestock feed (baled forage and 100 lb sacks of oats) and chicken feed (100 lb sacks of cracked/broken grains, bran and other mill screenings). It also offered bagged wool as well as fresh eggs, butter, cheese and cream by the pound, and a wide array of seasonal fresh vegetables.

In addition to field and garden products produced by the CCUB at Cowley and Lundbreck, the store brought in seasonal fresh fruit (apples, pears, plums, peaches and cherries) grown in the CCUB orchards in the Kootenays along with the famous ‘K.C. Brand’ jams produced at the CCUB jam factory in Brilliant. Communally-milled lumber, poles, shingles and fence posts from the Kootenays were likely sold on order.

The Doukhobors sold goods at prevailing local prices.[14] However, its costs were markedly lower than other retailers since the CCUB produced all its own goods and used unpaid communal labour at all stages of the supply chain without the intervention of middlemen or commission agents. Its only external cost was for rail freight, which all local merchants bore. The store thus earned a higher profit margin than its local competitors.  

Doukhobor market produce was immensely popular in the Pass. Blairmore Enterprise, May 5, 1927.

The Doukhobors did not advertise in the local Blairmore Enterprise newspaper, relying instead on established word of mouth, particularly among Ukrainian, Polish, Czech and other immigrant coal miners and laborers. Based out of the store, Verigin and Salekin sold and delivered dray loads of goods throughout Blairmore and surrounding towns within a 3-5 mile radius, such as Sentinel, Coleman, Lille, Hillcrest, Frank, Bellevue and Maple Leaf.

In addition to selling farm products, the Doukhobors offered cartage services, hauling freight by wagon for hire. For instance, Veregin and Salekin were engaged to haul rock, cement and supplies by local Italian contractor H.J. Pozzi for the cribbing of Lyon (now Blairmore) Creek near 9th Avenue (now 131st Street) between March 1924 and February 1925, earning $450.00.[15]   

Paul N. Potapoff (1885-1958), branch manager of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood of Alberta in Cowley, made periodic visits to Blairmore to oversee and inspect the store operation, examine the ledger and account books and collect the cash revenue held in the office strong box.[16]

Letterhead of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood of Alberta, Limited, the CCUB’s Alberta subsidiary. University of Alberta Archives.

Family Life

The Verigin and Salekin family lived much the same simple life as other members of the CCUB. They were issued clothes (shoes, boots, etc.), foodstuffs (flour, salt, grain etc.) and provisions in exchange for living and working at the store. Their days were spent in communal labour with few opportunities for leisure.

Nikolai’s wife Anastasia and their daughter, Alex’s wife Mary, performed all domestic tasks including cooking, baking, housecleaning, washing, sewing and mending clothes and child-rearing. They milked the milk cow allotted to the family and grew a vegetable garden behind the store for their own use.

Upon their arrival in town, the youngest Verigin child Anastasia attended the Blairmore Public School. The Salekin children followed upon reaching school age. On enrollment, the Doukhobor children spoke only Russian, but over the course of the year, readily acquired English and excelled at their studies.

Portrait of Alex M. Salekin, his wife Mary (nee Verigin) and sons Peter (left) and Wasyl (right) taken at the Gushul Studio, Blairmore, AB, 1924. Courtesy Margaret Salekin.

In terms of spiritual life, the family held prayer meetings (moleniye) on Sunday mornings in their living quarters, conducted in the Russian language. The afternoon was spent in group singing of hymns and folk songs or visiting Doukhobor friends and family in from Cowley and Lundbreck, followed by Sunday dinner.

Community Upheaval

After a successful first year, the Doukhobor store in Blairmore seemed poised to continue business operations into the foreseeable future, had it not been for a series of events that left the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood devastated and divided.

Following the death of Peter V. Verigin in a mysterious train explosion at Farron, B.C. in October 1924, the CCUB was plunged into grief over the loss of their leader. Members withdrew children from public schools for a four-month period of mourning.[17] By December, a split arose over leadership succession. The minority ‘Leaders’ group comprised of CCUB officials and Veregin’s family members backed his niece Anastasia Holuboff and the status quo; while the majority rank and file ‘Working Brothers’ chose his son Peter in Russia and called to replace the managerial elite with their own candidates, or at least someone different from those in charge.[18]

In the upheaval following Peter V. Verigin’s death, Doukhobor ‘Workers’ organized to gain a greater voice in the affairs of the CCUB and to oust the existing managerial elite. Lethbridge Herald, January 8, 1925.

Amidst this upheaval, Nicholas J. Verigin found himself at odds with the CCUB majority on several fronts. First, he had continued to let his children attend public school in Blairmore following his uncle’s death. Second, as a Verigin family member, he was presumed by default to support Holuboff as successor. Finally, as a member of the ‘Leaders’ group who held an office job in the CCUB, he was now viewed as a privileged apparatchik (‘functionary’) and nepotee living on the shoulders of the working Doukhobors.   

Eviction from Community

Consequently, within weeks of the election of a ‘Working Brother’ to the Cowley branch directors in January 1925,[19] the Verigin and Salekin family in Blairmore ceased receiving supplies and rations from the CCUB branch office, their milking cow sent to winter in Cowley was not returned to them, they were relieved of their posts at the store, and were allegedly advised they were no longer members of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood.[20] 

Notice of disavowal of debts of Nicholas J. Verigin and Alex M. Salekin by the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood of Alberta, Blairmore Enterprise, February 19, 1925.

To this end, in February 1925, Community officials printed a public notice of disavowal of debt in the Blairmore Enterprise and Lethbridge Herald: “The Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood of Alberta, Limited, wish to state that they will not be responsible for any debts incurred by Aleck Seliken and Nick Veregin, who were running our store in Blairmore.  All business may be transacted care of head office, Cowley. Dated at Cowley, Alberta, this 16th day of February, 1925.”[21]

What was expected to happen next was that the Verigin and Salekin family would vacate the store to be replaced by another Doukhobor family who would carry on the business on behalf of the CCUB. However, Nicholas stood his ground and refused to leave, claiming he was entitled to the property as his share of the communal organization.[22] A stalemate ensued for the remainder of 1925.  

In the interim, the CCUB at Cowley and Lundbreck continued to sell field and garden products throughout the Pass by the wagonload.[23] At the same time, the CCUB Grand Forks branch opened a Doukhobor fruit store in Cranbook on the other side of the Pass in 1925-1926.

By 1926, local CCUB officials decided on a new tack. Upon obtaining legal title to the store property in February,[24] they purported to sell it to land surveyor John D. Anderson of Trail, B.C. by agreement for sale in April.[25] Anderson subsequently initiated eviction proceedings against the Doukhobor ‘squatters’ living there.

The Verigin-Salekin-Glookoff household residing in the CCUB store property at Blairmore, Alberta, 1926 Census of Prairie Provinces.

By then, Nicholas had more family living on the property. At the taking of the Census of Prairie Provinces in June 1926, the occupants were: Nicholas, 60, wife Mabel (Anastasia), 52, and daughter Mabel (Anastasia), 15; their daughter Mary, 25, husband Alex Salekin, 26, and sons Pete, 5, Wasyl, 4, and Alexander, 5 months; and their other daughter Helen (Hanya), 35, husband Kuzma W. Glookoff, 36, and daughter Mabel (Anastasia), 16. Listed on the same lot in a different building was their niece Vera, husband Jack J. Smoroden, both 34, and children John, 15, Jack, 6, and Vera, 4.[26] 

Faced with eviction, Nicholas doubled down on his ownership claim, producing a 1924 letter from his uncle, the late Peter V. Verigin, purportedly deeding him the premises.[27] This unexpected move frustrated not only the eviction action but Anderson’s purchase, with title reverting back to the CCUB in October 1926.[28]        

Nicholas Verigin then went on the offensive.

Lawsuit

In January 1927, Nicholas launched a suit in the Supreme Court of Alberta against the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood alleging that he was unlawfully expelled from it because he educated his children according to the laws of Canada and claiming $21,466.00 as recompense for 26 years of labour performed for the organization, $5,000.00 damages and an order establishing his right to the Blairmore property.[29]

Nicholas J. Verigin’s lawsuit against the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood for recompense of communal labour and his share of communal assets made national headlines. Calgary Herald, January 25, 1927.

The suit was an important test case that captured the attention of the Canadian public and Doukhobors alike. If successful, it would set a major precedent entitling other members to secede from the CCUB with financial compensation claims against it, which might very well bankrupt the organization.

Upon cross-examination at trial, however, CCUB officials rebutted the claims by contending they had always counseled that the children be sent to public schools when possible; that Verigin was mistaken in his belief that he was expelled; that he was still a member with full rights; and that he would be given a comfortable living for the rest of his life.[30] After a 3-day trial in June 1927, the case was dismissed on the basis that Verigin failed to prove he was in fact expelled.

Nicholas remained undeterred. In mid-September 1927, he filed a formal appeal to the Alberta Court of Appeal alleging that, irrespective of whether he was evicted, the CCUB, by organizing itself in such a way that individual member shareholders were debarred from obtaining their share of the organization’s assets, and by removing its children from public education, was contrary to public policy.[31]

If Verigin’s initial lawsuit threatened to pave the way for financial claims against the CCUB, his appeal challenged the legitimacy of the organization’s very corporate existence, since for the first time in the history of Canadian courts, it was alleged that the formation of community along the lines of the Doukhobors’ was illegal.

Settlement & Transfer to Nicholas Verigin

Only days before the appeal was to be heard, Nicholas’ first cousin, Peter P. ‘Chistyakov’ Verigin, arrived in Calgary, Alberta from Russia to assume leadership of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood in Canada.[32] Recognizing the tremendous risk to the organization posed by the appeal, the new leader promptly and quietly settled the matter out of court in October 1927. The full details of the settlement are unknown; however, it included the transfer the Blairmore property to Nicholas in exchange for his withdrawal of the appeal.[33]

Transfer of the Blairmore store property from the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood of Alberta Ltd. to Nicholas J. Verigin for $1.00, January 9, 1930. Alberta Land Titles South.

Following these somewhat dramatic events, Nicholas J. Verigin quietly lived at the property with his family for another 3 years. In October 30, 1930, his wife Anastasia died, whereafter he sold the property and moved with his son-in-law Alex M. Salekin and family to Lundbreck where they rejoined the CCUB; this detente proved fleeting, however, and by November 1932, Nicholas and the Salikins were living in Pincher Creek as Independent Doukhobors.[34]

Thus ended the brief but unique and eventful Doukhobor communal tenure in Blairmore.

Epilogue: Subsequent Owners

Between September 1931 and March 1936, the premises was an auto-wrecking business owned by Silva Sicotte.[35] From December 1937 to August 1953, it operated as ‘East End Service Garage’ run by J.L. ‘Pat’ McLeod.[36] On or around August 1953, the buildings, now in rough condition, were demolished, leaving only the warehouse concrete foundation remaining until at least 1973.[37]  

From 1937 to 1953, the former Doukhobor store at Blairmore was operated as the ‘East End Service Garage’. Crowsnest Museum and Archives, CM-BL-06-54.

After Word

Special thanks to Ian McKenzie, Crowsnest Heritage Initiative, for his kind support and assistance throughout the development of this article.

An abridged version of this article was originally published in:

Today, the site of the Doukhobor store is occupied by the residence at 13601 20th Ave and Soo Blairmore (formerly Royal Canadian Legion) at 13609 20th Ave in Blairmore, AB.

End Notes

[1] For general information about Doukhobor settlement in Alberta, see: John W. Friesen and Michael M. Verigin, The Community Doukhobors: A People in Transition (Ottawa: Borealis Press, 1996) at 47-48, 106-109; Barry Potyondi, Where the Rivers Meet, A History of the Upper Oldman River Basin to 1939 (Lethbridge: Robins Southern Printing, 1990) at 163-166, 208-209; Margaret Salekin, “Doukhobor History of the Lundbreck-Cowley Area of Alberta” in ISKRA Nos. 2034-2036 (2010) and Doukhobor Heritage: https://tinyurl.com/yc6226an; Koozma J. Tarasoff, Plakun Trava: The Doukhobors (Mir Publication Society, 1982) at 113.

[2] List of licensed elevators and warehouses in the Western Grain Inspection Division (Ottawa: Dept. of Trade and Commerce, 1915/1916); F.W. Godsal, ‘The Mail Bag’, The Grain Growers’ Guide, May 17, 1916.

[3] List of licensed elevators and warehouses in the Western Grain Inspection Division (Ottawa: Dept. of Trade and Commerce, 1916/1917); Grain and Farm Service Centers. c. 1, v. 37, Jul-Dec 1916; Blairmore Enterprise, September 29, 1916; Bellevue Times, September 29, 1916; Calgary Herald, October 2, 1916.

[4] Lethbridge Herald, April 22, 1922 and May 11, 1922; Blairmore Enterprise, September 13, 1923, October 25, 1923 and May 22, 1924; Irma Times, May 4, 1923; Redcliff Review, May 10, 1923; American Miller and Processor, Volume 28, 1923.

[5] For CCUB Alberta livestock statistics, see: Blairmore Enterprise, April 28, 1921; Lethbridge Herald, March 23 and 27, 1922, November 5, 1926 and September 4, 1928; Snesarev, V.N., The Doukhobors in British Columbia (University of British Columbia, Department of Agriculture, 1931), Appendix 1; Liuba Verigin, “The Alberta Doukhobors”, an unpublished paper prepared for the Institute of Doukhobor Studies, Castlegar, B.C., April 21, 1976.

[6] Lethbridge Telegram, March 1, 1917; Calgary Herald, February 10, 1920; Lethbridge Herald, November 5, 1926 and May 12, 1932; Blairmore Enterprise, May 5, 1927; Potyondi, supra, note 1 at 165.

[7] Blairmore Enterprise, February 7, 1924; Transfer of Title dated February 3, 1926 from Chrystostom J. Tompkins and James Johnston Murray to the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood of Alberta Limited re: Lots 10 and 11 in Block 2 and the most southerly 62 feet of Lot A in Block 2, Plan 2897R Blairmore, and registered as No. 4860 DI on February 13, 1926, with new Certificate of Title No. 34E dated February 13, 1926 issued in the name of the latter party. 

[8] Ibid. According to the newspaper account, the Community leased the property from Tomkins and Murray in February 1924. However, the transfer documents show that when the Community obtained title in February 1926, it paid $1,500.00 against the property, then valued at $4,000.00. This indicates an ‘agreement for sale’ arrangement, whereby the purchaser takes immediate possession of a property, which is paid for by installments, while the seller retains title as security until payment in full is received. Agreements for sale were a very common means of purchasing property in Western Canada in the Teens and Twenties.

[9] Blairmore, Alberta Fire Insurance Map (Winnipeg: Western Canadian Fire Underwriter’s Association; October 1925, Revised September 1931). Note the 1931 version of the map has a patch glued over Lots 10-11 of Block 2; however, an analysis of the map sheet under light confirmed that all buildings shown on the 1931 patch appeared in the original 1925 sheet; the only difference being that the words “Auto Wrecking” superimposed on the buildings in 1931 originally read “Flour and Feed” in 1925: Peter Peller, Spatial and Numeric Data Services, University of Calgary Archives, correspondence with the writer, October 27, 2020. 

[10] In 1906, Italian immigrants Antonio and Angelina Poggiali and family resettled from New York City to Blairmore, Alberta. In September 1909, they purchased Lots 8-11 of Block 2 at the east end of town: C. of T. No. KM-218, September 7, 1909. By mid-1911, they built two near-identical rectangular two-storey wood-frame structures: the family residence (main floor) and 9-room rooming house (upper floor) on Lot 8; and a grocery store (main floor) with residential space (upper floor) on Lot 10: 1911 Canada Census, District 3, Dub-District 5, p. 32; Henderson’s Alberta Gazetteer and Directory for 1911, p. 89. In October 1913, Antonio expanded the A. Poggiali & Co. retail grocery business, hiring contractor H.J. Pozzi to build 2 new brick stores at Bellevue and Coleman: Blairmore Enterprise, October 17, 1913. However, the expansion soon led to financial difficulty. By April 1914, he held a big cash sale at all three stores, evidently to pay off creditors: Bellevue Times, April 17, 1914. In May 1914, the Canadian Credit Men’s Trust Association seized $6,700 of stock at the 3 stores and sold it by tender: Bellevue Times, May 1, 8, 15, 1914. The same month, Antonio made an assignment of the rest of his estate to creditors: Bellevue Times, May 15 and October 16, 1914. Evidently, Antonio lost the Coleman and Bellevue stores; however, the store in Blairmore (in Angelina’s name) continued to operate: Henderson’s Alberta Gazetteer and Directory for 1914, p. 197: 1916 Census of Prairie Provinces, District 39, Sub-District 10, p. 8. In fall 1915, the Lot 8 residence was stripped and remodeled, removing the rooming quarters and façade: Blairmore Enterprise, July 2, October 1, November 5, 1915. Antonio was operating the Lot 10 store and living at the Lot 8 residence in June 1921: 1921 Canada Census, District 8, Sub-District 28, p. 15. In May 1922, the Poggialis sold the property to Tompkins and Murray and moved to New York: C. of T. No. 27-O-157, May 4, 1922.

[11] Blairmore, Alberta Fire insurance Map, supra, note 9.

[12] Margaret Salekin, correspondence with the writer, May 16, 2022.

[13] In Transfer of Title dated January 9, 1930 from the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood of Alberta Ltd to Nicholas J. Verigin re: Lots 10 and 11 in Block 2 and the most southerly 62 feet of Lot A in Block 2, Plan 2897R Blairmore, and registered as No. 3097EE on January 15, 1920, February 13, 1926, Veregin attested to building the warehouse. As the warehouse appears in the October 1925 version of the Blairmore, Alberta Fire insurance Map, supra, note 9 superimposed with the words “Flour and Feed” over it, it was most likely constructed in 1924 during the operation of the trading store.

[14] A common complaint by English Canadian merchants in Western Canadian towns were Doukhobors sold retail goods was that the Doukhobors’ large pool of unpaid labour enabled them to undercut the local market by selling goods for less than local merchants could afford to; however, research by the writer indicates that the Doukhobors routinely sold goods at prevailing rates, relying instead upon their greater profit margins for the same prices.

[15] Blairmore Enterprise, May 27, 1926; see also the March 6, 13 and 20, April 17, June 26, July 10, December 4, 1924 and January 1, February 19, 1925 editions.

[16] See for example Blairmore Enterprise, January 1, 1925.

[17] Doukhobors belonging to the Community had long been hesitant of public education, fearing it would lead their children away from communal life and their pacifist religious ideals. In the two years prior to Peter V. Verigin’s death, fanatics within the Community burned 8 schools to the ground in British Columbia: The Province, June 1 and 4, 1923; Vancouver Sun, August 12, 1923, April 1, 1924; Vancouver Daily World, June 30, 1923; Grand Forks Gazette, November 23, 1923. Upon his death, Community members withdrew their children from public schools altogether, ostensibly for a period of mourning, until May 1925: Grand Forks Gazette, March 6, 1925; The Province, April 8, 1925; Regina Leader-Post, June 23, 1927. For a comprehensive treatment of Doukhobor schooling see: William Janzen, Limits on Liberty, The Experience of Mennonite, Hutterite and Doukhobor Communities in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).

[18] Winnipeg Tribune, December 4, 1924; Nelson Daily News, December 8, 1924, March 4, 14 and 19, 1925; Winnipeg Free Press, December 11, 1924; Victoria Daily Times, December 17, 1924; Lethbridge Herald, January 8, 1925; The Province, March 18, 1925; Blairmore Enterprise, April 2, 1925; Times Colonist, March 28, 1925.

[19] On January 3, 1925, the appeal of the Doukhobor workers of the Cowley branch of the Community was met by the placing of one of their members, John P. Bojey, on the board of directors: Lethbridge Herald, January 8, 1925.

[20] Lethbridge Herald, February 18, 1927. Nicholas J. Verigin’s sacking from the Community was by no means an isolated case. In the same period, other Community managers belonging to the ‘Leader’ group were relieved of their positions, including Nicholas’s brother Peter J. Verigin in Veregin, Saskatchewan, his cousin Larion W. Verigin (another nephew of the late leader) in Brilliant, and Wasyl W. Lazareff in Trail, British Columbia: The Province, March 14, 1925; The Leader-Post, June 23, 1927.   

[21] Blairmore Enterprise, February 19, 1925; Lethbridge Herald, February 14, 1925.

[22] Lethbridge Herald, January 25, 1927; Blairmore Enterprise, January 27, 1927.

[23] Supra, note 6. There is no evidence that the Blairmore store continued to sell CCUB products after February 1925.

[24] Supra, note 7.

[25] John Drummond Anderson was no stranger to the Doukhobor Community. In 1909, he was hired by the government to survey the road built by the Doukhobors connecting Pass Creek to Brilliant; between 1909-1911, he hired several community members to clear land on his ranch, 7 miles north of Trail on the Columbia River at Sullivan and Murphy Creek; and during the same period he sold the Doukhobor Community fruit from his orchard ranch for their jam factory; he also testified favorably on their behalf at the Doukhobor Royal Commission hearings in Trail in September 1912: Royal Commission Into All Matters Pertaining to the Doukhobor Sect in British Columbia, Transcription of Proceedings, Trail, B.C. Sept 3, 1912 at 148-150; BC Archives GR-0793. In 1915, Anderson sold the Doukhobor Society 525 acres of land south of Castlegar: Nelson Daily News, 1915.02.15. And in 1925, he surveyed the Veregin Subdivision in West Trail for the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood: ‘Plan of Subdivision of Part of Sawmill Block, Reserve, Part of Block 16, Map 465 & Map 465A. With respect to the Blairmore property, it was transferred to Anderson by Transfer of Title dated March 31, 1926 from the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood of Alberta, Limited to John Drummond Anderson re: Lots 10 and 11 in Block 2 and the most southerly 62 feet of Lot A in Block 2, Plan 2897R Blairmore, and registered as No. 4781 on April 13, 1926, with new Certificate of Title No. 34D dated April 13, 1926 issued in the name of the latter party.

[26] 1926 Census of Prairie Provinces, Alberta, Division 49, Sub-Division 11, p. 17.

[27] Lethbridge Herald, January 25 and April 19, 1927; Blairmore Enterprise, January 27, 1927.

[28] Transfer of Title dated October 1, 1926 from John Drummond Anderson to the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood of Alberta, Limited re: Lots 10 and 11 in Block 2 and the most southerly 62 feet of Lot A in Block 2, Plan 2897R Blairmore, and registered as No. 6757 on December 27, 1926, with new Certificate of Title No. 35F dated December 27, 1926 issued in the name of the latter party.

[29] Calgary Herald, January 25, 1927; Calgary Albertan, January 25, 1927; Winnipeg Tribune, January 26, 1927; Lethbridge Herald, January 25 and 27, February 18 and April 19, 1927; Blairmore Enterprise, January 27, February 3 and 17 and April 21, 1927.

[30] The Province, June 22 and 23, 1927; Regina Leader-Post, June 22, 23 and 27, 1927; Montreal Gazette, June 22 and 23, 1927; Edmonton Journal, June 22, 23 and 24, 1927; The Montreal Daily Star, June 22, 1927; Calgary Albertan, June 23, 1927; Blairmore Enterprise, June 23, 1927.

[31] Edmonton Journal, September 14, 1927; Calgary Herald, September 14, 1927; Regina Leader-Post, September 14, 1927; Montreal Gazette, September 14, 1927; Grand Forks Gazette, September 14, 1927.

[32] Upon arriving in Calgary from Moscow, Peter P. Verigin met with a number of Doukhobor delegates from the Community as well as ex-community members, his first cousins Peter J. Verigin and Larion W. Verigin: Calgary Herald, October 6 and 12, 1927; Calgary Alberta, October 7, 1927; Edmonton Journal, October 7 and 10, 1927;

[33] Calgary Herald, October 13, 1927; Blairmore Enterprise, October 20, 1927. Although Nicholas J. Verigin’s appeal was settled in October 1927 and he continued to reside at the Blairmore store in the interim, it was two years before the property was legally transferred into his name:  Transfer of Title dated January 9, 1930 from the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood of Alberta Limited to Nicholas J. Verigin re: Lots 10 and 11 in Block 2 and the most southerly 62 feet of Lot A in Block 2, Plan 2897R Blairmore, and registered as No. 3097 on January 15, 1930, with new Certificate of Title No. 42C dated January 15, 1930 issued in the name of the latter party.

[34] Nicholas J. Verigin’s wife Anastasia’s death was reported in the Blairmore in October 1930 after a short illness: Blairmore Enterprise, October 16, 1930. By the taking of the 1931 Canada Census, Nicholas along with son-in-law Alex M. Salekin and family were living with other CCUB families in the hamlet of Lundbreck: District 221, Sub-District 13, pages 2-3; however Nicholas’ 17-year old daughter Mabel (Anastasia) was boarding at the household of William B. Rhodes in Blairmore: District 221, Sub-District 13, page 3. According to the Blairmore property transfer documents, by November 1932, Verigin and Saliken were living in the town of Pincher Creek as Independents.

[35] Legal title to the property passed from Nicholas J. Verigin to Silva Sicotte by Transfer dated November 23, 1932 and registered as No. 2969 on November 29, 1932, with new Certificate of Title No. 47E dated November 29, 1932 issued to the latter. Evidently, the purchase was made under a prior agreement for sale as the words “Auto Wrecking” were already superimposed on the buildings in the September 1931 Blairmore, Alberta Fire insurance Map: supra, note 9. As only $1,000.00 of the property value of $3,300.00 was paid on transfer, the agreement for sale presumably commenced around September 1931.

[36] From December 1937 to August 1953, the property was held by a succession of legal owners: Certificate of Title No. 52H dated December 13, 1937 issued to Charles Robert Luchia; Certificate of Title No. 61A dated April 2, 1943 issued to Arctic Oil Sales Limited; Certificate of Title No. 68H dated October 2, 1945 issued to Gas & Oil Products Limited; and Certificate of Title 94Z dated August 29, 1953 issued to Anglo American Exploration Ltd. However, the premises was continuously operated during this period as ‘East End Services’ by proprietor J.L. ‘Pat’ McLeod, presumably under lease: Blairmore Enterprise, December 19, 1941, December 18, 1942, June1 and 15, 1945; Lethbridge Herald, August 22, 1938, June 15, 1940, August 9, 1950 and February 22, 1952.

[37] According to Keith Sprlak, a lifetime resident of Blairmore who assumed ownership of the property in June 1973, there were no structures on the property (other than a concrete pad where the warehouse once stood) since the mid-1950s. Given that the last newspaper reference to East End Services dates to February 1952, it is reasonable to presume that the buildings were demolished either immediately prior or after the property changed hands in August 1953: Keith Sprlak, Blairmore, AB, interview with the writer, April 21, 2022.  

Categories
Historical

The Doukhobor Homestead Crisis, 1898-1907

by Kathlyn (Katya) Szalasznyj

In 1899, the Doukhobors settled on homestead lands reserved for them in Saskatchewan by the Dominion government. Materially, they made substantial progress, opening up vast tracts to cultivation over a short period. Legally, however, they had problems with every step of the process. At base was their belief that land belonged to God and any division of land that recognized individual ownership was a violation of God’s laws. Exacerbating this was the Doukhobors’ misunderstanding about the way in which land would be granted, and the government’s misconception of the full implications of the Doukhobor commitment to communalism. By 1905, thousands of Doukhobors refused to take patents on their homesteads. Land hungry settlers and a growing public backlash forced the government to seek a speedy resolution to the ‘Doukhobor issue’ resulting in the cancellation of thousands of homestead entries in 1907. The following scholarly article examines the Doukhobor homestead crisis.  Reproduced by permission from “Spirit Wrestlers: Centennial Papers in Honour of Canada’s Doukhobor Heritage”, Kathlyn Szalasznyi, Gatineau, Quebec, Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1995 © Canadian Museum of Civilization.

Saskatchewan was a place with a future in 1905. For many it was a promising place in which to build a home. Growing political maturity, culminating in the formation of the new province, raised many questions about provincial society and the ways in which its needs would be met. Clearly, “more” was a key superlative: more central homesteads, more roads, more railways, more bridges, more school districts and improved education were just a few critical concerns facing the young province in its first year.

The first harvest at Thunder Hill Colony, Manitoba, Fall 1899.  Library and Archives Canada, PA-022231.

There was another concern, one which flew in the face of the politician, the immigration official, the land agent, the farmer and the rancher, and drew hot and diverse opinions far beyond Saskatchewan’s borders. It was termed “the Doukhobor issue”, a fiery ethnic matter that involved over several hundred thousand acres of good prairie land, almost entirely in Saskatchewan, and Russian group settlers, who occupied the land but refused to obey the laws of the Dominion.

Public opinion tended to express the matter simply. Religious group settlers had arrived before the turn of the century, had been given a generous outlay of reserve land from which to select homesteads, and had been accommodated in their every request, including military exemption and communal residence. Six years later, their progress toward becoming Canadians, loyal British subjects and owners of the lands for which they had at last reluctantly signed, was practically non-existent. Refusing to take a stake and interest in Canada, their peculiar ways were more firmly entrenched than before and their leader, Peter Vasilevich Verigin, was the “King Bee” of a growing agricultural theocracy, with no regard for the rights and freedoms of the individual Doukhobor. How much longer could “these favoured children of the Department of the Interior” be allowed to tie up valuable central homestead lands and to perpetuate Little Russia on the prairie, with no interest in the development of local schools, churches or towns and or in the Canadian political process? One prairie editorial writer of the time stated it thus:

The Department of the Interior knows better than anyone else that somebody, they know who, got a good haul out of the treasury of Canada, which was cheerfully paid. A chronic “koff” almost became epidemic in this country then, and there is a peculiar value attached to a “koff” or a little “off” to one’s name today. Such attachments make it easy to get in “on the groundfloor” in the land scramble, since yet it is only Russians who need apply?

As suggested above, the Doukhobor issue centred mainly on the lands upon which the Doukhobors lived. Still owned by the Crown long after the “ordinary” homesteader would have received patent, the Doukhobors still could not decide if they wished to become Canadian landowners. By 1905, land hunger in central homesteading parts and a growing backlash toward the government that brought the Doukhobors west demanded a speedy resolution to this problem. In accordance, in the following year, the new Minister of the Interior, Frank Oliver, who succeeded Clifford Sifton, appointed a commission to investigate Doukhobor lands and to bring the Doukhobor issue to a speedy conclusion.

From the Doukhobor perspective, the issue at hand was considerably different. Initial concessions from the Canadian authorities and the creation of the reserve of land were accepted by them on their arrival, but past experience dictated a wary existence with the state. What would the laws of Canada require of them? Over a dozen Doukhobor sympathizers across the globe had helped to negotiate an initial deal for Verigin’s suffering religious people, a deal about which the Doukhobors knew extremely little. Homesteads of sixty desiatini in the Russian measure seemed generous. The Doukhobors were assured that block settlement was legally sanctioned by a cooperative farming and a hamlet clause in the Dominion Lands Act, but it was hardly what the Doukhobors later described as the desire to “live as one farm.” Instead the Doukhobor reserve provided for the development of four or five colonies throughout the West, generally settlements of under one thousand inhabitants, thus selected in order that the Doukhobor men might obtain employment on incoming railroads more readily and that, as the immigration officials openly stated, the Doukhobors might be “more rapidly Canadianized.”

Scrubbing and clearing, the Doukhobors made substantial material progress, proving their initial reputation as keen agriculturalists. In the beginning there were many problems impeding the orderly taking of lands, but the Doukhobors knew the majority of them were not of their making.

The Doukhobor reserve, a bare outline around almost unknown townships in 1899, was subject to considerable changes in its early years, shunting Doukhobor holdings back and forth. Oddly, land agents could not agree whether the Doukhobors were to possess all lands in each township or only the even-numbered ones, as in ordinary townships available for homesteading. While the North and South Reserves included all lands, Doukhobors on the Prince Albert Reserve were only allowed to settle on the even-numbered lands. Numerous village houses built upon arrival were later found to be on odd-numbered, railway lands and even outside the reserve, through no fault of the group settlers. Throughout the summer of 1901, the villages of Bogdanovka and Tikhomirnoe of the North Colony petitioned to be included in the reserve: “We are very sorry we did not know this before, as no one explained anything about it to us and now it is a year ago since we began to work the ground.”

One of the communal “barracks” houses that the Doukhobors built at Thunder Hill Colony, Manitoba. Summer of 1899.  Library and Archives Canada, C-008896.

Two townships lacked water and were too heavily treed for settlement and another two overlapped with the Cote Indian Reserve. Five townships had been withdrawn for a sinister reason: because of the adverse opinion of ranchers, farmers and squatters toward the Doukhobors. Ranchers disliked the settlers for their fences. Others thought their insular ways hindered the normal social and economic development of districts and were quick to exhibit their prejudice against these “alien and servile Slav serfs of Europe, who are one degree above the monkey for civilization….” By 1900, there were reports of ranchers tearing down Doukhobor fences and driving cattle into their crops.

The early years in Canada proved that there were wide disparities in the Doukhobor understanding of landowning and village life, disparities that were not so apparent on arrival. Initially, communal holding of land, labour and capital was the general rule, imposed largely by difficult economic conditions in the settlements. Soon cracks in the communal model appeared. There were totally communalistic villages, such as Blagodarnoe in the South Colony, where “…everything to the last needle was held in common.” In contrast, the Prince Albert colony Doukhobors showed a great willingness to take lands as ordinary settlers and to reside on homesteads. By September, 1899 ninety-seven Doukhobors had applied for lands, anxious for choice quarters in the district.

Between the two extremes lay the majority of settlers, which tried to interpret Canadian land law in the light of Peter Vasilevich Verigin’s latest letters from exile. He said little about property-holding, but instructed the settlers not to build large buildings or to immerse themselves in husbandry, which suggested they might move again. Yet during the winter of 1899, Herbert Archer, a local immigration agent and J.S. Crerar, Dominion Land Agent at Yorkton, were able to complete lists of homesteaders in the North and South Reserves and to determine their potential land locations. Unfortunately, due to an oversight, the lists were not acted upon by the land agents until several critical issues preventing Doukhobor entry had emerged.

Could one hold land privately, live apart from the community and still be a Doukhobor? The “Independent” sector believed one could. The Communal Doukhobor, with the assistance of Russian ideologues living among them, held the opposite opinion. He saw the independent brethren falling to the temptations of greed and individualism. If property-holding was the temptation, then the Dominion that offered it was the tempter: compliance with the ordinances of the state could only signal spiritual decline.

The Dominion census of 1901 added fuel to the debate, as census-takers extracted information relating to families and their ages. At least three villages, Petrovka, Troudenia [Trudolubivoe] and Pozaraevka, petitioned for exclusion from this fourth census of the Dominion, writing that “…we now know that we have been written up in police-books, which we do not want.”

Coincidentally, a chiding letter from Lev Tolstoy, whose strong support had so assisted their emigration from Russia, rebuked those who had taken homestead entry, insisting that “if a man acknowledges himself to be a son of God, from that acknowledgement flows the love of his neighbour, the repudiation of violence, of oaths, of state service and of property.”

As land officials pursued the subject of homestead entry, it became clear to the Doukhobors that a separate issue, that of communal cultivation as a means of making improvements on their lands, had yet to be resolved. The Doukhobors generally cultivated lands within a six-mile radius of their villages, with hay meadows and grazing lands held in common, much as they had done under the mir landholding system in Russia. Would this cultivation be accepted in place of the cultivation regulations of the Dominion Lands Act, namely, fifteen acres on each quarter-section, usually completed within a three-year period from the date of entry?

The first Doukhobor binders cut the grain and placed it in swaths to be picked up, tied in sheaves and stooked by the women, 1903.  Library and Archives Canada, C-008893.

To the Doukhobors, communal cultivation was a natural part of operating “as one farm,” their request upon arrival in Canada. The Lands Branch did not think so. Numerous meetings and much correspondence finally resolved the issue, at least for the time. Clifford Sifton, the Minister of the Interior who had negotiated the Doukhobors’ original agreement with the Canadian government, officially expressed homestead policy as it pertained to the Doukhobors in a letter of 15 February 1901:

And I have decided that those who will take their homesteads and accept of free land from the Government may live together in one or more villages, and instead of being compelled to cultivate each quarter-section held by each Doukhobor, that the land around the village itself may be cultivated and the work which otherwise would be required on each individual homestead may be done altogether around the village.

Sifton stressed that only Doukhobors applying for lands would be allowed to live in villages, clearly tying the cultivation concession to the larger and more immediate issue of homestead entry.

The divisive nature of Sifton’s concession was clearly upsetting to the Doukhobors. It threatened to end any semblance of a unified Doukhobor existence, as only homestead entrants and their families could remain in the villages. Outside of a small number of entrants gained at the Prince Albert Dominion Land office, the Doukhobors adamantly refused to enter for homesteads, asking instead to buy lands outrightly at ten dollars a quarter-section.

Verigin arrived in Canada on the heels of this debate and on that of the first pilgrimage of “zealots,” numbering approximately 1,800, who had repudiated all property and the enslaving of animals. He did not disappoint the Lands Branch, spending his first two months dealing with the question of landholding. For the first time on record, another key issue, that of taking an oath of allegiance in order to become British subjects, was discussed at length in relation to homesteading. Whether affirmed or sworn, oath-taking was a serious issue to the Doukhobors, who had suffered much persecution in Russia over it.

Upon inquiring of the regulations and questioning the Lands Branch closely, Verigin urged the Doukhobors to sign for lands without delay. Several years lay between entry and the time of patent, when the oath would have to be faced. Perhaps he realized that homestead entry, in itself, did not constitute placing one’s seal of ownership upon the land, especially if the entry was accomplished by a proxy committee. During March and April, 1903, entries were made for over two thousand homesteaders, representing a total of 281,660 acres in northeastern Saskatchewan and 141,140 acres in central areas. Unused reserve lands would be held until the end of the year to accommodate changes and minors. The Doukhobor reserve finally came to an end on December 15, 1904, making over 100,000 acres at Yorkton and nearly 150,000 acres in Prince Albert available.

The new era of material prosperity under Verigin’s leadership that followed him in from 1903 to 1905 was not without its problems. Many of them were tied to the land issue. Verigin’s plan to bring all obedient followers together in the Yorkton-Swan River area was questioned by the Lands Branch, particularly when it appeared that incorrect names had been affixed to proxy entries in preparation for resettlement. Independents accused Verigin of tampering with the homestead entries of forty independent Doukhobors by not informing them of pending inspection of their lands.

A detailed inspection of all Doukhobor lands would help to clarify existing irregularities and also soothe public opinion. In the light of changing demographic situation in Saskatchewan, such a measure was justifiable. Doukhobor holdings, by 1904, could be considered old lands in the heart of settlement, as the recently-constructed Canadian Northern railway line through Canora to Langham brought more settlers and lands speculators in the vicinity of the Doukhobor lands. A barrage of letters to the Lands Branch indicated that many potential homesteaders were eagerly watching Doukhobor lands, prepared to file claims for inspection on lands not being cleared.

Sample household entry from the special investigation of Doukhobor lands, 1905.

Two special investigations of Doukhobor lands came in the summer and fall of 1905, preparing the way for the Commission a year later. The first was made “to see that no member of the community was intimidated or suffering in any way from any hardship from the fact that he may have decided to secede from the community and establish himself along independent lines.” A team of homestead inspectors, including J. Seale, D.C. McNab, J.B. White and J.S. Gibson, spent several weeks touring the Doukhobor villages and recording cultivated acres, eligible homesteads and economic assets. What conclusions did these investigators reach? Doukhobor industry aside, Speers’ report stated:

The individual homesteader has never been impressed with his rights as a settler [or] his independence as an individual. Peter Verigin and the Community have controlled all earnings, all revenues, all incomes from all sources and this ruling has been considered absolute. I would recommend that the individual homesteader be impressed with his own independence and also his individual rights, and that some kind of receipt or the interim homestead receipt be given to him personally.

They also found too many entrants for the size of the community, too many lands reserved for minors and over one hundred irregularities in the age category of homesteaders. Although they could not take issue with the number of acres cultivated per communal entrant, as the community Doukhobors had cultivated more than the required fifteen acres per entrant, the inspectors were quick to point out that the independent sector had cultivated even more. The Independents were “…the very best material out of which to make citizens superior to most of the foreigners finding homes in our land in intelligence, industry, aspirations and work accomplished.” More importantly, the independent Doukhobors were “…rapidly absorbing Canadian sentiments and dropping notions peculiar to them.”

The McDougall Commission, that was to bring the Doukhobor land issue to its final conclusion, set about its work in the summer of 1906 in a brisk and efficient manner, informing Doukhobors that the “government was re-arranging its own lands.” Its first itinerary covered 1,200 miles, beginning in the Good Spirit area, then moving in a northwest direction to Buchanan, eastward to Canora, Verigin and Pelly, on to Swan River and finally, to the far western stretches of the Langham and Prince Albert lands. Its purpose was to record economic assets, inspect cultivation, take census, record homestead entrants and their whereabouts. Ideologically, the Commission was “…to discuss with the Doukhobors present their experience with and attitude towards this country, the Government and things in general.”

The Doukhobors greeted the Commission with traditional, kind hospitality, and gave no indication of ill feeling toward McDougall. In the fall of 1906 Verigin met with the Minster of the Interior to discuss the cancellation of minors’ homesteads and to try to obtain lands for communal Doukhobors from Prince Albert who wished to move to eastern lands. He also needed a letter of recommendation from Oliver for his coming trip to Russia, one purpose of which was to try to secure Russian workers for the building of western Canadian railways. There is no record that the work of the McDougall Commission was even discussed at that time.

The first official report of the McDougall Commission of 25 November 1906 traced the root of all Doukhobor difficulties to their “abject communism” which resulted in “extreme passivity and lethargy.” It blamed Verigin’s one-man leadership and an economic system that kept superstitious and illiterate followers in isolated villages. While McDougall had to admit that communal entrants had cultivated an average of 21.8 acres, he complained that their fields were not symmetrical and that they had cleared the easiest land. McDougall concluded that Doukhobor homesteads, still Crown property, should be subject to stringent homesteading rules regarding cultivation and residence. Obtaining patent for any bona fide homesteads would have to be based on ordinary conditions as he considered “…these people are even as others and subject to the same law.” He made no allowance for Sifton’s letter of concession regarding communal cultivation. Doukhobors not complying fully with existing homestead legislation were to have their homesteads cancelled. They would have an opportunity to re-enter for lands in the regular way. However, any Doukhobor not proceeding towards naturalization or compliance with the definition of the “vicinity of residence” would have to be resettled on new reservation containing seventeen to twenty acres of land per capita.

Broadside concerning the Doukhobor reserve, 1907.  Library and Archives Canada, e000009389.

McDougall returned to the Doukhobor villages in 1907 as the Commissioner of Investigation and Adjuster of Land Claims for Doukhobor lands. His first itinerary that year cancelled a total of 2,503 Doukhobor claims. It left 136 entries intact. His second itinerary, to establish reentries for lands, brought a meagre 384 Doukhobor entries, largely made by those who had opted for independence before McDougall’s work. A communal population of 8,175 had opted for relocation on the new reserves.

How had the majority of the Doukhobors arrived at their final decision regarding the land? Independently, it seemed, for Peter Verigin was abroad in Russia exploring the possibility of the Doukhobors’ return when McDougall first made his rounds. Bulgaria appeared to be another possibility for them or the fruit-growing regions of Canada, which proved their ultimate destination.

Verigin returned to Canada in February 1907. He was strangely silent about the land issue. Perhaps any strong vocal ruling at that time might have been sure evidence of the very “dictatorship” that the Commission was trying to eliminate. It is also possible that he was aware that the resolution of the Doukhobor claims by dismantling the village system was a foregone conclusion.

In the final run, it was the naturalization issue, more than that of cultivation of residence, that met with the most Doukhobor opposition.

It was always the same case that your Commission thus met. They could not, they would not naturalize. In vain we told them that our Government had promised them exemption from military service, that Quakers and others had lived for many years in Canada and had never been called on to give military service. They insisted that if they naturalized and became citizens then they would be compelled to go to war. This they would not do, as some told us [they] “would die first.” When we continued to reason with them they repeatedly told us “we do not want to own the land — all we want is to be permitted to make a living therein.”

And this was the invariable answer of the leaders and representative men of these strange people on the question of land ownership, dependent as it is upon naturalization.

Verigin’s reaction regarding the oath was simply, “whether you will take the oath or not, every man must act according to his conscience, but what must be first in our lives is reliance on the will of God in order to live within His law.” A meeting of village elders in the village of Terpennie in May 1907 proposed that fifty men could take the oath and the lands could be saved, much as homestead entry had been made by a three-man committee. Verigin addressed them:

Brothers and sisters, for myself I speak thus: if we take the oath even by having some elderly ones take it, even by this we would separate ourselves from Christ’s teaching of two thousand years. But you must see for yourselves.

The Doukhobor lands were opened immediately to settlers, facing such strong demand that only one township a day was released in each Dominion land office. The Lands Branch reported that it was delighted with the class of men receiving lands, who, even in entry, exhibited such will power, endurance and obedience to all rules. The land office staffs provided another perspective, as windows were smashed by those in line for lands and firehouses were turned on crowds. In many cases, land speculators catalyzed much of the action. Royal North-West Mounted Police inspector. Christen Junget, confessed that holding the mobs back was a nightmarish task:

I have never experienced a meaner job that this. Only the small percentage of those struggling for positions who get in are satisfied and pleased, the rest feel hurt and do not hesitate to trump up charges of any description against the police. This makes the work extremely difficult and discouraging.

A new reserve consisting of 766 quarter-sections in total was established for the communal Doukhobors. No claims for improvements were made relating to the lands lost in 1907, an estimated $682,000 worth of cultivation, clearing and crops. Yet, new entrants were required to pay the Lands Branch for improvements that had been made on the property they acquired.

Homesteaders seeking Doukhobor lands, 1907.  Library and Archives Canada, C-025694.

The Doukhobor reserve created in 1907 lasted only a decade. As the last of the communal Doukhobors left for British Columbia, the Doukhobor homesteading era closed.

Much has happened since the Doukhobors had turned their first furrow in 1899. Eastern and western land-use systems clashed. In an empty prairie, there was room for compromise. As the West filled, mir and homestead systems found themselves in full conflict, especially when public opinion was so adversely fixed on the village system that was the foundation of Verigin’s rule.

The Doukhobor homestead crisis said much about the settlers Canada had accepted in 1898-1899. They were a complex people and subject to differences among themselves. The land question mirrored the emergency of three different Doukhobor ideals regarding landowning: the Community believed the land could be for its use but not for personal ownership; the Independents saw no conflict between being private farmers, Canadians and Doukhobors; and the Freedomites or Zealots, a small but ever-present group by 1907, would not consent to use the land, let alone to own it.

The land issue also said a great deal about the workings and misworkings of the Department of the Interior as well. In the context of the broader demographic scene, the McDougall Commission’s recommendations and actions were probably inevitable. The government could simply not afford to offer concessions to one group of settlers while others waited eagerly for lands.

In the broader light, it must be admitted that homestead regulations were enforced to the letter for all by 1906. Proxy entry was eliminated. 15,000 entries that had been granted prior to June 1902 and for which patent had not been obtained, were inspected and cleared. Seven inspectors were employed in Saskatchewan to investigate irregularities regarding railway lands and to pressure railway companies to complete their selections. Maps showing available quarters were revised and posted daily.

Numerous mistakes and miscommunications by Lands Branch officials clearly added fuel to the land issue. Local land agent, Herbert Archer, of Swan River was horrified by the mistakes made by the Department of the Interior in connection with the Doukhobor lands, particularly the even-odd controversy over the early reserve, stating: “…if such a very serious blunder has been made by the Interior, the effect will be very bad.”

Many questions remain unanswered. Why was the list of Doukhobor homesteaders compiled in 1900 never filed? Why were the Doukhobors’ special farming conditions never recognized on paper? Their proxy homestead entries were made in the standard way, using ordinary forms, even though local land agents inquired whether the Lands Branch would issue special forms to reflect the Doukhobors’ special farming conditions. Later, Lands Branch officials wrote: “… they made entry on the ordinary forms, and these forms were accepted, and their entries stood in the book against lands subject to the ordinary homestead conditions.”

Doukhobor land rush in Yorkton, 1907. Library and Archives Canada, PA-022232.

The prairie “Doukhobor issue” had been resolved to the satisfaction of the Canadian public. A measure had been meted – not of quarter-sections and acres cleared – but of the extent to which Canada would or could allow its landholding system and social value to be challenged by “ethnic peculiarities.” From the Doukhobor perspective, the land issue confirmed their attitude toward the state: as brief sojourners in a temporal land, they would continue to seek the kingdom of God within and prepare for whatever adversities might lie ahead.

For More Information

For a detailed, in-depth scholarly analysis of the Doukhobor homestead crisis, see the Master of Arts thesis, The Doukhobor Homestead Crisis, 1898-1907, completed by Kathlyn (Katya) Szalasznyj at the University of Saskatchewan in 1977. It provides an overview of events using the Land Records of the Department of the Interior in Ottawa and other key sources, tracing pre-immigration negotations, the granting of a Doukhobor reserve of lands for entry and the complexities of communal settlement at a time of increasing prairie land hunger and growing adverse public opinion. From the effects of the arrival of Peter V. Verigin, to the work (and blunders!) of individual land agents and including such factors as the emergence of the Sons of Freedom, this thesis is an in-depth look at Doukhobor prairie life prior to the establishment of the McDougall Commission of 1907, which resulted in the cancellation of homestead entries and Doukhobor movement to British Columbia.

Categories
Historical Stories and Articles

Several Characteristics of Doukhobor Society, 1805

p>Translated by Robert Pinkerton

In 1805, a “gentleman of the highest respectability” in St. Petersburg, Russia composed a tract entitled “Nekotorye cherty ob obshchestve Dukhobortsev” [“Several Characteristics of Doukhobor Society”]. It was a sympathetic exposition of the religious and social teachings of the Dukhobortsy. Ten years later, the tract was published as an appendix to Robert Pinkerton’s translation of “The Present State of the Greek Church in Russia” by Metropolitan Platon of Moscow (New York: Collins and Col, 1815). Reproduced below, it contains the earliest systematic account of Doukhobor religious doctrine and provides invaluable historic insights into the belief system of our Doukhobor ancestors. Editorial comments and afterword by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

From among the common peasants, who are in general not only illiterate, but strongly attached to the external ceremonies of religion, there sprung up all at once a sect, in the middle of the last century, that not only threw aside all the ceremonies and rites of the Greek church, but who also rejected baptism and the Lord’s supper.

A sect of this description could not long remain unnoticed, or be secure from molestation, both by their neighbours and by government, especially as both were unacquainted with their principles. Accordingly, they suffered from all quarters continual persecution, being constantly exposed to reproach, and not infrequently to imprisonment. In their intercourse with their neighbours, they endured the most abusive language, and other insults; and all were ready to construe every action of their lives in such a way, as to point them out the disturbers of the public peace, and as the offscouring of society.

The higher departments of government judged of them according to the reports of the lower departments; and hence many of them were sent into exile, as if they had been the worst of criminals. In this manner the persecution of the Dukhobortsy continued, with few intermissions, until the reign of the humane and peaceable Alexander I.

Robert Pinkerton (1780-1859), agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Russia who translated  the 1805 tract.

In 1801, the senators Lopukhin and Neledinsky, being sent to review the state of affairs in the government of the Ukraine (Sloboda-Ukraine province, Russia – ed.), were the first who represented these people to the emperor in a true light. According to their representations, his Majesty granted the scattered Dukhobortsy permission to remove from the governments of Ukraine and Malorus (“Little Russia”, the Ukrainian provinces of Russia – ed.) and to settle at a place called Molochnye Vody, in the government of Tavria. Here the Dukhobortsy formed two settlements in 1804, and their brethren from the governments of Voronezh and Tavria were also permitted to settle along with them.

The name Dukhobortsy was already given to this sect in 1788, probably by the then-Archbishop of Ekaterinoslav Amvrossi, who, by this designation, no doubt intended to point out the heresy contained in their doctrines; for Dukhoborets literally signifies a wrestler with the spirit. Formerly they were called by government Ikonobortsy, on account of their rejecting, with other things, the use of pictures (ikons – ed.) in their worship. But the Dukhobortsy call themselves Christians, and all other people they denominate men of the world.

The origin of this sect is altogether unknown to its present members; for they are in general illiterate, and they possess no written history of the founders of their sect. Their traditionary story affirms, that they are the descendants of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abedriego, who suffered for not falling down to worship the golden image of Nebuchadnezzar. No doubt they intend to intimate by this, that they not only suffer, but are willing to suffer, rather than worship the ikons, or observe the external rites and ceremonies of the Greek church.

The Dukhobortsy, till of late, had been very much scattered in different parts of the empire; seldom could as many of them be found in one place as to form a separate village. But, exclusive of those in the southern provinces above-mentioned, they are dispersed throughout the governments of Caucasus, the Don Cossacks, and Arkhangel’ in Lapland, and even in Irkutsk, and Kamchatka.

They say also that there are many of their members in Germany and Turkey; but that they are more persecuted in Germany than even among the Mohammedans.

The communication which they have with each other is only occasional; as when any of their number travels into distant provinces on business; however, when affairs of importance happen among them, they send some of their members expressly to give information.

Excepting their principles of faith, the Dukhobortsy, in their domestic and social life, may serve as examples to all other sects. In 1792, the governor of Ekaterinoslav, Kokhovsky, in his reports to the general procurator, Vesemskoy, at that time represents the Dukhobortsy as leading most exemplary lives; being sober and industrious, diligent in their occupations, and of good and gentle dispositions. The taxes, and other public obligations, they pay and perform punctually, and in this respect were always before their neighbour peasants; otherwise the agents of government in the villages were ever ready to catch an occasion to harass them. Laziness and drunkenness are vices not suffered among them; so that those who are infected with such sins are excluded from their society.

As soon as we approach, however, and take a view of their creed, we at once see the contrast between it and that of their surrounding neighbours. The Dukhobortsy never enter the national churches, or bow before the pictures in time of prayer; they do not cross themselves, or observe the appointed fasts; they take no part in the joys and corrupt deeds of the men of the world. These are causes sufficient to separate them for ever from the company of the other peasants, and to expose them to continual persecution.

The Dukhobortsy affirm that every external rite, in regard to salvation, is of no avail whatever, and that the outward church, in consequence of her corruption, is now become a den of thieves. On this account, they confess that alone to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, which the Lord gathered by his appearance, which he enlightens, and adorns, by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and which on this account is the company of the faithful, or of true believers, in all ages.

In this persuasion they frequently have meetings among themselves, but have no stated place appointed for this purpose, as they account every place alike holy; hence these meetings are held in the first convenient place they can find. Neither do they appoint any particular days for this purpose, accounting all days alike. They have, therefore, no holidays, but their meetings are frequently held on the holidays appointed by the church, when other people are not engaged in labour; for if they were to work on the holidays of their neighbours, they say, they should subject themselves to double persecution, and might be represented as disobedient to the laws of the empire.

Each of them is at liberty to hold a meeting in his own house, and to invite such of his brethren as are near him to attend. In such meetings, they always sup together; and should the brother in whose house the meeting is held not be able to provide food sufficient to entertain his guests, in that case they either send themselves, before hand, provisions for this purpose, or bring them along with them.

Being assembled, they salute one another; the men salute the men, and the females the females, by taking each other by the right hand, and thrice bowing and kissing one another; at the same time every one pronounces a short prayer. These three bows and three embraces, they perform in the name of the three one (tripartite – ed.) God, to the purifying of the flesh, and to the rooting out of pride. They take each other by the hand as a mark of their union in love, in calling, in knowledge of judgment, and of the unseen God, who is within them.

In the course of the meeting, they pray one after another, sing psalms, and explain the word of God; but as the greater part of them are unable to read, most of this is performed in their assemblies extemporaneously. They have no appointed priests, but confess Jesus Christ alone to be the only just, holy, pure, undefiled priest, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens; he also is their only Teacher. In their assemblies they instruct each other from the Scriptures; every one speaks according to the grace given him, to the admonishing and comforting of his brethren. Even women are not excluded from this privilege; for they say, “Have not women enlightened understandings as well as men?” They pray standing or sitting, just as it happens. At the end of the meeting they again embrace each other thrice, as at the beginning, and then separate.

What has been said above of their time and place of meeting, regards in particular those Dukhobortsy who are scattered among the villages of the peasants (Orthodox – ed.); but those that are settled at the Molochnye Vody have their meetings in the open air when the weather permits, in two circles, the one of men, and the other of women.

The virtue which shines with greatest lustre among the Dukhobortsy is brotherly love. They have no particular private property, all things are common. After their settling at the Molochnye Vody, they were enabled to put this in practice without any hindrance; for they laid all their private property together, so that now they have one general purse, one general flock, and in their two villages two common magazines for corn, out of which every brother takes according to his wants.

They are also hospitable to strangers, and entertain most of them at the expense of their society, having a house built for the express purpose of accommodating strangers. They are also praised for their compassion to such as are in distress; even the governors of the places where they live have borne testimony to the readiness with which the Dukhobortsy assist their neighbours in affliction. Solomon’s maxim is strictly observed among them, “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast,” Proverbs xii. 10.

Their children are in the strictest subjection to their parents, and, in general, young people among them pay the most profound respect to the aged; though at the same time, their parents and elders do not assume any superior power, as it were, over them, accounting them equal in spirit with themselves.

They have no kind of punishments among them except expulsion from their society; and this takes place only for such transgressions, as prove the person evidently to have lost the spirit of Christianity, since, were such a one suffered to remain among them, he would become a stumbling block to the brethren. But as soon as any of them observes a brother guilty of a transgression, he reproves him for his fault, according to the spirit of the gospel. If this is not laid to heart, he is then admonished before two or more. Should he still remain impenitent, he is finally brought before the whole society; after which, in case of contumacy, he is excommunicated from their society.

Metropolitan Platon of Moscow (1737-1812), author of “The Present State…”. It is unlikely that he wrote the 1805 tract.

It sometimes happens, though seldom, that individuals leave their society without having done any thing to deprive them of its privileges, for no other reason but to have liberty to live as they please; and it has even happened that wives have left their husbands from the same cause. Such they do not restrain; but grant them liberty to depart if they will, and divide with them a share of their common property. But those who are excluded from their society, and also such as leave it, may again be admitted, if they give evidence of their repentance, and quit their sinful courses, of which there have been few instances.

Their occupations are regulated according to the knowledge of individuals among them. Hence, the merchant engages in merchandize, and the husbandman in agriculture. But as the greater part of them are husbandmen, so the cultivation of the ground is their chief employment; and in their estimation, this employment is more honourable than all others.

In their society they have no superior powers, such as magistrates to govern and command; but the society at large governs itself and each individual in it, and they have neither written laws, nor regulations of any kind. Judging according to the spirit of common people in general, it might be expected that the Dukhobortsy would be often troubled with divisions; this however, seldom happens; for at the Molochnye Vody, we find frequently two or three young families all living together in one house.

In respect to the government of their families, the weakness of the female sex, inexperience of youth, and education of children, naturally require the superintendence of age and experience, to preserve order. Hence it naturally follows, that in every family the father is the governor, who is bound to care for the wants of his family, to look after the conduct of his children, to correct their faults, and teach them the law of God. When the father dies, the eldest son succeeds him.

The manner of educating children among the Dukhobortsy is simple, and peculiar to themselves. As soon as a child begins to speak, the parents teach him to get by heart, short prayers and psalms, and relate to him such passages out of sacred history as are calculated to engage his attention. In this manner they continue to instruct their children, till they are of age, in the doctrines of the gospel. When the children have thus learned by heart several prayers and Psalms, they go along with others to their meetings, repeat their prayers, and sing Psalms with the rest. But the Dukhobortsy look upon it as the duty of every parent, not only to instruct his own children, hut also, when opportunity occurs, to teach those of his neighbour also, and to restrain them from folly and sin wherever he observes it.

In this way, the sentiments of the parents are, by little and little, formed in the minds of their children, and are rooted in their young minds by the exemplary conduct of their parents. Hence, it has been observed, that the children of the Dukhobortsy are distinguished among all other children, like stalks of wheat among oats.

1. The chief and distinguishing dogma of the Dukhobortsy is, the worshipping God in spirit and in truth; and hence they reject all external rites as not being necessary in the work of salvation.

2. They hold no particular creed, but only say, in regard to themselves, that they are of the law of God, and of the faith of Jesus. The symbol of faith of the Greek church or the Nicene creed they not only respect, but confess all that it contains to be truth; they merely, however, assign it a place among their common Psalms.

3. They confess one God in three persons (the Trinity – ed.) incomprehensible. They believe that in memory we resemble God the Father, in intelligence God the Son, and in will God the Holy Ghost. Also, that the first person is the Father of light, our God; the second person, the Son of life, our God; and the third person is holy rest, the Spirit of our God. The likeness of the three one God: the Father is height, the Son is breadth, the Holy Ghost is depth. These also they take in a moral sense. The Father is high, and none can comprehend him; the Son is broad in intelligence; and the Holy Ghost is deep, past searching out.

4. The conceptions they have of Christ are founded on the doctrines of the gospel; they confess his incarnation, his acts, doctrines, and sufferings; but in general, they take all this in a spiritual sense, and affirm that all that is said in the gospel must be perfected in us. Thus, Christ must be begotten in us, be born in us, grow up in us, teach in us, suffer in us, die in us, rise again from the dead in us, and ascend into heaven in us; and in these different acts they understand the process of regeneration, or of a man’s being born again. They say, that Jesus himself is, and was, the eternal and living gospel, and that he sent out his disciples to preach himself in the word; for he himself is the word, which is written only on the hearts of those who believe in him.

5. They believe that in God and in his Christ alone salvation is to be found; but that if a man does not call upon God out of a pure heart, even God himself cannot save him.

6. To the salvation of man, unfeigned faith in Christ is absolutely necessary; but faith without works being dead, so also works without faith are dead. True and living faith is a hearty reception of the gospel.

7. With respect to baptism, they say that they are baptized by the word, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as Christ commanded his apostles, saying, “Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” That this baptism takes place when a man truly repents, and in the sincerity of his heart crieth unto God; then his sins are forgiven him, and his affections are no more set upon the world but upon God. This is the only baptism which they confess for the remission of sins.

Regeneration and spiritual baptism are, in their opinion, one and the same thing. The means of attaining regeneration are a living faith in God and prayer. The marks of the regenerated, or of one’s being baptized from above, are the works of the new man. However, this baptism they hold to have seven degrees: 1st, Baptism for the remission of sins. 2d, Anointing with ointment, that is, the understanding of ointment, or the knowledge of the ways of the Lord. 3d, The understanding the word of the Lord. 4th, The anointing with holy oil, or the unction of prayer. 5th, Spiritual confession. 6th, Spiritual communion. And 7th, the agony of blood, or humility. These seven degrees also signify their union with God. If any one has attained to an union with God, which they place in the seven degrees of spiritual baptism or regeneration, such a one lives in God, and by his spiritual eyes can behold the angels.

They look upon external baptism with water as of no use, and say that it only washes off the impurities of the body.

8. They believe that to every Christian are given two names, one by his parents when he is born, and another by his heavenly Father at his spiritual baptism, according to his works. This last name is unknown on earth, but shall be made known in heaven.

9. Those who confess their sins to their heavenly Father, who is infinitely good and merciful, shall receive the remission of their sins by means of faith and prayer. Those who sin against their brethren among the Dukhobortsy confess their faults before all, and beg forgiveness of those they have offended. They who are known to conceal their sins, are by them accounted great transgressors; if any one after a third admonition does not make confession, they exclude him from their society.

They severely condemn such as call themselves sinners, and who by their feigned confessions, seek after a sort of humility which is founded in pride, or who try by confessions, to excuse themselves; but are not careful to reform their lives. When a man falls, they say, he ought immediately to rise again, ask forgiveness of God with a contrite spirit, and resist with all his might temptations to a similar fall in future.

10. In regard to the Lord’s supper, they say, that they always communicate in the holy and life-giving, immortal and awful mysteries of Christ to the remission of sins, by spiritually and internally receiving into themselves the word of God which is Christ; and such communion, they say, penetrates the judgment of man, through bones and marrow. But the ordinance of communicating of the body and blood of Christ, under the symbols of bread and wine, they do not receive; for they say, that bread and wine enter the mouth, like our common food, and are of no advantage whatever to the soul.

Ivan Vladimirovich Lopukhin (1756-1816), the most likely author of the 1805 tract.

11. They place fasting, not in abstaining from food of any kind, but in abstinence from gluttony and other vices: in parity, in humility, and meekness of spirit. Abstinence from flesh, they say, is of no advantage to the soul.

12. They respect departed saints, but do not invoke them for help, saying, that in pleasing God they benefited themselves, and that we ought only to follow their example. This they call invoking their good works.

They do not, however, consider the actions of those who have pleased God to have been indiscriminately holy.

13. They do not hold marriage to be a sacrament. It is constituted among them simply by the mutual consent of the parties. And as there are no distinctions among the Dukhobortsy of family or rank, so the parents, in general, do not interfere in the marriages of their children. They have scarcely any sort of ceremony on such an occasion; a reciprocal consent, and promise before witnesses that the parties resolve to live together, is sufficient. Sometimes, however, this mutual consent is not made evident till the bride has become a mother. But whenever a man is known to have seduced a woman, he cannot refuse to make her his wife; otherwise he is excluded from their society. Oh the death of one of the parties, the other is at liberty to marry again, even a third time, which, however, seldom happens; for they say Christians ought to subdue their sensual desires.

14. They preserve the memory of their departed friends only by imitating their good deeds; for they neither pray for nor to them. They say, the Lord himself will remember them in his kingdom. But they do not style the departure of a brother out of this world death, but call it a change; and hence they do not say, our brother is dead, but our brother is changed.

They have no particular ceremonies at burial, nor do they mourn over the change of their friends. When the Dukhobortsy lived in persecution, they buried their dead in the common burying places; but since persecution has ceased against them, and they are known, they bury their dead in their own particular burying grounds.

15. They believe in the creation and fall of man, as stated in the Holy Scriptures, that is, that his body is taken from the earth, and that God breathed into him the breath of life. That before his fall his soul was pure and holy, and his body was vigorous and perfect; or, as they express it, he lived in a body of gentleness.

The Dukhobortsy say, that the flesh of man is made of earth, his bones of stone, his sinews of roots, the blood of water, his hair of grass, his thoughts he receiveth from the wind, and grace from heaven. This may explain their common proverb: “Man is a little world” (microcosm – ed.). In regard to the soul of man, they say that the soul is power, power in God, and God in man.

16. Concerning original sin, they believe, that from wicked parents are born wicked children; nevertheless, they affirm, that the sins of the parents do not hinder the salvation of their children; and that with respect to salvation; every one shall render an account to God for himself.

17. In respect to the future state of the righteous, they say that the kingdom is in power, and paradise in words; that the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and therefore no harm can come near them. Of the sufferings of the wicked, and of hell, they say, that the souls of the wicked wander in darkness, ever in expectation of sudden destruction, and that hell is founded on wrath.

Of the destination of the soul after death, they say that a man’s actions will either justify or condemn him; and therefore, that the works of men in this world bring every one to his place in the next, in which there is no repentance.

18. With regard to the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked at the last day, with their present bodies, the Dukhobortsy do not determine any thing dogmatically, but leave that event entirely to God.

19. They, in general, conceal their opinions in regard to mysterious points, from those with whom they are not intimately acquainted, and justify themselves by the words of our Saviour, “Cast not your pearls before swine.” They say this is not the time to reveal these things; but that ere long they shall be made manifest unto all.

In like manner, in regard to the second coming of the Saviour, they say, that judging from the events which now take place in the world, we may expect him soon.

20. They do not consider it to be essential to salvation that a man should be a member of their society; they say that it is necessary only to understand the ways of the Lord, and to walk in them, and to fulfill his will, for that this is the way of salvation.

21. The Dukhobortsy call the theatre the school of Satan, where he himself and his agents preside. They compare those who dance either on the stage or in private companies to young geese, which in spring, go out with their dame and frolic upon the green, but still, they say, they are but geese, and have no knowledge of God, and when the frost comes they sit with their heads beneath their wings, and hide their feet from the cold.

22. They are distinguished for the orderly and cleanly manner in which they live; and they say, that it is becoming in a Christian to live in this way. In regard to having the pictures or portraits of eminent men or of saints in our dwellings, they observe that they serve to adorn the house, and are agreeable to the eyes; but, to worship before them, they consider as a mortal sin.

23. Of shaving the beard and making use of tobacco, which some Raskolniks (schismatics – ed.) look on as sinful, they say that as neither the one nor the other makes a Christian, therefore they are both matters of indifference. That if it were proper for them as peasants to shave the beard, they would have no objections to do so.

24. When the Dukhobortsy lived in a concealed manner, necessity obliged them to conform to many of the external usages of the Greek church; but as they paid no internal respect to them, they concealed their real opinions by giving to every article and ceremony of the external service a different name and a spiritual signification; thus, for instance, in regard to the five loaves of shewbread, they called the first, the union of the true faith; the second, unfeigned love; the third, the value of the knowledge of truth; the fourth, the reception of the holy mysteries; the fifth, the enlightener. Being accustomed to express their ideas in this allegorical manner, they give a moral signification to many other objects.

Thus, to every day of the week they give the following denominations by way of short moral lessons.

Monday. Understand the works of the Lord.

Tuesday. Regeneration.

Wednesday. The Lord calleth the people to salvation.

Thursday. Bless the Lord all ye his saints.

Friday. Sing praises to the name of the Lord.

Saturday. Fear the judgment of the Lord, that thy soul be not ruined by iniquity.

Sunday. Arise from your dead works, and come to the kingdom of heaven.

The seven heavens they distinguish by the seven following gospel graces. The first heaven is humility; the second, understanding; the third, self-denial; the fourth, brotherly love; the fifth, mercy; the sixth, counsel; the seventh, love, where God himself reigneth. In like manner, these twelve Christian virtues, they denominate the twelve friends. These friends are:

1. Truth. Which saveth man from death.

2. Purity. Which bringeth man to God.

3. Love. Where love is, there God is.

4. Labours. Honourable to the body, and beneficial to the soul.

5. Obedience. The nearest way to salvation.

6. Not judging. The salvation of man without difficulty.

7. Understanding. The first of virtues.

8. Mercy. By the merciful man, Satan himself is made to tremble.

9. Subjection. The work of Christ himself, our God.

10. Prayer and fasting. Which unite man with God.

11. Repentance. Than which, there is no law, and no commandment higher.

12. Thanksgiving. Pleasing to God and to his angels.

He who hath found these twelve friends, they say, is under the guidance of twelve angels, who, at last, will transport his soul to the kingdom of heaven.

As examples of their manner of prayer, we subjoin the two following, from among those which they use in their meetings:

First.

To whom shall I go but unto thee, O Lord; or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend unto heaven, lo, thou art there; if I descend into hell, lo, thou art there; if I take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost comers of the sea, there thy hand guides me, and thy right hand shall find me out. To whom shall I go, and where shall I find eternal life, except in thee, my Creator! To whom shall I go, and where shall I obtain comfort, joy, a refuge, and rest to my soul! To whom shall I go, and whither shall I fly from thee, my Lord and my God, for thou alone hast the words of eternal life in thy self? Thou art the fountain of life, and the giver of all good. My soul thirsteth for thee, my heart panteth for thee, O God, my life! I will rejoice in thy most holy name, and in my beloved Lord Jesus. Subdue my heart by him, and may he occupy my whole soul! Let nothing be dearer to me in life than thy most Holy Spirit. Let thy words be sweet unto my taste, and sweeter far to my mouth than the honey comb. Let thy favour ever be more desired by me than gold, and more precious than jewels. – Amen.

Second.

What reason have I to love thee, O Lord! For thou art my life; thou art my salvation, my glory, and praise; thou art my treasure, my eternal riches; thou art my hope and trust; thou art my joy and eternal rest. Shall I rather love vain things, or corrupting or ruinous things and things that are false, than thee my real life! Thou alone art my life and my salvation; therefore all my hopes and all my desires, and the panting of my soul are towards thee only. I will seek thee, O Lord, with my whole heart, with my whole soul, and with my whole mind. To thee alone, in the depths of my soul, I cry, to thee alone I will pour forth my supplications. I desire to be wholly in thee, and to have thee in me. I know and confess thee in truth, the one true God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. In thy light, I shall behold light, and the grace of thy most Holy Spirit. – Amen.

25. The Dukhobortsy, who came to St. Petersburg in the year 1804 to entreat permission of the Emperor for their brethren to settle at the Molochnye Vody, and from whom many of the above particulars were taken, being ready to set out on their return, just on the eve of the festival of the birth of Christ, were entreated to stop and spend the holidays in that city. But they replied: “for us there is no difference of days, for our festivals are within us.” When they were also admonished, after receiving their privileges from government, that they should live in their new settlements in peace, and should not attempt to propagate their opinions in that quarter, they replied, “All that is needful is sown already; now the time of harvest is come, and not the seed-time.” *

* Most of these interesting particulars concerning the Dukhobortsy I have taken from a manuscript account of them in the Russian language, composed by a gentleman of the first respectability in Petersburg. I also perused this manuscript with a Russian nobleman, who, in 1808, was the civil governor of the province of Kherson and was well acquainted with the principles and character of the Dukhobortsy at Molochnye Vody.

Afterword

The 1805 tract has been acclaimed by many scholars to be the earliest systematic account published about the Doukhobors. Yet in spite of this, its author has yet to be positively identified.

Ostensibly, the tract was published in 1815 as part of the translated works of Metropolitan Platon (Levshin) of Moscow (1737-1812). However, the extreme sympathy of its author towards the Doukhobors would seem to preclude the cleric from being the original writer, given the hatred of the sect by the Orthodox clergy.

There is nothing to suggest that the tract was written by the Doukhobors themselves. The sectarians were largely illiterate and would have been loath to reduce their tenets to writing, lest it become a basis for further persecution. On the contrary, the style and substance of the tract suggests it was composed by someone well educated and highly conversant in the Russian literary language.

The most likely author of the tract is Ivan Vladimirovich Lopukhin (1756-1816), an envoy sent by Tsar Alexander I to investigate the Doukhobors in the southern provinces in 1801. Intellectually, Lopukhin was very receptive to Doukhoborism, and he is cited by several scholars as the “probable” author of the tract appearing in Platon’s volume. In the footnote at the end of the tract, the translator wrote that the “interesting particulars concerning the Dukhobortsi” were taken from a Russian language manuscript “composed by a gentleman of the first respectability in Petersburg.” In 1805, the date of composition assigned to the tract, Lopukhin was a senator, certainly a respectable position, who had first-hand experience with the Doukhobors. And as scholar Svetlana Inikova has observed, he had a motive to write the tract at that time. In 1805, Lopukhin was accused by the Orthodox heirarchy of helping the Doukhobors and of predisposing Tsar Alexander I favourably toward the sect. Right at the time he needed to justify himself, there appeared the “Nekotorye cherty ob obshchestve Dukhobortsev” [“Several Characteristics of Doukhobor Society”], painting the Doukhobors as a religious-philosophical movement completely loyal to the authorities.

In any event, the 1805 tract appended to Platon’s translated volume is generally regarded as a contemporary and accurate, if idealized, description of the Doukhobor faith. During his 1816 visit to Tavria province, the Doukhobors encountered by Robert Pinkerton (1780-1859) vouched for the veracity of the tract, and the Scottish missionary had the satisfaction of hearing them “distinctly state their principles in the very terms” of the document contained in his translation of Platon’s volume.

To read more, search, download, save and print a full PDF copy of “The Present State of the Greek Church in Russia” by Metropolitan Platon of Moscow, translated by Robert Pinkerton (New York: Collins and Col, 1815), visit the Google Book Search digital database.

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Historical Stories and Articles

A Visit to the Dukhobortsy on the Sea of Azov, 1816

by Robert Pinkerton

Robert Pinkerton (1780-1859) was a Scottish missionary of the British and Foreign Bible Society who travelled extensively throughout Russia during the reign of Tsar Alexander I. In 1816, he travelled to the Dukhobortsy living on the Molochnaya River in Tavria province, Russia. He kept a journal and recorded his detailed impressions of his visit. The following account is reproduced from his published memoirs, “Russia: or, Miscellaneous Observations on the Past and Present State of that Country and its Inhabitants” (London: Seeley and Sons, 1833). It is the earliest surviving Western account of the Doukhobor colony on the Molochnaya and provides invaluable historic insights about their way of life and beliefs. Afterword by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

In 1816, after having visited the tribe of Nogai Tartars that wander with their flocks and herds about the extensive steppes of Little Tartary, on the Sea of Azov, and having made preparations for supplying the villages of German colonists recently settled there with the Holy Scriptures, I purposed, on my way towards the Crimea, to see the Dukhobortsy [Doukhobors] who live on the River Molochnaya and on the Sea of Azov [collectively known as Molochnaya Vody or “Milky Waters”].

Robert Pinkerton (1780-1859).

On approaching the first of their villages on the Molochnaya, I met with a female and inquired of her where the chief person of the place resided. The answer she gave me was, “Among us, no one is greater than another”. The next person I met was a shepherd attending his flock, an old man with grey hair. I made my driver stop, and beckoned to the man to draw near. This he did, and uncovering his head, he leaned over his staff and replied to my inquiries. 

I asked the old man if he could could read. He replied, “Yes, I can read the word of life”. From this I naturally thought that he was able to read the Bible, and offered him a Tract on the Bible Society. He refused, however, to accept it, saying that he could not read our books, but only the Book of Life which he had learnt by heart. In other words, that he could repeat the principal doctrinal and moral articles of the Dukhobortsy sect. And when I touched upon some of the articles, as given in my work on the Orthodox Church, he repeated them distinctly; in others of them his memory failed him.

I stopped in a second village [Terpeniye], the capital, and without ceremony entered one of the best looking houses, requesting a glass of water. This a young man readily handed to me. After a little talk with him, I discovered that I was in the chancery, or place where the civil affairs of the sect are transacted [Sirotsky Dom or “Orphans Home”].

I told him distinctly what my object was in visiting them, and begged him to introduce me to some of their seniors. All this seemed rather suspicious to him; yet he sent for one of the Elders, who had been in St. Petersburg as a deputy to the Government, and who soon after, with several of his brethren, made his appearance. After a little talk about Senator Hoblitz and other gentlemen who had shown them kindness during their stay in St. Petersburg, they seemed in some degree to lay aside their reserve, and replied freely to my inquiries.

I took out my volume on the Orthodox Church and read to the assembly the passages which I had written concerning the Dukhobortsy, and I had the satisfaction of hearing them distinctly state their principles in the very terms there given. As soon as I began any paragraph by translating a few words, they generally gave the remainder exactly as stated in the book. The two prayers they repeated verbatim. One passage only was found to require explanation that of their “having all things in common”. This was their practice when they came to the Molochnaya, but now every family has its own private property, cattle, fields, etc. Still they have fields of corn, gardens and flocks which belong to the whole community, and the revenues of which are applied for the common benefit of the society. This is also the custom of the Mennonites, who live near them, and of other German colonists; a custom, in their case, independent of religious considerations.

Doukhobor village, Melitopol district, Tavria province, Russia circa 1816.

This extraordinary sect, the Dukhobortsy, is settled in eight [nine] villages and consists of about 2,500 souls. I saw an individual of them who had been sixteen years exiled to Siberia, for conscience sake. He spoke with great feeling, when contrasting his former sufferings with his present prosperous circumstances. He was a fine looking, middle aged man, and was returning on horseback from viewing his corn fields and flocks, country like, without his coat. They have been collected from every part of the Empire, and are entirely separated from the Orthodox Church. Indeed, it was the object of the Tsarist government, in colonizing them here, to put it out of their power to make any more proselytes to their peculiar opinions. Their neat and clean dress, comfortable looking huts, and industrious habits, their numerous flocks, and extensive and well cultivated fields, widely distinguish them from the common Russian peasantry.

Their neighbours the Mennonites and other German colonists speak well of their morals; but all complain of their reserve and shyness of character. No doubt they have been taught this by the severe persecutions to which they have for ages been exposed, and out of which they can scarcely yet believe themselves delivered. Their neighbours seem to know but little of their religious tenets. The Mennonites say they are a peaceable and industrious people, but accuse them of hypocrisy. Hence, they say, when some of their members were convicted of drunkenness, they denied the fact, and maintained that their members were all holy.

Very few among the Doukhobors appear to be capable of reading; yet their members seem to have had the doctrines of the sect instilled into them by oral instruction. These lessons are committed to memory. They have no schools among them, nor did I see a book of any kind among them. I recommended to them the Bible, and offered to supply them with it; but they refused to accept any copies, saying, “That what was in the Bible was in them also”. I told them that some of their neighbours suspected them of immoral habits, because in speaking of females and children they did not use the common expressions of “my wife”, “my child” etc. but rather “my sister”, “our child” etc. This insinuation they indignantly repelled, exclaiming, “Are we then beasts?” “But” continued they, “we are accustomed to every kind of false accusation”.

Dukhoborets – a Doukhobor man.

Dukhoborka – a Doukhobor woman.

Their whole aspect and manner of intercourse with strangers, indicates a degree of shyness and distrust which is quite extraordinary. Hence, also, their evasive answers to all direct inquiries respecting their sect. Some of them, however, ventured to speak with me freely, and with warmth, against the use of images in worship. Their assemblies for religious purposes are held in the open air, or in private dwellings, according as the weather suits. They say their doctrines are as old as the world, and they either would not, or could not, give me any particulars of the rise of the sect in Russia.

It was, doubtless, the heavy burden of superstitious ceremonies in the services of the Orthodox Church which drove the founders of this sect to reject all ceremony, and external ordinances of every kind. Many of this sect, I fear, are deists.

But we need not wonder at these indications of fear and distrust. For at the very time I visited them, as I afterwards learned, intrigues were on foot in order to ruin them, under the twofold accusation of their harbouring deserters and making proselytes.

Afterword

Between 1812 and 1822, Robert Pinkerton travelled extensively throughout Russia in the service of the British and Foreign Bible Society, a non-denominational Christian charity formed in England in 1804 for the purpose of making affordable, vernacular translations of the Bible available throughout the world. Through his indefatigable efforts, readily supported by Tsar Alexander I and the Russian nobility, the Russian Bible Society was established in St. Petersburg in 1812-1813. In the years that followed, Pinkerton assisted in the formation of dozens of local branches of the Russian Bible Society, through which thousands of Russian language Bibles were distributed to the peasantry.

Through his travels and studies, Pinkerton became acquainted with the Doukhobor religious sect. In 1815, he translated an 1805 tract about the sect, Several Characteristics of Doukhobor Society as part of his English publication of Platon’s “Present State”.  In September of the same year, he travelled forty miles north of Vyborg, Finland to the Imatra Waterfall, where he found a colony of Don Cossack Doukhobors living in exile there: Visit to the Dukhobortsy Exiled in Finland, 1815. The Scottish missionary was deeply moved by his meeting with the Doukhobor exiles, who were most thankful to receive copies of the Russian Scriptures and publications from the Russian Bible Society.

It was in this context that in 1816, Pinkerton, accompanied by a cargo of Bibles, set out to visit the largest group of Doukhobors in the Russian Empire: those living on the Molochnaya River in Tavria province near the Sea of Azov. There, he expected to find kindred spirits whom he could supply with copies of the Scriptures on behalf of the Russian Bible Society.

Pinkerton visited two Doukhobor villages on the Molochnaya. At the first unnamed village, he encountered two Doukhobors with whom he had a short exchange. At the second village, which was Terpeniye, he was conducted to the Sirotsky Dom (Orphan’s Home) where he addressed a group of Doukhobors and met briefly with a Doukhobor elder. Thereafter, Pinkerton departed from Terpeniye and travelled to the neighbouring Mennonite villages across the Molochnaya. His recorded impressions of his visit are brief, forming a random compendium of his conversations with the Doukhobor colonists and their Mennonite neighbours.

Pinkerton found the Molochnaya Doukhobors to be settled in eight villages (he erred as there were nine Doukhobor villages in 1816) with a total population of 2,500 residents. Materially speaking, his impression of the colony was highly favourable. The Doukhobors’ “neat and clean dress” he wrote, “comfortable-looking huts, and industrious habits, their numerous flocks, and extensive and well-cultivated fields, widely distinguish them from the common Russian peasantry.” In every aspect, the Doukhobors verified the opinion of their Mennonite neighbours that they were a “peaceable and industrious people…”.


View Tavria Doukhobor Villages, 1802-1845 in a larger map

The Scottish missionary noted that when they first came to the Molochnaya, the Doukhobors held everything in common. However, by 1816 the Doukhobors had abandoned communalism and distributed their property on an individual basis. Pinkerton recorded that “now every family has its own private property, cattle, fields, etc. Still they have fields of corn, gardens and flocks which belong to the whole community, and the revenues of which are applied for the common benefit of the society.” By this he meant the lands belonging to the Sirotsky Dom, the Doukhobors’ financial, administrative and spiritual centre.

Pinkerton found the Doukhobors proficiently disciplined in matters of faith and doctrine. The first sectarian he encountered was a female, whom he met on the approaches of the first village. He inquired of the woman “where the chief person of the place resided.” She answered that “among us, no one is greater than another.” The second Doukhobor Pinkerton met was an elderly shepherd tending a flock of sheep. With him, Pinkerton began a discussion of the chief doctrines of Doukhoborism, based on the 1805 tract. He found that the old Doukhobor could repeat some of the articles “distinctly”. Similarly, when Pinkerton read passages from the tract to the Doukhobors at Terpeniye, he “had the satisfaction of hearing them distinctly state their principles in the very terms there given.” They also dutifully advised him against the use of images in worship.  As these encounters indicate, the Molochnaya Doukhobors possessed a strong doctrinal unity.

At the same time, Pinkerton found the Doukhobors to be evasive in their replies to many of his inquiries. “Their whole aspect, and manner of intercourse with strangers,” he found, “indicate a degree of shyness and distrust which is quite extraordinary; hence, also their evasive answers to all direct inquiries respecting their sect.” Neighbouring Mennonites also complained of the “reserve and shyness” of the Doukhobors, which gave rise to various vague rumours and accusations about the sect. What Pinkerton and the Mennonites did not take sufficiently into account, however, was the intensity of persecution that had made the Doukhobors evolve evasion as a means of dealing with authorities or with passing strangers.

Unlike their brethren in Finland, the Molochnaya Doukhobors were now living in a completely Doukhobor setting under the dynamic influence of their leader Kapustin and the exclusivist doctrines embodied in his psalms.  They possessed the fully-developed version of the Living Book and had come to reject the Bible as an exclusive source of divine revelation.

Hence, Pinkerton’s main objective of distributing Bibles among the Molochnaya Doukhobors proved unsuccessful. He had travelled far only to find people who, when he offered copies of the Scriptures, ‘refused to accept any copies, remarking, “That what was in the Bible was in them also.”’ He had one moment of hope, when the old shepherd told him, ‘Yes, I can read the Word of Life’; however it turned out that the old man was illiterate but knew by heart the Living Book of the Doukhobors. Consequently, Pinkerton left the Molochnaya disappointed, having failed to dispense a single Bible to the Doukhobors there.  

To read more, search, download, save and print a full PDF copy of “Russia: or, Miscellaneous Observations on the Past and Present State of that Country and its Inhabitants”  by Robert Pinkerton (London: Seeley and Sons, 1833), visit the Google Book Search digital database.

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Historical Stories and Articles

A Visit to the Dukhobortsy, 1843

by Baron August Freiherr von Hasthausen

In 1843, German political economist Baron August Freiherr von Haxthausen (1792-1866) was commissioned by Tsar Nicholas I to undertake a study of land tenure in the Russian Empire. He journeyed over 7,000 miles through European Russia, the Crimea and the Caucasus. In the late summer of 1843, Haxthausen visited the Doukhobors at Milky Waters, just after the sect was exiled to the Caucasus. His account, published in “The Russian Empire, its People, Institutions and Resources (2 vols) (London: Chapman and Hall, 1856) is one of the most valuable foreign accounts of the sect in the early nineteenth century. In Haxthausen, we find the most frequently cited account of the crisis which racked the Doukhobor colony in the 1830’s and led to its exile and disbursement. Afterword by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

…If the Molokans must be regarded as a Christian Sect, the same cannot be said of the Dukhobortsy, at least in their extreme doctrines. It would lead too far to attempt to give here a full description of these: they constitute a complete theological and mystic-philosophical system, replete with grand ideas and of great consistency. Beside their public assemblies and usual ceremonies they have also mysteries, accompanied by horrible ceremonies and orgies, the nature of which is kept profoundly secret. Even those who in recent times have gone over from the Sect on the Molochnaya to the Church observe a careful silence on this subject, although their behavior when questioned regarding these secrets, and the accidental expressions which fall from them, clearly indicate their existence. All or nearly all know of them, but few participate in them.

Baron August Freiherr von Haxthausen (1792-1866)

It does not appear that the Dukhobortsy have ever had a common head. The various Communes are frequently at variance; but everywhere leaders arise among them who soon acquire an absolute control over their neighbors, and secure perfect obedience.

The most interesting man of this Sect of whom we have any knowledge is Kapustin. I heard much respecting him from the Mennonites on the Molochnaya, his nearest neighbors. Complete obscurity veils his birth, name, and early life: when he began to disseminate his views among the Molokans, it caused a schism in their body; and as about that time the majority of the Dukhobortsy in the Government of Tambov emigrated to the Molochnye Vody, in the Government of Tavria, he and his followers accompanied them and settled there.

In the year 1801 the remainder of the Dukhobortsy in the village of Nikol’sk (Government of Ekaterinoslav), consisting of thirty families, settled, with the permission of the Emperor Alexander, on the Molochnaya; and as this small colony, being free from all hostile attacks and oppression, rapidly increased and flourished, the Dukhobortsy came from all quarters of the Empire and settled here, with the permission of the Government.

Kapustin’s distinguished personal and natural qualities, his genius and eloquence, soon gained him the supremacy of authority and command: all subjected themselves willingly to him, and he ruled like a king, or rather a prophet. He expounded the tenets of the Dukhobortsy in a manner to turn them to his own peculiar profit and advantage. He attached peculiar importance to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which was already known among them: he also taught that Christ is born again in every believer; that God is in every one; for when the Word became flesh it became this for all time, like everything divine, that is, man in the world; but each human soul, at least as long as the created world exists, remains a distinct individual. Now when God descended into the individuality of Jesus as Christ, He sought out the purest and most perfect man that ever existed, and the soul of Jesus was the purest and most perfect of all human souls. God, since the time when He first revealed himself in Jesus, has always remained in the human race, and dwells and reveals himself in every believer.

But the individual soul of Jesus, where has it been? By virtue of the law of the transmigration of souls, it must necessarily have animated another human body! Jesus himself said, “I am with you always, until the end of the world.” Thus the soul of Jesus, favored by God above all human souls, had from generation to generation continually animated new bodies; and by virtue of its higher qualities, and the peculiar and absolute command of God, it had invariably retained a remembrance of its previous condition. Every man therefore in whom it resided knew that the soul of Jesus was in him. In the first centuries after Christ this was so universally acknowledged among believers, that every one recognized the new Jesus, who was the guide and ruler of Christendom, and decided all disputes respecting the Faith. The Jesus thus always born again was called Pope. False popes however soon obtained possession of the throne of Jesus; but the true Jesus had only retained a small band of believers about him, as he predicted in the New Testament, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” These believers are the Dukhobortsy, among whom Jesus constantly dwells, his soul animating one of them. “Thus Sylvan Kolesnikov at Nikol’sk,” said Kapustin, “whom many of the older among you knew, was Jesus; but now, as truly as the heaven is above me and the earth under my feet, I am the true Jesus Christ, your Lord! Fall down therefore on your knees and worship me!” And they all fell on their knees and worshiped him.

Sketch of Terpeniye village, Melitopol district, Tavria province, Russia by Baron Von Haxthausen, 1843. Note in the foreground the row of dwellings, barns and stables built  along a wide central street. Note also the Sirotsky Dom (Orphans Home) in the background.

The Dukhobortsy settled on the Molochnaya Vody in nine villages, to which they gave the significant names of Terpeniye (“Patience”), Bogdanovka (the “Gift of God”), Troitskoye (the “Trinity”), Spasskoye (“Salvation”), etc. Kapustin took up his residence at Terpeniye, and from hence governed all the rest. In the year 1833 about four thousand Dukhobortsy were living there.

Kapustin introduced a complete community of goods among the people. The fields were worked in common, the harvest divided among them all, and storehouses were erected to provide against years of dearth; all kinds of industrial occupations were followed, and the colony was making visible progress.

About the year 1814 Kapustin underwent a legal examination for proselytizing, and was thrown into prison, being soon however liberated on bail. His subsequent history is mysterious and dark: it was said that he not long after died and was buried. The authorities, wishing to convince themselves of this, ordered the grave to be opened, and found a man in it with a long red beard, whereas Kapustin had brown hair and always shaved off his beard; the face and figure were no longer recognizable. Kapustin’s wife had been living for some time on an island at the mouth of the Molochnaya, a league distant from Terpeniye, near the Sea of Azov. The persons of most consideration among the Dukhobortsy soon took passports to Lugan, ostensibly to purchase horses; but the authorities grew suspicious, and ordered an investigation to be made on the spot where the woman lived, but nothing was discovered. It was not until a long time after, when Kapustin was really dead, that about the year 1820 the younger Cornies discovered a cave in which he had passed the last years of his life.

I have myself seen it: a small fissure, probably closed at one time by a door, leads from the bank by a zigzag passage into a kind of chamber in the rock, in which stood a bedstead and a stove; light was admitted into the cave by a wooden tube running out into the open air and concealed by bushes.

Sketch of Doukhobor house in Terpeniye village by Baron Von Haxthausen, 1843. Note the high-lofted construction, with the second floor under a steeply pitched gable roof. The Doukhobors continued this style of construction into the early 1900’s in Canada.

After the death of Kapustin the office of Christ passed to his son; he is said to have assured his people that the soul of Christ had the power of uniting itself with any human body it pleased, and that it would establish itself in the body of his son. In order to exempt the latter from service in the army, Kapustin sent his wife when pregnant to the house of her father, Kalmykov, that she might there give birth to the child; after that event he married her anew and the child, which was regarded as illegitimate, was called (Vasily) Kalmykov. This (Vasily) was about fifteen years old when his father died. The Dukhobortsy, in order to obtain issue from him as soon as possible, assigned him, when scarcely sixteen years old, six young girls one after another: but the spirit of the father did not dwell in him. He addicted himself to drinking; order was lost among the Dukhobortsy, and the community of goods was destroyed. He died in 1841 at Akalkhalaki in the Caucasian provinces, leaving behind him two children under age, one of whom the Dukhobortsy expect will in his thirtieth year manifest himself as Christ.

On the dissolution of order among them the despotism of the leaders and Elders increased. Kapustin had assembled a council of thirty Elders about him, of whom twelve acted as Apostles; after his death these, under his weak son, had absolute command. But too many had been initiated into the secret mysteries, and suspicion, mistrust, and denunciation arose; they feared discovery.

The Council of Elders constituted itself a terrible inquisitional tribunal. The principle, “Whoso denies his God shall perish by the sword,” was interpreted according to their caprice; the house of justice was called rai i muka, paradise and torture; the place of execution was on the island at the mouth of the Molochnaya. A mere suspicion of treachery, or of an intention to go over to the Russian Church, was punished with torture and death. Within a few years about two hundred people disappeared, leaving scarcely a trace behind; an investigation by the authorities, too late to prevent the mischief, revealed a frightful state of things: bodies were found buried alive, and many mutilated. The investigation, which was commenced in 1834, terminated in 1839; the Emperor decided that the whole body of the Dukhobortsy on the Molochnaya should be transported to the Caucasian Provinces, there to be parceled out and placed under strict surveillance; those only who were willing to join the Russian Church being permitted to remain. The order was communicated to these people by the Governor-General, Count Vorontsov. I give a literal translation of it: 

“From the Governor-General of New Russia and Bessarabia, to the Inhabitants of the village of Efremovka, called Dukhobortsy.  Proclamation:

“All acts injurious to our Orthodox Church, or which disturb the public peace, are forbidden by our national laws; and any violation of these laws is visited with severe punishment. But these laws were made by the power appointed by God to that effect; from Him they derive their sacred origin, and it is the duty of all and every one to obey them, and punctually to fulfill them; so that whoever opposes this power rebels against the appointment of God himself.

“Ye, Dukhobortsy, have fallen away from the doctrines which the Orthodox Church has held throughout all ages; and, from perverted notions and ignorance, constituting a peculiar belief among yourselves, ye have disturbed the peace of the Church, and by your unlawful proceedings have violated public order. As enemies of the Government and its ordinances, you have long since deserved reproof and punishment. But the Emperor Alexander, who is now with God, from a desire of converting you by kindness, patience, and love, in his generosity not only overlooked your guilt and remitted the punishment which awaited you, but ordered that all of you who were scattered and living in darkness should be collected into one community; and moreover that a considerable extent of land should be given to you. In return for all these marks of his favour he required only one thing – that you should live in peace and quiet, and abstain from interfering with the ordinances of the State. But what fruits has this paternal care produced? Scarcely were you settled upon the land allotted to you, when in the name of your religion, and by the command of your pretended teachers, you put men to death, treating them cruelly, harbouring deserters from the army, concealing crimes committed by your brethren, and everywhere opposing disobedience and contempt to the Government. These things, contrary to all the laws of God and man, many of your brethren knew, and, instead of giving intelligence of them to the Government, they endeavored to conceal them; many are still in custody for this conduct, awaiting the just punishment of their misdeeds.

“Your offences are thus all discovered, and the blood which has been shed in secret and in the light of day calls aloud for vengeance. The favour of God’s Anointed, which has hitherto shielded and protected you, ye have yourselves forfeited – by your crimes ye have broken the conditions upon which it was vouchsafed. Your acts, which spring from your belief and interrupt the public peace, have exhausted the patience of the Government; public order demands that ye should no longer be endured here, but should be removed to a place where the means shall be taken from you of injuring your neighbors. Your actions have at length drawn upon them the supreme attention of the Emperor. Now learn his will:

“His Imperial Majesty orders all those who belong to your persuasion to emigrate to the Caucasus. At the same time our master the Emperor grants you the following marks of his favour:

“1. As compensation for the land which you at present hold from the Crown, other lands will be given to you in the Georgian-Imiretian Government, in the Circle of Akhalkalaki. At the same time it is announced to you that henceforth all those of your persuasion who emigrate to the Caucasus are not exempt from service in the army.

“2. It is permitted to the emigrants to sell their movable property, or to take it with them.

“3. For the fixed property, houses and gardens, compensation will be given according to the valuation of a Commission, which will be appointed for the purpose.

“4. Lands which belong to the emigrants in fee may be sold or surrendered to the Crown for a certain price; but on this condition, that if these lands are not sold or surrendered to the Crown at the time appointed for the emigration, which is fixed for the middle of May of this year, 1841, the emigrants to whom they belong will not be permitted to remain longer in their present habitations.

“At the same time his Imperial Majesty has been pleased to command it to be announced to you, that those among you who, acknowledging their error, are willing to be converted to the true faith, to return into the bosom of the Orthodox Church, our common Mother, and to conform to her doctrines, which are founded upon the Word of the Redeemer and the Apostle, may remain in their dwellings and in possession of the lands belonging and granted to them by the Crown, and that especial protection and favour shall invariably be shown to them.

“In order to make known this the will of our most gracious Master, I send to you your Civil Governor, the State-Councillor Muromtsev, and the Collegiate Councillor Kluchbarev. I exhort and pray you to take what I have said into your earnest consideration, and to return me an answer containing your determination.

“(Signed,) Governor-General of New Russia and Bessarabia,

Count Vorontsov, Odessa, January 26, 1841.

In consequence of this announcement, those who were most implicated, together with their families, in all eight hundred individuals, were in 1841 transplanted to the Caucasus, Ilarion Kalmykov with his family being of the number. In 1842 eight hundred more were transported, and in 1843 nine hundred. Some preferred going over to the Russian Church, and remaining in their former homes; many also have since returned from their new home, where they feel wretched enough, declaring their conversion to the Church. That this conversion is only pretended is more than probable: if the Government indeed were to establish schools, and send hither pious and active clergymen, an honorable conversion of the uneducated mass might be effected; otherwise the Church will certainly receive no converts but a crowd of hypocrites.

Before proceeding to describe my visit to these people, I will relate an anecdote which was told me by J. Cornies. In the year 1816 two Quakers were in Russia – Allan from England, and Grellet from Pennsylvania. A belief had arisen that the Dukhobortsy held the same religious principles as the Quakers. The Emperor Alexander, to whom these two worthy men were introduced, encouraged them to investigate the matter, and they in consequence went to the Molochnaya. The Director of the Mennonite colony, State-Councillor Contenius, accompanied them, and arranged a kind of religious colloquy between them and some of the best-informed Dukhobortsy. Kapustin was then dead or in concealment. The conversation was of course carried on by interpreters, and lasted half a day: it was conducted on the part of the Dukhobortsy by a clever and eloquent man named Grishka. The Dukhobortsy spoke in an evasive and ambiguous manner, in which art they have great dexterity; but the Englishmen kept firmly to the point, and at length the Dukhobortsy could elude their questions no longer. When to the peremptory interrogation, “Do you believe in Christ, the only begotten Son of God, the second Person in the Trinity?” they replied, “We believe that Christ was a good man, and nothing more,” Allan covered his eyes with his hands, and exclaimed, “Darkness!”  The two Englishmen then immediately took their departure.

Sketch of Sirotsky Dom (Orphans Home) in the Doukhobor village of Terpeniye by Baron Von Haxthausen, 1843. Note the courtyard was surrounded by a high wall, reputedly so that Orthodox Russians could not see or hear the Doukhobor prayer services, since it was a crime to proselytize among the Orthodox.

I took advantage of my sojourn among the Mennonites on the Molochnaya to become personally acquainted with the Dukhobortsy, under the guidance of J. Cornies, the Mennonite.

On the 7th of August, 1843, we drove to the Dukhobortsy village of Bogdanovka, and were hospitably received by one of its chief inhabitants, whom Cornies knew well. A great number of them soon collected in and around the house of our host. The exterior of the village, the arrangements of the courtyard and dwelling, and the dress of the people, differed little from those in the surrounding Russian villages; but the whole had an appearance of greater wealth, order, and cleanliness; and in walking through the village and looking at the children, and afterwards at the inhabitants collected in the house and courtyard of our host, I was struck with the remarkably handsome forms both of the men and women, and the health and strength they displayed.

The interior of the peasant’s house which I entered was quite the same as all the rest in this district; the absence of a portrait of the Saint in one corner of the room struck me, as this is invariably seen in an ordinary peasant’s house. The conversation soon turned to religious subjects; and although, from being interpreted to me, the connection and niceties of the language were necessarily lost, I could not but admire the readiness, facility of expression, and adroitness of the two principal disputants, one a white-bearded old man, and the other an active young fellow of thirty-two. Whenever they spoke of the higher and dangerous doctrines of their Sect, it was in an equivocal and ambiguous manner, and with such a multitude of fantastic expressions as would have done honour to a sophist gifted with the most acute dialectic powers. Unfortunately I could not in their presence note down anything in my pocketbook, fearing to excite their suspicion; and I can therefore only allude to the general effect: it was the most singular mixture of sublime thoughts, with a material and gross application of them to the affairs of everyday life, possible to conceive, showing how easily the highest spiritual mysticism may grow into atheism: the self-deification of these people was on the point of entirely destroying the idea of the Divinity. Good and evil, virtue and vice, resolved themselves merely into the conception of the I and the Not I; for the Dukhoborets is God, and cannot sin; but the Non-Dukhoborets is the radically wicked – all that he does, even what appears to be good, is sin.

After this colloquy, which lasted a long time, we visited several houses, to cast a glance at their domestic and family life. Cornies drew my attention to the loose connection existing between parents and children – a necessary result of their principles and doctrine. The act of generation and of being born is supposed to constitute no tie of relationship; the soul, the image of God, recognizes not any earthly father or mother; the body springs from matter as a whole; it is the child of the earth; with the body of the mother, which bore it for a time, it stands in no nearer relationship than the seed with the plant from which we pluck it. It is indifferent to the soul in what prison, or body, it is confined. There is only one father, the totality of God, who lives in every individual; and one mother, universal matter or nature, the Earth. The Dukhobortsy therefore never call their parents “father” and “mother,” but only “old man” and “old woman.” In the same way a father and mother call their children, not mine, but ours (the Commune’s); the men call their wives “sisters.”

Sketch of floor plan of Sirotsky Dom by Baron Von Haxthausen, 1843. (a) main home of Kapustin; (b) smaller home used by Kapustin; (c) three female statutuettes; (d) home containing cells; (e) well. The other structures were homes lived in by the advisors of Kapustin as well as barns, stables, etc.

Natural sympathies and instincts however are stronger than dogmas. Thus I both heard and saw that the deep and affectionate veneration of children for their parents, the tender love of parents for their children, which prevail universally among the Russians, appeared here likewise almost everywhere in the family life of the Dukhobortsy, the outward signs of the relationship only being avoided.

On the 28th of July I drove with Cornies to the village of Terpeniye, so long the residence of Kapustin. Accompanied by a Dukhoborets who had gone over to the Church, we entered the house of Kapustin (ie. Sirotsky Dom). It was empty and deserted; the doors and windows stood open, and the wind whistled in every corner. The house consisted of two stories, the upper of which had a small gallery along one side, where on certain days, when all the people were assembled below, Kapustin appeared; then they all fell down upon their knees and worshiped him. But here also was that horrible tribunal, “the place of torture and paradise.” Every spot, room, and partition is said to have had its peculiar use and name; but the Dukhoborets who accompanied us and whom Cornies questioned, at first gave evasive answers, and then observed a gloomy silence. Below was a large dark hall, without windows, which is said to have been the place where the mysteries were celebrated, and where Kapustin and his intimate associates gave themselves up to the most frightful orgies.

It was a beautiful morning, but nevertheless the whole place, in its silent and deserted condition, with the three spectral-looking statues in the courtyard, and its dark and ghastly reminiscences, made a truly fearful impression upon me.

Kapustin had, in his whole nature and position, manifestly a great resemblance to John of Leyden, the Anabaptist King in Munster. The religious principles of the Baptists too, in their origin, if not in their present state, bear an incontestable resemblance to those of the Dukhobortsy. It is however very remarkable that this man, who, according to our modern ideas, was merely an uncultivated Russian peasant, should have been able to create a complete theocratic state, comprising four thousand persons – Platonic Utopia, founded upon religious, Christian and Gnostic principles, and to maintain it for so many years.

Afterword

It should be noted that Haxthausen’s account of the events which led to the exile of the Doukhobors to the Caucasus (ie. murder, harboring deserters, etc) took place prior to his visit and is based on second-hand information. In this regard, Haxthausen drew on rumours and accusations emanating partly from the Mennonites, who never approved of the Doukhobors and partly from unsympathetic Tsarist authorities. The account is further complicated by Haxthausen’s own inconsistency and exaggeration. For example, in the French Edition of his account, published in 1847, he alleges that 400 Doukhobors were killed at Milky Waters, whereas in the English Edition of his account, published in 1856, he alleges that only 200 Doukhobors were killed. Therefore, Haxthausen’s account is unreliable in this regard, although it is the most commonly-cited version of those events.


View Tavria Doukhobor Villages, 1802-1845 in a larger map

Furthermore, recent archival research by scholar John R. Staples refutes many of the reasons cited by Haxthausen for the Doukhobor exile. In his recent publication, Cross-Cultural Encounters on the Ukrainian Steppe, Settling the Molochna Basin, 1783-1861 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), Dr. Staples suggests that the case against the Doukhobors was largely fabricated to give the government and the church a dubious excuse to take away their land (motivated by land shortages), to convert them to Orthodoxy, and prepare the ground for exile. The single largest benefactors of the Doukhobor exiles were Mennonites Johan Cornies and his brother David who received 4,039 desiatinas of the land taken away from the Doukhobors.  Staples discovered these findings in a large cache of documents in the State Archives of the Odessa Region, pertaining particularly to the exile of the Doukhobors from Molochna to the Caucasus in the 1840’s.  Doukhobors, confronted by both religious prejudice and jealousy because of their large successful land holdings, could not defend themselves against the abuse of power and consequently were exiles.

Bearing the above in mind, Haxthausen’s first-hand account of his visit to the village of Terpeniye and his sketches of Doukhobor architecture, nevertheless remains one of the rare and valuable glimpses of the Doukhobor colony on the Molochnaya at the end of its existence.

To read more, search, download, save and print a full PDF copy of “The Russian Empire, its People, Institutions and Resources” by Baron August Freiherr von Haxthausen (London: Chapman and Hall, 1856), visit the Google Book Search digital database.

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