Spirit Wrestlers of Southern Russia

by Maria Kolesnikova

Not many hints remain of Doukhobor culture in Southern Russia. Persecuted in the past for their pacifist beliefs, modern Doukhobors search for an identity in the modern world. The following article by Dr. Maria Kolesnikova examines the Doukhobors of Tselina region, Rostov province as they struggle to maintain their faith, traditions, history and culture in twenty-first century Russia. Reproduced from “Russian Life” magazine ( Sept/Oct 2005).

Few in Russia remember the Doukhobors, the pacifist Russian Christian sect championed by Leo Tolstoy over a century ago. In fact, even the name Doukhobor evokes little reaction.

“It sounds funny. Perhaps it is an evil house spirit?” guessed Mikhail Grishin, 20, an engineering student in Rostov-on-Don. His grandmother, Maria Grishina, 80, a retired schoolteacher, does no better. “Doukhobor sounds like doushegub [murderer],” she said. Natalia Trifonova, a Rostov University professor, knows of the Doukhobors. “But they are all gone now,” she noted. “To find them you should go to Canada.

“In fact, the Doukhobors are not all gone. An estimated 40,000 still live in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. About the same number live in Western Canada, and a few hundred live in the U.S., according to Koozma Tarasoff, a Canadian historian of the Doukhobors and author of 12 books and hundreds of articles about their culture. Scattered around Russia, Doukhobor populations are centered in the Tselina region in Rostov oblast, Cherns region in Tula oblast, near Blagoveshchensk in Amur oblast and the Mirnoye settlement near Bryansk.

Doukhobors (Doukhobory in Russian), literally means “spirit wrestlers.” It was a name bestowed on the sect — which had previously been known as Ikonobory (“icon fighters”) — by a Russian Orthodox Church priest (originally, the epithet was Doukhobortsy — “wrestlers against the Holy Spirit” — and intended as an insult, but the members of the sect changed it to the more positive Doukhobors, which implies a wrestling with the Holy Spirit). The sect has its roots in the 1650s, when Patriarch Nikon’s reforms of the Russian Orthodox Church led to the Raskol, the Great Schism. Some of the schismatics [raskolniks], called Popovtsi (“Priesters”) sought a return to pre-reform traditions, eventually giving way to the movement known as Old Believers. Others, called Bezpopovtsi (“priestless”), argued for dispensing entirely with priests. Some went further still, rejecting icons, sacraments, the divinity of Christ and even the Bible. They became precursors of the Doukhobors, who developed into a distinct religious group by the early 18th century.

Natalia Trofimenko, a Doukhobor who moved to Khlebodarnoye in 1992.

The notion of God within each individual is the cornerstone of Doukhobor belief “This philosophy has no creeds and does not need any Bible, Church, icons, or priests to fulfill its needs,” Tarasoff explained. “From this notion, we support the moral imperative that we cannot kill another human being — because then we would be killing the spark of God in us. The creation of a non-killing society is the essential quest of the Doukhobors.”

Not surprisingly, Russia’s tsars saw such pacifism as a threat, as something that could undermine social order and lead to rebellion. As a result, the Doukhobors suffered through centuries of persecution and three major resettlements. Under Tsar Alexander I, they were moved to Molochnye Vody, on the border between Ukraine and Russia. Under Nicholas I, they were exiled to Transcaucasia, along the border of Georgia and Turkey. There, in 1895, the Doukhobors refused to fight in Russia’s war with Turkey, burning all their weapons in a symbolic protest against war and militarism.

The furious tsar ordered that the Doukhobors be scattered throughout Transcaucasia, “sending the father to one village, the mother to another and their children to yet a different village,” according to Doukhobor lore [oral history]. The Doukhobors pleaded for help. It came from Quakers in the United States, who shared many beliefs with the Doukhobors, most notably pacifism and anticlericalism. And it came from the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose own personal philosophy had, by this time, gravitated into non-violence. Tolstoy called the Doukhobors a “people of the 25th century.” The Doukhobors, for their part, called Tolstoy “our father,” after he donated $17,000 from the publication of his book Resurrection to help pay for emigration of some 7,500 Doukhobors to Canada in 1898. Despite this mass emigration, the majority of Doukhobors remained; many moved to Southern Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

Tselina region, Rostov Oblast

My qust for the Doukhobors takes me to Petrovka, a village in Tselina region, about 100 miles southeast of Rostov-on-Don. In 1921, some 4,000 Doukhobors were permitted to resettle here, establishing 21 villages (consolidated to 11 in the 1950s). Today, there are just six Doukhobor villages. Petrovka is the largest and it is by no means exclusively Doukhobor. Other inhabitants include Russian Orthodox, Armenians and Meskhetian Turks, who fled from Uzbekistan after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Farther into the country, the asphalt road turns to dirt and cows mindlessly collaborate in the creation of a traffic jam. By the time I reach Petrovka, the dirt road has turned to mud.

Regional administrator Lyudmila Nikitina — my guide in Petrovka — offers a disapproving glance at my sandals as she dons her rubber boots. As we splash together through the mud, she explains that Doukhobors still comprise about half of the village’s declining population of 300. “It’s not as good as it used to be,” Nikitina says. “Young people cant find jobs here and they have to leave.”

I examine the streets of Petrovka, looking for traces of Doukhobor culture. Most houses appear to have porches bordered with columns, their whitewashed siding shyly hiding behind trees in the yards. On some, sheds and hen houses share a roof with the house itself. These are traditional Doukhobor homes. Newer ones use brick and have no porches, Some of the houses are well kept; some are shabby; some are deserted. The streets seem empty, with only two or three middle-aged women digging in their gardens. There are few children and men.

We approach one of the women. “You are a Doukhobor, aren’t you?” I ask. She seems proud. “Yes, I’m a pureblood,” she replies. She invites us into her house, to see a typical Doukhobor interior of three rooms with papered walls. “It’s more fashionable today than whitewash, as prescribed by tradition,” she explains. The house has painted floors, several wardrobes made in the 1970s, a television and lots of embroidery. It smells of ripe apples.

Sen (left) and Tatyana Safonova at the Petrovka cemetery.

Our hostess is Tatyana Yuritsina, a social worker in Petrovka. “Doukhobors are the nicest, the most hospitable people,” she says. “Now there are many refugees and many people of different religions here. But we have no trouble with them.”

Yet, life carries on and the Doukhobors are changing. “We used to live without fences,” Yuritsina says. “And the young, they don’t want to follow Doukhobor traditions. Take my daughter. She’s 25, and she won’t listen to me, won’t stick to the tradition.” Yuritsina speculates that her generation may be the last of the “true Doukhobors,” because only older members are clinging to their roots.

Many Doukhobors now marry outside the sect. Yuritsina’s husband Vasily is Ukrainian; she says she met him in Rostov and brought him back to Petrovka. “I don’t mind Doukhobors,” he says. “They are people, just like everyone else. And the religion isn’t important in the long run. You have to believe in God and not sin. That’s all.”

Museum of Doukhobor Culture and Worship

The Museum of Doukhobor Culture and Worship is a small home dating to the 1950s which was turned into a museum in 1991, thanks to a donation from the local collective farm, Lenin Kolkhoz. It has a collection of Doukhobor artifacts and serves as a place of worship for a few of Petrovka’s active Doukhobors.

Today, a dozen Doukhobor women have assembled in the living room, the largest room in the house. Its walls are adorned with embroidered towels and traditional costumes. A table in the far right corner holds a bust of Lev Tolstoy and albums with black and white photographs of community members. On the wall are portraits of two Doukhobor leaders, Lukeria Kalmykova and Peter P Verigin.

The Doukhobor women greet us with a traditional hymn. They are wearing long skirts with fancy, embroidered aprons, colorful blouses and white kerchiefs. Some of their attire comes from their grandmothers; some was adapted from the contemporary clothing bought at a local market. it is the sort of clothing no longer worn in everyday life.

“If you dress Doukhobor style and walk along the streets, people will look at you as if you were a savage,” says Yevdokia Bulanova, 75, a Doukhobor who lives in the village of Khlebodarnoye, five miles from Petrovka.

The women in front of me walked to the museum wearing their regular dresses. They carried their traditional Doukhobor costumes in plastic bags, then changed at the museum, like schoolchildren for a class drama performance. But the reality is that they came here to perform, and they like it.

The oldest surviving Doukhobor house in Petrovka.

Their singing seems to erase years of worry and woe from their faces. They have a certain ethereal solemnity. The words of the hymns are hard to make out, enhancing the impression that they are protecting some hidden truths. But the explanation is more banal. Years of persecution made Doukhobors in Russia drawl their syllables when singing, so that outsiders could not understand their meaning, says Lyudmila Borisova, 66, a choir member and Doukhobor activist. “Canadian Doukhobors sing much faster,” she says, “and one can actually make out the words.” Once they have started, the women do not want to stop. Their singing goes on and on. They forget about their hardships, miniscule pensions, cows that need milking, or water that only runs out of the tap a couple of hours each day.

Petrovka’s Doukhobor choir once was quite well known. Ethnographers came from Rostov and Moscow to record them singing their traditional hymns and psalms. The choir even toured Rostovskaya and neighboring provinces during the 1995-1998 centennial celebrations of Doukhobor heritage. But the choir doesn’t travel anymore. “People are scattered,” Borisova says. “We used to have a big choir, but now maybe only a dozen people remain.” Some left the village, some are too old to travel, and some are dead.

“Young people don’t come to our meetings,” Borisova says. “They are busy working and don’t have time.”

Vera Guzheva, 44, is an exception. Guzheva, who lives in the city of Taganrog, about 170 miles northwest of Petrovka, came to the meeting with her mother, Vera Safonova, who is 77. “My mother is a Doukhobor, but I’m not,” says Guzheva. “Our generation doesn’t even know who we are.”

The other women at the meeting hiss in protest.

“I’ve lived in the city for 25 years, I am not a Doukhobor anymore,” Guzheva responds.

“Who are you then? You are not a Ukrainian, you are not a Belorussian, you are a Doukhobor,” Borisova asserts.

“No one in the city knows the Doukhobors. How will I explain to people who I am?”

“You don’t need to tell them, you just have to know in your soul that you are a Doukhobor,” Borisova says.

After moving to Taganrog, Guzheva had changed to Russian Orthodoxy, thinking it was more convenient than living as a Doukhobor. During her baptismal, the priest corrected her, saying that the right name of the religion she was giving up was Doukhobortsy, not Doukhobors, a fact she didn’t know. “But in my soul I’m a Christian and a Doukhobor,” Guzheva says.

Oral History

Doukhobors in Petrovka nourish Doukhobor legends and revere names like Lukeria Kalmykova and Peter P Verigin. They remember the rituals, and, during their meetings on major holidays — Christmas, Whitsunday, Easter and St. Peter’s Day — they each read a psalm and then all perform a low bow, even though some of the women now need help standing up afterwards. But ask them to explain the essence o their belief and daily traditions, and they may give you a puzzled look.

A traditional Doukhobor bow.

There is an awkward silence when I pose this question while visiting the village of Khlebodarnoye. Yevdokia Bulanova finally speaks. “We have our Zhivotnaya Kniga [Book of Life], and you can read something about it there,” she suggests. “Nadezhda, bring it here.”

Nadezhda Trofimenko, whose home we are visiting, disappears behind the curtain separating the bedroom and living room, and returns with an old, leather-bound book, which she sets down carefully. “This is the principal Doukhobor document, here you’ll find everything,” Trofimenko says.

The Doukhobor Book of Life is the primary written artifact of Doukhobor heritage, which had been transmitted orally before 1899. Compiled by the Russian ethnographer Vladimir Bonch Bruevich while spending nearly a year in Canada transcribing Doukhobor psalms and hymns, the Book of Life preserves Doukhobor oral history and serves as a bible of their faith.

Dr. Vladimir Kuchin, 63, a researcher at Rostov-on-Don’s Anti Plague Institute, has lived in Rostov since 1958. He is a Doukhobor, and in his tiny studio apartment on the city outskirts, he archives a complete collection of the back issues of Iskra — the Canadian published Doukhobor magazine. He also stores trunk-loads of Doukhobor recordings and artifacts, which he has been collecting since 1975. He frequently contributes to local papers and to Iskra, and he said he is thinking about writing a book on Doukhobor heritage. But he must wonder whom he would be writing for. His own brother and sister have expressed no interest in their Doukhobor roots. And his parents, when they were alive, worried about his fervor for Doukhoboriana. “Dear son, why do you need all this?” they used to ask.

Kuchin’s grandparents moved to the Tselina region in 1922. They were in their thirties; his father was 10 and his mother was 8 at the time. At first, people lived in sod houses — 30 people in each home. “Their life was hard, but full of wisdom, patience and good spirit,” Kuchin says. When the Soviet state started putting up collective farms (kolkhozy), the first Doukhobor kolkhoz — Obshy Trud [Joint Labor] was set up in Petrovka, headed by Peter P. Verigin. There followed a kolkhoz named after the military commander Vasily Chapayev, and then six Doukhobor villages were united in another kolkhoz named after Vladimir Lenin. In 1928, Doukhobors in the Soviet Union dropped their stricture against army service.

“There was no other way to survive,” Kuchin says. For the most part, the Doukhobors lived an uneasy peace with the atheistic Soviet State. The government was tacitly permissive toward their religion, as long as the Doukhobors did not openly profess it.

Certainly many Doukhobors were imprisoned and exiled under Stalin. Kuchin recalls one story from Petrovka which reflects the insanity of the times. A villager, Fyodor Tomilin, made a chest for his little daughter’s toys and instruments and decorated it with a newspaper clipping that featured, among other things, a picture of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a prominent Soviet military leader arrested and executed in 1937 on trumped-up charges of treason. Some time later, another villager, Koozma Pereverzev, stopped by to borrow some tools. On his way out, Pereverzev said, “Such a young guy, and already a marshal.” Tomilin had no idea what Pereverzev was talking about. Ten days later, Tomilin was arrested and accused of treason along with Tukhachevsky and his supporters. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Tomilin insisted that he did not have any idea who Tukhachevsky was, and that no one by this name lived in this village. Only after several years in prison, when he saw Tukhachevsky’s photo somewhere else, did he understand what had happened.

Anna Sen (Safonova), center, who helped set up the Museum of Doukhobor Culture and Worship.

In the 1960s, political liberalization allowed the Doukhobors to be open about their beliefs. “I left my home village in 1958, when I entered Rostov State Medical Institute,” Kuchin says. “Even then I didn’t conceal my religion from my friends.”

Unfortunately for the Doukhobors, Kuchin’s example was becoming more typical. The youth left the village for the cities, where they studied, worked, lived, got married and had children. Many married people outside their religion, often assimilating into Russian Orthodoxy. In bigger cities, like Rostov, Doukhobors no longer gather to sing psalms. “Canadian [Doukhobor] visits might stir people up,” Kuchin says. “Some people would meet at Whitsunday, St. Peter’s day, and Christmas.

“Kuchin says he used to go to Petrovka quite frequently, until his father died in 1999. But he does not go any longer. It is too painful. “The things that have been happening since the 1980s and 1990s are incredible and I can hardly find the right words,” he says. “Prosperous Doukhobor villages in Tselinsky and Bogdanovsky regions have become hard to recognize. Suspicious strangers are buying up many homes; other houses are abandoned and falling apart, and yards and gardens are covered in thick weeds.

“The Doukhobor cemetery is also covered with thick grass. There, Doukhobor graves, devoid of tombstones and crosses, are marked only by fences with people’s names. Anna Sen and Tatyana Safonova lead me to the grave of the five settlers who died during the Doukhobors’ first winter in Tselina region. These people are heroes, and a memorial plaque was placed over their grave in the 1960s.

Three years ago, Lyudmila Dorokh, a longtime director of the museum and one of the best singers in the Petrovka choir, told me, “We are losing our identity as a community and the Doukhobor culture here will be gone in several years.” She is gone now, lying in this quiet cemetery. And her prediction is slowly coming to pass.

Certainly there are attempts to preserve Doukhobor culture in Tselina region. Canadian Doukhobors visited the museum several years ago and gave $200 for repairs. Regional authorities provided a tape recorder, so that locals might record Doukhobor psalms. “We are trying to preserve the Doukhobor culture, which is unique,” says Lyudmila Nikitina, the regional administrator. “Once a year, we bring children from the local school to this museum for a history class, to tell them about the Doukhobor faith and traditions. I wish we could do more before it’s too late.”

Goat and sheep herds near Khlebodarnoye. Agriculture is still the main source of income.

On the way back to the village, we meet other women from the Doukhobor museum. They are walking home, carrying plastic bags containing their traditional costumes. They show us a recently built asphalt road, which gives Petrovka a new, better connection with the outside world, for better or for worse.

Last Days of the Georgian Doukhobors?

by Mark Grigorian

Squeezed out by their Armenian and Georgian neighbors in southern Georgia, the remaining members of the Doukhobor religious sect are planning on returning to the land of their forefathers. The following article by Mark Grigorian, foreign correspondent in Gorelovka, Georgia, originally appeared in the Caucasus Reporting Service produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, www.iwpr.net. Reproduced by permission.

A large loaf of white bread, which our hostess had just pulled out of the old Russian stove, was lying on the table surrounded by cheese, tomatoes and sour cream. Suddenly a bottle of ‘samogon’, strong Russian homemade alcoholic brew, appeared from nowhere as if by magic.

"Oh no, don’t pour me any," 75-year-old Aunt Niura protested in embarrassment but took the glass and immediately pronounced a toast. `To your health! If your health is strong, then everything else will follow. But if not…’  She was interrupted by her neighbour Nastya, `I just wish that God keeps at least a handful of people here. Because if everyone leaves, what will become of all of this?’ `Let’s drink to our dear little corner, to our mountains…’

That little corner is the village of Gorelovka in the mountains of southern Georgia, home to some of the last members of the Dukhobor sect to remain in the country. Sadly, they may not last long. Almost all have close relatives in Russia and almost all are planning to emigrate. Only fifteen years ago Dukhobors inhabited eight villages, but today the community, which once boasted some 7,000 people, shrank to less than 700.

Dukhobors (the Russian word means `spirit wrestlers’) are ethnic Russians, representatives of a rare Christian Orthodox sect expelled to the Caucasus in the mid-nineteenth century. They do not recognise the church or priests, but believe that each man’s soul is a temple. Dukhobors do not worship the cross or icons and they reject the church sacraments. They believe that Jesus Christ transmigrated into God’s chosen people – the Dukhobors. The life of every Dukhobor should serve as an example for others because love and joy, peacefulness and patience, faith, humility and abstinence, reign in each believer.

In the late 19th century, having become acquainted with the ideas of the great writer and pacifist Leo Tolstoy, the Dukhobors refused to serve in the Russian Tsar’s army. And in 1895 they famously collected together all their weaponry and set fire to it. `The Dukhobors put all the weapons into one big pile and lit it up,’ said Tatyana Chuchmayeva, leader of the Dukhobor community in Georgia. `When the government called in the Cossacks, they stood around the fire holding each other’s hands and sang psalms and peaceful songs. All the time the Cossacks were flogging them with whips.’

Many of those who burned the weapons were punished and around 500 families were exiled to Siberia. However, Tolstoy managed, with the help of English Quakers, to organise the resettlement of Dukhobors to Canada where they were spared military service. Many others stayed in Georgia and survived all the tribulations of the 20th century.

However, life under independent Georgia has proved the biggest test. Two censuses conducted in 1989 and 2002 show that of 340,000 Russians that lived in Georgia in 1989 less than ten per cent – about 32,500 people – remained there thirteen years later. Other ethnic minorities also left.

Fyodor Goncharov, chairman of the Gorelovka village council, said that the first wave of emigration occurred in 1989-1991 when the extreme nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia was leader of Georgia. About half of the Dukhobor population left the region.

In the late 1980s, the Merab Kostava Foundation was set up in Tbilisi with the stated aim of making Georgians the dominant ethnic group. They focussed strong attention on the southern province of Samtskhe-Javakheti, where over 90 per cent were ethnic-Armenians and the rest, with few exceptions, were Russian Dukhobors.

The Merab Kostava Foundation bought about 200 of the Dukhobors’ houses and gave these to Georgians. Clothes and funds were provided to the new arrivals.

However, the experiment failed. `They could not endure our living conditions and ran away from here after one year,’ said Konstantin Vardanian, a journalist from the local town of Ninotsminda. `During the first winter they heated their houses with coal and firewood that the foundation had left for them. Then, after they ran out of coal, they lived in one room of the house and pulled up floors in the other rooms and burnt them in stoves. When spring came they all left.’

Local Armenians were alarmed by the Merab Kostava project and one result was that the Armenian Javakh Committee, founded to fight for Armenian rights in Javakheti, also began to buy houses from Dukhobors – just to keep them out of Georgian hands. `It was some sort of competition, really,’ Vardanian said, with Armenians and Georgians vying for the same houses in Dukhobor villages.

At first, Armenians enjoyed being neighbours to the Dukhobors. `Akhalkalaki people always preferred to buy butter, cheese, curd cheese and other dairy products from Dukhobors,’ remembers Karine Khodikian, a well-known Armenian writer originally from the local town of Akhalkalaki. `It was a sign of respect for them, their cleanliness and tidiness.’ But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenians got envious of the Dukhobors and their apparently orderly, calm lives. `Armenians saw that the Dukhobor community in Gorelovka was self-sustaining, they said that Canadians Dukhobors helped it,’ Vardanian said.

Armenians from mountain villages, where living conditions were much worse than in Gorelovka, began to move into the houses purchased by the Javakhk Committee and to buy land. They were joined by immigrants from Armenia who used to live in the city of Gumri and its neighbouring villages – a region almost entirely demolished by the 1988 earthquake. Relations between the Dukhobors and these newcomers was far worse than with their old neighbours.

Enterprising Armenians opened small shops and started producing sour cream, butter and cheese, traditional Dukhobor products. They purchase milk from the Dukhobors, but the latter are very unhappy with the buying prices. `Armenians buy milk in our village,’ said Goncharov. `Then they make cheese out of it, take it to Tbilisi and sell it. They pay us only 30
tetri for a litre (about 15 cents), while we have to pay 70 or 80 tetri just for one litre of fuel.’

Dukhobor villager Sveta Gonachrova said that her neighbours were frightened by the incoming Armenians, `You step outside and get punched in the face.’

Vardanian believes that antipathy between the Dukhobors and Armenians is not the only reason Dukhobors are leaving, but `it contributed’. This new wave of emigration has found help from the Russian authorities.

In December 1998, Russia’s then-prime minister Yevgeny Primakov signed a decree on assistance to the Georgian Dukhobors and the Russian parliament, the State Duma passed a special resolution on the group. The International Organisation for Migration helped with the resettlement, while Georgia’s emergencies ministry provided buses.

In January 1999, community leader Lyuba Goncharova led a large number of her community on a journey whose final point of destination was the Bryansk region of Russia. Many of those left behind are now seeking help from the Russian embassy in Tbilisi to go and join them.

The remaining Dukhobors say they are worried by Georgia’s new president, Mikheil Saakashvili, whom they see as a Georgian nationalist. There are also rumours in the community – denied by Georgian officials – that all non-Georgian schools will be closed. `Saakashvili’s rise to power scares everyone,’ said Chuchmayeva. `Everyone is panic-stricken. People see what is happening in (South) Ossetia and feel scared,’ she added in a reference to Saakashvili’s attempts to restore central authority to that breakaway region.

‘Now they are talking about making all schools switch to the Georgian language… And that scares people. They are terrified that main subjects in schools will be taught in Georgian from 2006 and our children will not be able to study.’

Georgia’s minister for refugees and migration, Eter Astemirova, told IWPR that `the main reason they are leaving, as far as I know, is due to problems with the local Armenian population. There is no basis to their worries about the Georgian language or schools’. Astemirova said the Georgian state was entirely neutral in the affair. Dukhobors are not helped `to leave or to stay’, she said. `If there is a problem, we will try to address it. … So far, I don’t know, because we have no information about Dukhobors.’

The cultural attache of the Russian embassy in Tbilisi, Vasily Korchmar, said another reason for the Dukhobors’ desire to leave is the difficult economic situation in Georgia and its tense relationship with Russia.

Gonachrova agreed that tradition counted for nothing as this community made up its mind. For young people in particular life is better in Russia than in Gorelovka, `We are sorry to leave, but what can one do? There are [proper] conditions for young people in Russia. Discos and all sorts of amusement. We have nothing.’

The Maintenance and Revitalization of Doukhobor Russian in British Columbia, Canada: Prospects and Problems

by Gunter Schaarschmidt

Over the past 75 years, the Doukhobor Russian dialect has sustained a slow but steady decline after reaching its peak of usage and functionality in Canada in 1940. This is in large part due to the increasing use of English, on the one hand, and of Standard Russian, on the other hand.  The following article by Gunter Schaarschmidt of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies, University of Victoria, examines the root causes of this trend and identifies a strategy for its maintenance and revitalization among the Doukhobors of British Columbia.  The author contends that to save Doukhobor Russian from imminent extinction, a second language program in Doukhobor Russian must be established at the elementary school level, with Doukhobor elders and culture incorporated into the school programs. Reproduced with the author’s permission from “Topical Problems of Communication and Culture, Collection of Research Articles of International Scholars (Moscow-Pyatigorsk, 2013).

1. Introduction

The Doukhobors are a pacifist and anarchist splinter group from the Russian Orthodox Church. Their views led Tsar Nicholas to ban them from their first concentrated settlement in the fertile Crimea to barren Transcaucasia. In 1895, the group created a huge bonfire of weaponry as a gesture to the government that they they opposed conscription. Fearing extermination for the group, the writer Leo Tolstoy with the aid of the Quakers in Great Britain enabled approximately 7,500 Doukhobors to leave Russia in 1899 and settle in Canada. Following a dispute with the Government and after living in the Province of Saskatchewan for 9 years, the colony split into two groups, with the larger group (approximately 4,000) moving to the Province of British Columbia (BC) in the years 1908-1913.

It is estimated that there are currently 25,000 Doukhobors living in Canada, 8,000 in Saskatchewan and 12,300 of them in British Columbia, with smaller groups in Alberta (3,000) and other provinces (between 1,500 and 1,700)[1]. Until the demise of the USSR there were 7,000 Doukhobors living in the Republic of Georgia, with many other members of the group dispersed all over Russia including Siberia.[2]  At the time of the group’s move to Canada, Doukhobor Russian was a language composed of two functional styles: the colloquial language based largely on a South Russian dialect and the ritual language based on Russian Church Slavonic and handed down orally from generation to generation until the early part of the 20th century.[3]  There are no written sources in Doukhobor Russian until the Book of Life (Životnaja kniga; also often translated as “Living Book”) was published in Russia by Bonč-Bruevič (1909 [1954]).[4]  The colloquial language was oral until the Doukhobors’ move to Canada and here well into the 1930s (see Section 3.1. below).

Although Doukhobor Russian (“DR”), with its estimated 15, 000 speakers[5], is as distinct from Standard Russian as Plautdietsch is from Standard German, the former has not been included as a language or as a minority language in any of the current handbooks while the latter has been (see, for example, Lewis 2009 and Moseley 2007). Plautdietsch is included as an endangered language of some 80,000 to 100,000 speakers in Canada (Moseley 2007:265; Lewis 2009: online). To some extent perhaps Russian scholars and possibly Doukhobor writers themselves are to blame for this omission since DR is often referred to as a “variety of Russian” (Makarova 2012: x) or as a “dialect” (Harshenin 1961).[6]  And yet, the Doukhobors clearly form a minority group distinct from other Russian émigré groups in three geographic areas outside of Russia: 1) the Province of British Columbia (Canada); 2) the Province of Saskatchewan (Canada); and 3) the Republic of Georgia. The possibility of revitalization and maintenance is possible in BC if something is done before the current older generation(s) disappear (Schaarschmidt 2012: 255-57); it is becoming very unlikely in Saskatchewan (Makarova 2011); and probably still has a small chance in Georgia (Lom [Lohm] 2006).

In this pilot study we shall first provide a summary of the history of DR from the first homogeneous settlement in the Crimea in 1801 until the move to Canada (Section 2); then describe the development of DR from the group’s arrival in Saskatchewan and the partial move to British Columbia, the onset of both diglossia and bilingualism in the community in BC and the present linguistic situation (Section 3); and, as DR is currently on the brink of extinction in this province, a preliminary outline of an “eleventh-hour” proposal how to go beyond the process of preservation to a systematic maintenance and revitalization process of the language (Section 4).

2.    From Koine to Leveling (1801-1899)

2.1. Some linguistic prerequisites.

According to Trudgill, new-dialect formation proceeds generally in three stages (quoted here from Kerswill 2002, 679; see also Schaarschmidt 2012, 238-9):

Stage Speakers involved Linguistic characteristics
I  Adult migrants Rudimentary leveling
II  First native-born speakers  Extreme variability and further leveling
III Subsequent generations

 Focusing, leveling and reallocation

There is a great deal of variability in the time-depth of koineization, with focusing possible already by Stage II, and the absence of focusing sometimes persisting over several generations of Stage III. In this section, we deal with Stage I, what Siegel calls the “pre-koine.” This is the unstabilized stage at the beginning of koineization. A continuum exists in which various forms of the varieties in contact are used concurrently and inconsistently. Leveling and some mixing has begun to occur, and there may be various degrees of reduction, but few forms have emerged as the accepted compromise (Siegel 1985: 373).

2.2. Rudimentary leveling: Milky Waters.

When Tsar Alexander decided to create a concentrated settlement of the Doukhobors in the area near the Moločna River (whence the English term “Milky Waters”), he also created the foundation for the rise of Doukhobor Russian, originally as a mixture of dialects, a sort of koine [i.e. a standard dialect that has arisen as a result of contact between two or more mutually intelligible varieties of the same language], later as a language with distinct functional styles (see especially Schaarschmidt 2008). The only uniting feature at this point was the ritual functional style (hereafter short: “ritual language”). We have no direct evidence of the Doukhobor colloquial functional style of this period or, for that matter, for a good 100 years before the Canadian period. The details of the koine situation of this period can thus be gleaned only from 1) the evidence provided by interviews with second- and third generation speakers in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s; 2) interference phenomena in the ritual language; and 3) the experience gained in the internal reconstruction of other languages. This evidence allows us to assert that for the Milky Waters period rudimentary leveling of the dialect features was in process and that because of the interruptions in this process caused by the migrations to Transcaucasia and Canada the leveling process took longer than it normally takes for a non-migrant community of speakers. There is no tangible evidence of a diglossic situation [i.e. where two dialects are used by a single language community] Doukhobor Russian – Standard Russian as the large majority of Doukhobors were illiterate, as was the case for four fifths of all Russians in the Empire, (acording to the first census of 1897; see, in this respect Rašin 1951: 49).

This figure is reproduced by permission from the Doukhobor Genealogy Website (www.doukhobor.org). Copyright Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. All rights reserved.

2.3. Further leveling: Transcaucasia.

We may assume that the Transcaucasian period marked the continuation of the rudimentary leveling process mentioned above in Section 2.1. For the first native-born speakers, however, there probably existed a combination of extreme dialect variability and further leveling. By the time adult speakers migrated to Canada in 1899, both the variability and the leveling were part of their dialect and were, to some extent, reflected in the ritual style.

This figure is reproduced by permission from the Doukhobor Genealogy Website (www.doukhobor.org). Copyright Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. All rights reserved.

There is no tangible evidence of a diglossic situation Doukhobor Russian – Standard Russian during the Transcaucasian period. There may, however, have been elements of bilingualism, as trading with the non-Slavic peoples (mainly Turko-Tatars) would have required a vehicle of communication, if only a pigeon [i.e. a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two groups that do not have a language in common] of the Russenorsk type or that used today in trading on the Russian-Chinese border area in the Far East. Many of the linguistic features collected are based on interviews with speakers in their 60s and 70s, i.e., those who migrated from Transcaucasia to Canada (see, in this respect, Schaarschmidt 2012: 241-3). We shall select here only the category of loans to illustrate the partial leveling process at this stage in language development (see also Tarasoff 1963 and Beženceva 2007:123-6). Due to the later influence of Standard Russian it is not always clear whether such loans are actually genuine loans directly from Turko-Tataric or indirect loans in a later period. This can be exemplified by the apparent Doukhobor loan from Turkic džiranka ‘deer’, for which there exist the Standard Russian variants džejran, dzeren and zeren/zerenka, referring, however, to a kind of antelope (see Fasmer 1964–73, I: 510–11; II: 95). The Doukhobor language in present-day Georgia also contains many loans from the adjacent or co-territorial non-Slavic languages but here again many assumed Doukhobor loans may in fact also be loans in Standard Russian or internationalisms, as exemplified by the loan mazun ‘matzoon/madzoon’ (a type of yoghurt), cf. Standard Russian maconi, borrowed from Armenian.

The Transcaucasian period was marked by a considerable variability in the area of phonology, morphology, lexical structure, and syntax. An apparent Doukhobor Russian innovation in morphology is the replacement of the neuter gender by the feminine gender in the first and second generations (Inikova 1995, 156). The loss of the neuter gender may have been caused by the coalescence of unstressed o, a, e in post-tonic desinences and that coalescence was then extended to stressed endings and modifiers, i.e., эта жабa [èta žaba] ‘this toad’: это сало [èta sála] ‘this lard,’ therefore моя жабa [majá žába] ‘my toad’: моё сало *[majá sála] ‘my lard.’ This coalescence can be seen widely in the Anglicization of place-names, such as Ootischenia, a locality in Castlegar, BC, referred to in a modern spelling Ooteshenie in Tarasoff (2002, 470), cf. Russian утешение ‘consolation.’

The Doukhobor settlements today are found primarily in the Republic of Georgia.

This figure is reproduced by permission from the Doukhobor Genealogy Website (www.doukhobor.org). Copyright Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. All rights reserved.

The question of the revitalization and maintenance of DR in the Republic of Georgia is not within the scope of the present investigation. It seems, however, that in spite of the significant exodus of speakers to Russia, present levels of maintenance appear to be vigorous. To be sure, the chances of a successful revitalization and maintenance process of Doukhobor Russian in Georgia are decreasing rapidly because as the leader of the Georgian Doukhobor community, Tat’jana Tixonova put it: “out of the more than 6-7,000 Doukhobors who lived in Georgia at the end of the 1980s no more than 800 are left, and these are basically between 50 to 70 years old“ (Beženceva 2007, 100; translation mine – GS). A somewhat more optimistic view is expressed in Lom [Lohm]: 2006, 48 (translation mine – GS): “One must note, however, that there are often apocalyptic[7] prophecies concerning the future of the Doukhobors. Already in the 1960s the scholars predicted that the Doukhobor identity would disappear in the near future. When saying goodbye to us, a Doukhobor woman told us: ‘you know, every year we say that we are going to leave for Russia. But in the end we always stay.’”

3.    Focusing and Reallocation: 1899-1938

3.1. Saskatchewan

Focusing, i.e., the selection of one of the competing forms, was considerably impeded by the influence of the language of the “Galicians”, i.e., of Ukrainian.[8]  This influence was still felt for a short while after the move to British Columbia (see 3.2. below). Reallocation took place, for example, in the borrowing of words from English into DR primarily in the workplace (Harshenin 1964, 1967), thus narrowing the linguistic functions of either Ukrainian borrowings or traditional DR lexical items. This period also saw the beginning of diglossia since in a letter of February 1, 1899, to Leo Tolstoy the Doukhobors’ spiritual leader in exile had stated that “teaching literacy to the children, including the girls, must be considered a priority right at the start” (Donskov 1995, 43).

This figure is reproduced by permission from the Doukhobor Genealogy Website (www.doukhobor.org). Copyright Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. All rights reserved.

The time for a revitalization of DR in Saskatchewan may have passed: Makarova (2011) predicts that the language will be extinct within a decade.

3.2. Move to British Columbia

The Doukhobors’ move to British Columbia in a relatively secluded area, free from interference with Ukrainian, allowed the Doukhobor community to conclude the focusing, leveling, and reallocation of linguistic features resulting in the demarcation of three functional styles: the colloquial language, the ritual language, and the written language. English – Russian bilingualism developed fully within one generation (roughly between the 1930s to the 1960s), primarily due to forced schooling in English (Schaarschmidt 2009: 35-36).

Due to the increasing use of English, on the one hand, and of Standard Russian (“SR”), on the other hand, both the colloquial DR style and the ritual language began their inevitable retreat after reaching their peaks of usage and functionality between 1801 and 1940. This is manifested in 1) a growing SR component in the diglossic DR/SR situation in the form of home-schooling in Standard Russian using old-country bukvari (primers) as well as in the launching of Russian schools maintained by the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ in the main Doukhobor centres of Grand Forks and the West Kootenays in BC since 1935; 2) an increase in code-switching in the colloquial style; 3) the marginalization of the DR colloquial style or its replacement by the Standard Russian colloquial style; 4) the translation of ritual texts into English or the standardization of DR ritual texts, e.g., by removing Church Slavonicisms or obscure passages; and 5) the launching of Russian-language courses from kindergarten to Grade 12 in schools in the Doukhobor areas in the early 1980s, thus further marginalizing the DR colloquial style.

This figure is reproduced by permission from the Doukhobor Genealogy Website (www.doukhobor.org). Copyright Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. All rights reserved.

4. A Strategy for the Maintenance and Revitalization of DR

4.1. The present situation

There can be no question that DR in British Columbia has sustained some heavy losses in the past 75 years, resulting in a crisis situation in our days. It is good to know, however, that there is currently a kind of revitalization of DR carried out in this province. To be sure, this “revitalization” is more aimed at recording lexical items and texts for the sake of saving as much information as possible for future generations. From efforts such as a series of thus far sixteen two-page articles of DR data in the monthly magazine Iskra (Popoff 2012) it is still a long way to the revival of DR as a vehicle of communication and a school subject. But it is a good testing ground as to how far educators in conjunction with the community are willing to go in this revitalization process.

4.2. What can be done?[9]

As in traditional native cultures, the Doukhobor elders “were the source of all knowledge and the keepers of the value and belief systems. The elders used oral language as a means of passing on their knowledge and cultures and thus education … meant that elders, language and culture were inextricably interwoven.” (Native Language Education 1986: 1; Government of Alberta 2010:2).Thus, in order to develop a Second Language Program in DR from Grades 1-3, the Doukhobor elders and cultures must be brought into the school programs. The subject DR faces stiff competition from a numerically stronger relative, i.e., Standard Russian (SR), historically a compromise language based essentially on the Moscow dialect.

The current need for the maintenance and revitalization of DR is similar to the needs of many other minority languages including autochthonous ones. We will select here one that is within our research experience and competence, viz., Lower Sorbian (a Slavic language) in Germany. About a dozen years ago, Lower Sorbian was spoken only by people older than 60 years, and it was predicted that in about 15 to 20, maximally 30 years, the language would be dead (Jodlbauer, Spieß and Stenwijk 2001: 204). The remedy for this was seen in revitalizing Lower Sorbian as a second language beginning in pre-school years. For this purpose, a special day-care centre, called Mato Rizo, was established in a district in the city of Cottbus. In that day-care centre, part of an anticipated chain of such centres called WITAJ (“welcome”), Lower Sorbian was taught as an immersion course in the hope that a new generation of second-language speakers would compensate for the losses suffered in the last two decades. In addition, as a possible interim supporting measure it was hoped that Lower Sorbian could be increasingly taught as a foreign language with English and possibly French and Russian as powerful competitors (Jodlbauer, Spieß and Stenwijk 2001: 207-208).

Like in the case of Canada’s First Nations languages, such efforts for the revitalization of Lower Sorbian require the active involvement of elders with native or next-to-native (semi-speaker) proficiency in the WITAJ project. But similar to the Doukhobor Russian situation, Lower Sorbian language activists have come out against making two languages, viz., Lower Sorbian and English compulsory subjects even though they do not agree with public opinion that learning two languages in addition to German would present a burden. Admittedly, the possible range of applicability of Lower Sorbian as a second language is very limited in present-day German society; however, the language does have a rich written tradition to look back on. On balance, then, Doukhobor Russian is more in the situation of Canada’s First Nations Languages: for the latter, especially the smaller groups like some Salish languages in British Columbia, it is often suggested that they would be better off learning a major First Nations language, such as Cree (see also Schaarschmidt 1998:463). This is similar, then, to the view expressed in the Doukhobor community that Doukhobor children should learn Standard Russian but that all efforts should be made to document as much as possible of Doukhobor Russian so as to preserve it as a museum language.

At the time of writing, only the oldest generation of Doukhobors in BC is still using the language in one or the other function. Children pick up bits and pieces from grandparents but they don’t speak it for the simple reason that their parents don’t know how to speak it any more. This situation in general implies the impending death of a language/dialect. True, there are many who would like to save the dialect and they can learn a lot from the situation of the First Nations languages in British Columbia where considerable progress has been made even in those cases where there were only 50 adult speakers. There are also opponents who either do not see any value in maintaining and revitalizing the language of the elders or view this process as an extra burden on the children in the light of Standard Russian as a school subject. It is difficult to counter value judgments except perhaps with the argument that there are benefits in maintaining something that could be of good use some day (Harrison 2010:274). The extra-burden argument does not hold water because the human brain between three and six years of age can pick up an indefinite number of languages or dialects (even closely related ones) without any difficulty (for a detailed discussion of the pros and cons of multiple-language acquisition, see Harrison 2010: 221-242). Another hindrance to the revitalization project is the auto- and heterostereotype perception of DR: 1) the Doukhobors themselves consider DR to be outdated and not good Russian (being based on a South Russian, DR is often felt to be like Ukrainian). The notion of DR being outdated is perhaps best expressed in this quote from a Doukhobor: “Personally, the so-called ‘Doukhobor dialect’ is interesting as a minor artifact of life, but the real future is in learning Standard Russian, one of the important international languages of the world” (Koozma Tarasoff, Spirit Wrestlers Blog, May 21, 2011. www.spirit-wrestlers.com). This negative autostereotype perception is enforced by the heterostereotype perception as exemplified by references to DR as being “artificial” and “defective” (Golubeva-Monatkina 1997: 35; translation mine – GS).

As stated in the Introduction, the present study should be viewed as a pilot study to be followed by a detailed proposal how to 1) get DR into the school system at least in Grades 1-3; 2) develop a teacher training programme and curriculum as well as teaching aids in consultation with elders; and 3) secure funding for such a programme perhaps in the form of a foundation grant as well as grants from the Provincial Government.

4.3. Getting DR into the BC school system

4.3.1. Teacher training programs

Selkirk College in Castlegar, BC, would be the most appropriate place to develop a teacher training programme and workshops as well as curriculum and teaching aids perhaps with the assistance of the University of Victoria, a traditional supporter of DR studies and teacher training initiatives since the early 1980s. A Doukhobor foundation grant would help with the financing of these efforts as well as with the preparation of the kinds of materials mentioned in 4.3.3. below.

4.3.2. Writing DR

One of the first things that were done for Sencoten, a language like DR with an oral tradition, was to develop an alphabet for the language. This was carried out by John Elliott, a non-linguist who has managed to incorporate four of his new graphic symbols into UNICODE (see www.languagegeek.com/salishan/sencoten.html and Claxton & Elliott 1994). For DR it will make good sense to use the cyrillic alphabet but perhaps with the addition of the Greek letter γ (gamma) to denote the pronunciation of Cyrillic г as either [γ] or [h] in DR as well as the letter ў to denote bilabial [w].

4.3.3. Texts, dictionaries and a grammar

A second task will be to create an archive of texts in both oral form and cyrillic letters. A grammatical outline of DR as well as dictionaries will also be essential as teaching aids.

5. Conclusion

In concluding this pilot study we wish to emphasize that we take it for granted that saving a language from extinction is just as important as ensuring the survival of an animal or plant species. As the Australian language expert Wurm (1991: 17) put it: “With the death of a language […] an irreplaceable unit in our knowledge and understanding of human thought and world-view has been lost forever.” And to paraphrase Harrison (2010: 274), what the elder generations of the Doukhobors know – “which we’ve forgotten or never knew – may someday save us.” It is imperative that, once a community decision has been reached to embark upon a revitalization program, a school program in DR should be started very soon, certainly while the elders are still around because creating a generation of DR as second-language speakers may make good economic sense the benefits of which might only be felt a couple of generations later.

As Harrison quoted one of his “last speakers”: “trouble is, they say they want to learn it [=the language, G.S.], but when it comes time to do the work, nobody comes around” (Harrison 2010: 249). It is noteworthy that in those cases where somebody did come around (Sencoten, Lower Sorbian), the experience has invariably been a rewarding one.

Footnotes

[1] This statistics are based on the possibly quite outdated information given in Popoff 1983, 117. Later figures put the totals somewhat higher, e.g., in Tarasoff 2002, 12.

[2] Current estimates for the Republic of Georgia vary widely due to a lack of reliable statistics from 800 speakers to a mere 150 (see also Section 2.3. of the present study).

[3] DR has been variously referred to as a “language’, a “dialect”, or a “variant” (of Russian). We are using “language” where many writers have been using “dialect”, and we prefer to use “style” as opposed to “dialect”. This question of nomenclature is not trivial, see also the discussion of the hetero- and autostereotype perception of DR in Section 4. of the present study.

[4] In the transliteration of cyrillic, we follow the “ISO Transliteration System”. In one instance, viz., in the discussion of the loss of the neuter gender in DR in Section 2.3., we decided to use the original cyrillic because it seemed to us to make the opposition stressed : unstressed clearer.

[5] This is on the assumption of a 60% language maintenance estimated in Schaarschmidt 1998, 466. The level of maintenance has probably shrunk to something like 50% during the last 15 years, amounting to a total of 12,500 speakers including a large number of semi-speakers.

[6] We prefer to label the relation DR – SR in BC as a diglossic situation. Due to the fact that Canadian English is rapidly becoming the first language for BC Doukhobors, there is bilingualism in addition to diglossia (Schaarschmidt 2012: 249-50). For a discussion of the various forms of diglossia, as opposed to bilingualism, see Myers-Scotton 2006: 80-89.

[7] The term “apocalyptic” seems to refer to the “Day of Judgment” said to arrive possibly in the year 2000, as quoted in Inikova 1995, 194. For some recent literature on the protection of the Doukhobors in Georgia, see also also Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Georgia: Treatment of Doukhobors (Dukhobors) and state protection available to them, 1 January 1999, GGA31028.E, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6ab9448.html [last accessed 6 February 2013]. For the reduction in the number of schools with Russian instruction in Georgia and an action plan to remedy this situation, see Council of National Minorities (2012).

[8] Young (1931:185) reports many cases of intermarriage between Doukhobors and Ukrainians.

[9] Most of these steps are outlined in Hinton and Hale 2001. A convenient shortcut guide for indigenous languages can be found in FPCC 2013 http://www.fpcc.ca/language/toolkit/begining_an_Indigenous_Language_Initiative.aspx (last accessed February 20, 2013).

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  • Siegel, J. (1985). “Koines and koineization” in Language in Society 14: 357–78.
  • Tarasoff, Koozma J. (1963). “Cultural interchange between the non-Slavic peoples of the Soviet Union and the people of Russian background in the greater Vancouver area.” Term paper, Slavonic Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
  • Tarasoff, Koozma (2002). Spirit Wrestlers: Doukhobor Pioneers’ Strategies for Living. Brooklyn, NY: Legas/Ottawa: Spirit Wrestlers Publishing.
  • Trudgill, P. J. (1998). “The Chaos before Order: New Zealand English and the Second Stage of New-dialect Formation” in E. H. Jahr (ed.), pp. 1-11. Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Trudgill, P. J., E. Gordon, G. Lewis and M. Maclagan. (2000). “Determination in New-dialect Formation and the Genesis of New Zealand English”. Journal of Linguistics 36: 299–318.
  • Wurm, Stephen A. (1991). “Language Death and Disappearance: Causes and Circumstances” in Robert H. Robins and Eugenius M. Uhlenbeck (eds.), pp. 1-17. Endangered Languages. Oxford and New York: Berg.
  • Young, Charles H. (1931). Ukrainian Canadians. Toronto: Nelson.

For More Information

For additional research about the Doukhobor dialect spoken in Canada, see Gunter Schaarschmidt’s articles Four Norms – One Culture: Doukhobor Russian in Canada as well as English for Doukhobors: 110 Years of Russian-English Contact in Canada.  Read also about his Day-trip to Piers Island: Reminiscing About the Penitentiary, 1932-1935.  Finally, for Gunter Schaarschmidt’s exclusive translations of 19th century German articles about the Doukhobors, see The Dukhobortsy, 1822-1828 by Daniel Schlatter; Passage Across the Caucasus, 1843 by Kuzma F. Spassky-Avtonomov; The Dukhobortsy in Transcaucasia, 1854-1856 by Heinrich Johann von Paucker; Notes from the Molochnaya, 1855 by Alexander Petzholdt; Doukhobors in the Caucasus, 1863-1864 by Alexander Petzholdt; Report from the Caucasus, 1875 by Hans Leder; and Travels in the Caucasus and the Armenian Highlands, 1875 by Gustav I. Sievers and Gustav I. Radde. 

Trek of the Doukhobors

by Betty Ward

The story of how four large groups of Doukhobors were handed across Canada by train from district to district in 1899 is a mission the details of whose drama has never been fully appreciated. It necessitated a monumental piece of fast organizing and is told in remarkable detail in the records of the Immigration Branch of the Department of the Interior. The following article by Betty Ward, reproduced by permission from Saskatchewan History (34, 1981, No. 1) outlines the frantic work of immigration officials to order supplies, fight red tape, inclement weather and inadequate shelter buildings during the months the Doukhobors were arriving. Despite these challenges, and an occasional loss of tempers from time to time, the immigration officials got the Doukhobors to the Canadian Prairies intact. 

The immigration policy of the Canadian government from 1882 to 1899 was to give to booking agents of steamship companies, or local agents in small towns, a bonus of one English pound for each adult ticket sold in Europe, $1.75 in Great Britain and Ireland, and half that for “half-tickets” – presumably children. The bonuses were given as an incentive to sell more tickets. The Canadian Government had not employed any immigration agents on the Continent, so booking agents were paid “a sufficient amount to encourage [them] to … act as agents for this country.”

When the Doukhobors came, the English Society of Friends had chartered the ships, no tickets had been issued, so no booking agents’ fees were involved. Because of this, an arrangement was made that the government would pay to a committee appointed in Winnipeg, one pound for each person, and this money would be held as a credit that could be used on the Doukhobors’ behalf when necessary.

They came, exhausted and fearful after four years of hounding and persecution from the Russian government because of their refusal to bear arms. They came as fast as they were able and before the Russian government could change its mind about letting them go, to a Canadian winter of “unprecedented cold.” Only a fraction of those who came had any means. The rest fled Russia with blind trust that nothing they might encounter in a foreign country could possibly be as bad as what they had endured in their own. They received financial assistance from the Friends (Quakers), concerned humanitarians like Leo Tolstoi, who donated royalties from his last book Resurrection to their cause, and his son, who came with them at least as far as Winnipeg, and the Canadian government, as well as private donations from many other compassionate and concerned individuals and groups, in England, Canada and the United States.

First party of Doukhobors a day’s journey from Yorkton. Library and Archives Canada C-000684.

Beginning in late January 1899 the groups landed in Halifax, Saint John, and Quebec. Interpreters were sent from Winnipeg to meet them. Chief among them was Philip Harvey. Harvey made only the first trip, and then remained at East Selkirk to supervise incoming trains. Five other interpreters shuttled back and forth across the continent at a time when travel was neither easy nor taken for granted, assisted the Doukhobors from ship to train, saw they had what they needed and understood what was happening to them, and helped at each point to divide up and load the consignments of food. They talked, listened and worked endlessly.

Six days travel from Winnipeg to Halifax. It’s interesting to read, too, that in 1899, $20 was considered sufficient for each interpreter’s expenses, plus $2.50 a day for meals.

W. F. McCreary, Commissioner of Immigration at Winnipeg, and Frank Pedley, Superintendent of Immigration, Ottawa, and their deputies, wrote countless letters during the months the Doukhobors were arriving. They scrambled to order supplies, fought red tape, frightful weather and inadequate shelter buildings, tore their collective hair, and in a gentlemanly way lost their tempers from time to time. But they got the Doukhobors to Western Canada intact.

The first letter after the first group of Doukhobors arrived was a long and detailed one from McCreary to James Smart, Deputy Minister, Department of the Interior, in Ottawa, dated February 9, 1899. McCreary’s secretary was ill, he was behind in his correspondence, working overtime and in haste. His letter shows it but tells its own story best, mistakes and all.

… in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, there has not been a more prolonged stretch of extremely cold weather, than we have had for the last two or three weeks. This morning, at nine o’clock, when I came down, the thermometer stood at forty four. [below zero, Fahrenheit] Last night, during the fire in the “Manitoba”, it stood about fifty one, and it has been running from thirty-five to forty-five, with a keen wind, for many weeks. You can readily imagine, as an old resident, what that means.

These Doukhobors have hard leather boots with a piece of balnket [sic] about the foot, and no socks. The women also, have only a half slipper with leather soles. They have not mits [sic] whatever, or, at least, very few, so that the work of getting them out to the colonies has been stationary.

Yorkton Shed is, I believe, ready, but I have not even been able to send the people from Dufferin School there, because I could not risk loading the children on the trains in such weather. It will surely, however, moderate when the new moon comes in on Friday, so that I will possibly get them out on Saturday or Sunday. As I must have this building for the Superior people. [Doukhobors coming on the Lake Superior]

I have heard from the gang of ten men whom I sent out to the White Sand Colony; [Canora area] they are getting along fairly well, but sadly hampered by cold weather, they were also some time finding timber, but have secured some now on the Hansack. [Kamsack?] They have built three houses 24 x 24 already, so that fifty or sixty Doukhobor men can be sent either there as well as to the camp at Thunder Hill, just as soon as the weather moderates.

I have a car of flour at Yorkton and the same at Cowan as well as other supplies. I have at each place five teams of horses and three of oxen. I tried to engage teamsters at Yorkton to exercise these horses taking out the flour, but Crerar wires me tonight that he cannot get a man, even for big pay to face the cold.

Certainly Providence intervened in preventing the “Superior” people from coming up here, for I believe, had they been forwarded, they would have had to remain on the cars or would have perished. …

I deem this explanation of the weather necessary, in order that both you and Mr. Pedley, may understand thoroughly why more progress has not been made in getting the people forward. In fact, I have been urging such incessantly but Prince Hilkoff will not hear of the people being forced out in this weather.

I have loaded a car of supplies here, and will ship it to end of Dauphin track Monday night, taking fifty men from Dauphin Shed. I have bought fifty pairs of heavy rubber boots, one hundred pairs of socks, fifty pairs of mits, and fifty pairs blankets…

The original intention seems to have been to settle the Doukhobors in Manitoba, which by that time was a well-organized province with schools, courts of law and other provincial institutions. In this regard, “When I learned that Hubbell was at the end of the Dauphin track,” Mr. McCreary’s letter continued,

I wired him to come down to meet Prince Hilkoff, as we wished to discuss Range 29 (in Manitoba), as I was having considerable difficulty over this matter … the Prince, after consulting with the Doukhobors has agreed to release this Range and will afterward select other three Townships … further west on the Saskatchewan.

… either the Prince or Sulerjitzky will go out with the deputation to select the villages, though, I imagine, for this winter at least, the houses will have to be erected wherever timber is found, and they can move the logs afterward to the village sites.

Now in regard to the East Selkirk Round House being ready, matters are not working very smoothly and have not from the first, for reasons which I need not explain here. I sent thirty Doukhobors down yesterday morning and wished Mr. Smith to go down with them, but so far he has not done so. I cannot possibly get away, and besides as the work is under his supervision, I could not give advice in the matter. I imagine these Doukhobors will be able to complete the building by Monday or Tuesday next, all except the roof, which Smith refused to repair, or, at least, says it cannot be done in the winter. I believe that, unless it is covered outside, or the building is plastered, or tar paper put on inside all the heat will escape through the roof and it will be impossible to heat it. We are going, however, to start all the caldrons and other stoves going and try it next week before the people come. I intend doing down on Saturday night to look over the situation there.

I presume that if these people leave [Halifax] on the 17th they will be here about the 22nd, so that we will have the work completed by that time.

Now in regard to supplies. There seems to be some hitch in the financial arrangements. From your letters I understand that the credit by the government was to be supplemented by contributions from various sources, including the Doukhobors themselves, Quakers and so forth, but so far they have not materialized. I discussed it with Prince Hilkoff tonight, and he himself is disappointed, he tells me that the money which they expected to be sent here, has to be used in paying transportation for the ‘Lake Superior’ party, which the Quakers refused to pay although they had promised. It would appear … the Government will either have to loan or guarantee a loan of seventy-five or one hundred thousand dollars to help these people out. …

Now I will send you a rough estimate of what, in my opinion will be required to feed these people, that is four thousand from now to the end of July, that will be five months…

Since fresh vegetables could not be shipped to the colonies in winter, McCreary suggested that the chief diet consist of bread, rice, barley, butter, sugar, tea, cheese, molasses, rolled oats, salt, “peper” [sic], and citric acid, “to sour their soup”. Meat was not needed as the Doukhobors were vegetarians. Their pacifist beliefs extended to the killing of any living creature, on the grounds that it was “brutalizing to the senses” as well as morally wrong. The list of foods was subject to change in different places, but it was not until they ran into trouble over some groups complaining that others were getting more variety that McCreary decided on a standard food list for all. Even at that he was sometimes over-ridden in the selections provided.

Doukhobors of the Thunder Hill Colony moving supplies from Yorkton to their villages. Library and Archives Canada C-005209.

His letter of February 9 goes on to list the staggering quantities of food that would be required, the household effects, the costs of each, plus freight costs. He figured out how much would be needed for each of thirteen different items and this is how he did it:

Each soul here is now consuming one loaf of bread per day, and this with a copious supply of vegetables, but putting one loaf as the quantity for each soul, and supposing each sack of flour will make sixty loaves of bread, … it would figure out this way, one sack of flour would feed two Doukhobors for one month … for five months, 4,000 Doukhobors require 10,000 sacks of flour. These 10,000 sacks of flour at $1.50 would mean $15,000.

He worked out each item in the same way until he came to the question of vegetables, at which point he threw in the sponge.

… It is useless to figure out these items, as, in my opinion we cannot buy them in [until] the spring but we could not freight them out [anyway]. But for the quantity we may have left on hand after feeding the people all winter, over and above what is required for seed, I think we can safely put down for this item $3,000.

This disposes of the whole supplies, although as you will notice I have not included cheese which we may have to buy, and many other items to be settled afterwards. This does not include all cooking utensils, stoves, hardware required for the buildings, such as sash and nails, farming tools, axes, hoes, farming machinery, such as mowers, rakes, plows, harrows, waggons, sleighs and so forth. Nor does it include the very large item for freighting all these goods over stiff trails to the colonies, nor the purchase of cows, clothing and so forth. I will endeavour to figure these out on a business basis and send you a copy, although it will be difficult to do so at the present time, as I pointed out before to Prince Hilkoff has not materialized the large amount of money that will be required, even to keep these people from actual starvation during the spring months. I told him to day, that there was one month last year, when every bridge in the Dauphin district was swept away, and close neibours [sic] were unable to get from [one] place to the other. The snow is now pretty deep up there and, at the Thunder Hill especially, we may expect just such a state of affairs so that a large quantity of these goods should be in there before the frost goes out, or I would not like to predict the result.

February 11, two days after his first long letter, McCreary, still labouring away without his secretary, wrote again to Pedley in Ottawa.

…I understand you have about two thousand people there, and my present idea is that you should send four trains containing about six or seven hundred people to East Selkirk, and a smaller train with from three to three hundred and fifty people, to the Dufferin School, Winnipeg, now occupied by those intended for Yorkton, who will go out on Monday or Tuesday, if we can get the temperature above forty five below, where it has been standing practically for the last three weeks. I may mention, in this connection, that these people are poorly clad for a cold climate — some of them froze their toes even sawing wood in the yard, and are laid up. I had to buy nearly two hundred pairs of moccasins, four hundred pairs of socks, and other warm clothing for the men that I am sending out to the colonies…

In regard to utensils, I presume you will have to buy some to replace those kept here. I think it should be arranged that these people should keep the utensils you buy for use on the train, as they will require them in East Selkirk. The only utensils they use here, where we have six hundred, are about twenty-four ordinary knives for peeling potatoes, many of which they have; a number of table spoons, and of these they have quite a lot made of wood; heavy iron pails for carrying up the soup and tin milk cans in which to place the soup, seven or eight people eat the soup out of one tin. The bread is also put in these tin dishes; forks they do not use at all, neither tin plates.

Owing to some of the Doukhobors at other points, getting food different from what they have here, they are making a rule that all should be fed the same – cheese is going to be cut off, as well as mollasses [sic], and fish, of which they are using some at Brandon and Portage. The regular diet is going to be potatoes, bread, cabbage where available, or if not, turnips or carrots, tea and sugar. As a substitute for vegetables, which we cannot get to the colonies, they will likely have to use cracked wheat, barley, rice or rolled oats, although they do not take kindly to porridge. Onions, of course, will be supplied to them, as well, but we cannot, I fear, get them out to the colonies, and of course they have to be imported from the south and are a little expensive.

But Frank Pedley had his own ideas. On February 15, 1889 Pedley sent off a note to R. E. Jamieson, a food merchant in Ottawa, as follows:

… the second party of Doukhobors … will … reach here next Monday or Tuesday and I would be glad if you would have the following provisions delivered at the Station here to be taken on board the several trains on arrival, the prices to be similar to those charged in connection with the provisioning of the first party: 7,500 loaves bread. 1,750 Ibs cheese. 75 Ibs tea. 160 gallons milk. 100 Ibs salt.

You will be wired when the trains leave St. John so that you will be able to judge when they will arrive in Ottawa. If any additional supplies are required you will be telegraphed to that effect.

The matter of where the Doukhobors would be settled seems to have been resolved. The only reference to it is in a letter from McCreary (sounding a bit tired and impatient by this time) to Pedley, dated May 25, 1899, when weather was no longer a problem.

Please let me know either by letter or by wire … what day you expect the Doukhobors to arrive, and will they all arrive at or about the same time, at Halifax or Quebec?

As already advised, I have purchased a large tent, 80 x 130, which I intended forwarding to Yorkton, but since Prince Khilkoff has an idea of starting a new colony up the Saskatchewan, I have held the tent here as, or course, it would not do to pull the people out to Yorkton if they were going up that line.

My intention now is to try and get rid of the 1400 Galicians who arrive tonight and who will be placed in the Round House for a time, before the Doukhobors will arrive, pitch the big tent down at Selkirk and if it is necessary to hold them over, place the entire party there. This tent will, I imagine, hold about a thousand, the Round House 1600, and, of course, if necessary, we could put three or four hundred at Portage la Prairie. …

The first year was difficult for any settler, as it was not possible to go onto uncleared prairie and turn it into a profitable farm at once. Most of the men worked for the railway, to get some cash income; and in the case of the Doukhobors the women put in the gardens, in some cases pulling the ploughs themselves, as they had no oxen or horses that first year. Those who needed help through the next winter got it from the government. When the Doukhobor men were settled into working for the railway, Mr. J. Niblock, Superintendent of the Canadian Pacific Railway in Moose Jaw wrote to Mr. McCreary on June 30 forwarding a copy of the report made to him by J. Armstrong, Roadmaster, on June 29, 1899. The roadmaster’s report said in part:

The Doukhobors are giving very good satisfaction. … are doing very well and are improving … where you can keep them together and not mix them with other men. … our greatest trouble is taking care of them, keeping them from getting pinched or jerked off the cars when moving, or hurt with slides when at work in the cuts.

By August 1899 only a handful of Doukhobors were still at Selkirk waiting for their accommodations at the new settlements on the Saskatchewan River near what is now the Borden district, and one near Duck Lake. By that time most of the villages were built and their occupants “well pleased with the country and in good spirits now.”

Doukhobor women winnowing grain.  Library and Archives Canada C-008891.

Thomas Copland, the Land Agent in Saskatoon at that time, wrote to McCreary August 26:

I have wired you re Doukhobors and location of three Villages … we had a stirring time for a few days owing to a commotion among themselves through the drawing of lots for the first location, disappointing some of them. This is all got over now and so far has resulted in good as it [before that] had seemed impossible to get them to consent to less than 75 families in the large Village,, now that is divided into two, making a selection of lands near to each village more practicable and I would not be surprised if a fourth village branches out yet. If so all the better.

The rains have been very heavy and the Rivers are in high flood, – you will therefore not wonder if running of lines takes a little longer than expected. Mr. Batter will have returned to make his own report. He was very useful. Mr. Schultz is as you said, very good with a compass, needs setting right very seldom.

The first village located wishes to know the best terms the Government will give them for the North West ¼ of Section 19-39-7 – and exact acreage. I presume 160 acres. This is required for water, there are at least 2 good springs on it.

I have also to request that you will obtain the approval of the Department for my action in allowing them to have the homesteads on the west of Tshp. 39 Rg. 7 – viz: one ¼ of Sec. 30. – all of 20 – 18 – and 6 -. Being on the spot and seeing the necessity of adding these to the first village. … A full list of names with homesteads allotted to each, will be sent you as soon as possible.

Those men who have come into this Colony from Yorkton, are delighted.

McCreary passed along this information to Pedley in Ottawa in a letter dated September 1.

You will observe that he [Mr. Copland] is making very satisfactory arrangements, and I think, while this will be a very small colony, they will get along all right. …

… Mr. Morrison … whom I have had for the last month at Duck Lake locating the large colony on the north side of the Saskatchewan returned this morning … They succeeded in getting most of the people across the River and about one half of their baggage, when the ferry broke away with the high water, and as but little could be done at present to complete the work, they returned.

There has been a great deal of trouble with these people; … each one wanting the same quarter-section, and the only way it could be settled was by drawing lots, and even then come of them would not abide by the land given them in this way – so that Mr. Morrison had to use a great deaf of diplomacy to get them settled at all.

It is difficult at present to state when the ferry will be replaced, as I understand the cable is buried in eight or ten feet of sand, and it will be useless for me to make a definite report until the matter has been finally adjusted…

In his yearly Report dated December 31, 1899, the Winnipeg Commissioner, W. F. McCreary said nothing at all of the turmoil involved in moving the Doukhobors across Canada, dismissing the difficulties by saying merely, “Public sympathy and attention have been so largely attracted by the settlement of this people … that little need be said … save as to their settlement.”

McCreary said the first group of 2,078 “souls” arrived January 27, 1899, followed by 1,973 in February; in May, 1,136 came, and July saw 2,335. Four more arrived in September and one in December. But his times and figures are inconsistent, as later in his report he speaks of the May group as the one which arrived in June. He reported the numbers variously as “7,427 souls”, and “7.354”; whereas if the above numbers are added up they come to 7,527. “There is thus,” McCreary concluded,

with some reasonable allowance for error, a total population of 7,354 souls, living in 795 houses, comprising 57 villages, and who, averaging 5 to a family, are settled on some 1,500 homesteads of 160 acres each.

The lands they have settled are fruitful, sufficient water is found in rivers, creeks, springs and wells, and the people are generally contented and satisfied with their prospects in their new home.

This article originally appeared in the pages of Saskatchewan History, an award-winning magazine dedicated to encouraging both readers and writers to explore the province’s history. Published by the Saskatchewan Archives since 1948, it is the pre-eminent source of information and narration about Saskatchewan’s unique heritage.  For more information, visit Saskatchewan History online at: http://www.saskarchives.com/web/history.html.

Spiritual Origins and the Beginnings of Doukhobor History

by Svetlana A. Inikova

The following is a keynote address given by Russian ethnographer and archivist Svetlana A. Inikova at the Doukhobor Centenary Conference, held at the University of Ottawa on October 22-24, 1999.  Her address, based on extensive research of Russian archival sources, including a significant number of previously unknown documents relating to the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, reveals many new and important insights into the spiritual origins and early history of the Doukhobor movement in Russia.  Reproduced by permission from A. Donskov, J. Woodsworth & C. Gaffield (eds.), The Doukhobor Centenary in Canada, A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective on their Unity and Diversity. (Ottawa: Slavic Research Group and Institute of Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa, 2000).

Doukhoborism is now three centuries old. While Doukhobors have never been able to boast great numbers or a widespread population, they have made a definite mark on Russian history. Their dramatic development has drawn the attention of historians for the past two hundred years. In spite of all that has been written about them, there are still noticeable gaps in their historical record. The early history of the movement and the consolidation of its teachings are very poorly researched, and there are only a very few articles dealing with eighteenth-century Doukhoborism.

Modern researchers are well acquainted with Orest Novitsky’s Dukhobortsy: ikh istoriya i verouchenie ["Doukhobors: their history and teachings"], published in 1882, which has become a leading textbook on the subject. Worth noting for their research on early Doukhobor history are A.S. Lebedev’s study on the Sloboda-Ukraine Doukhobors and N.G. Vysotsky’s work on the Doukhobors of Tambov and Voronezh Provinces. These major works written around the turn of the century are for some reason largely unknown to scholars today.

Much better known is F.V. Livanov’s Raskol’niki i ostrozhniki ["Raskolniks and Ostrozhniks"], based on a wide range of archival sources, although the author takes a less-than-serious approach to his subject, not distinguishing between the Doukhobors and the Molokans and thereby introducing an element of confusion into the question of territorial distribution. There is an article by Soviet researcher P.G. Ryndzyunsky on the so-called "Tambov free-thinkers" discovered in Tambov Province in 1768-69, but the writer did not identify the sect under discussion with the Doukhobors, as he was convinced that the Doukhobors did not yet exist at that time.

In 1977 A.I. Klibanov published his Narodnaya sotsial’naya utopiya v Rossii. Period feodalizma ["People’s social Utopia in Russia. Feudal period”], which featured an analysis of a “Note of 1791 submitted by the Doukhobors of Ekaterinoslav Province to Governor Kakhovsky” [Zapiska, podannaya dukhobortsami Ekaterinoslavskoy gubernii u 1791 g. gubernatoru Kakhovskomu] and the Doukhobor teachings outlined therein. In 1997 Svetlana Inikova’s “The Tambov Doukhobors of the 1760s” [Tambovskie dukhobortsy v 60-e gody XVIII veka] appeared in Vestnik Tambovskogo universiteta, showing that by that time the Doukhobors had already established themselves as a sect in Tambov province.

These are the only studies known on the early period of Doukhobor history.

Scholars still have not solved the question as to where or when the movement first appeared. Some look upon Ukraine as the birthplace of Doukhoborism, others refer to the Tambov area, still others maintain that the teachings came from Moscow. Before 1917 it was generally assumed that the Doukhobor teachings were of non-Russian origin. Some traced them to the early offshoots of Christianity, others to Bulgarian bogomil’stvo ("Bogomils") though the rise of Doukhoborism was most often associated with Quaker or Anabaptist proselytizing in Russia. Soviet historiography, which always related everything to the struggle between social classes, maintained that it was a uniquely Russian populist teaching arising as a form of social protest. Thus, even after three hundred years of Doukhoborism not one of the questions raised above has been finally resolved. This is due primarily to the scarcity of eighteenth-century historical sources, and secondarily to the difficulty in accurately identifying the dissidents described in the documents.

The word Doukhobors did not appear until 1786. It was coined not, as is commonly supposed, by Ambrosius, Archbishop of Ekaterinoslav, but by Nikifor, Archbishop of Slovenia. The Doukhobors themselves did not adopt the term until the beginning of the nineteenth century, while the clergy and secular officials continued to confuse the Doukhobors with the Molokans, and more often than not simply called them raskol’niki or iconoclasts to avoid a mistaken reference.

However, the problem of identification of the Doukhobors in their earlier historical periods still eludes the researchers of today just as much as in the past. In order to determine the precise point in time in which Doukhoborism first took organizational form, it is important to identify sectarian references in archival materials. To solve this rather complex problem it was necessary to compile a catalogue of Doukhobor families and their places of origin at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. This facilitated the preparation of a list of provinces populated by Doukhobors, the date of their first discovery there and the sectarians’ social status.

Describing the spiritual roots of the Doukhobors means first establishing what its doctrinal teachings are. For the past two centuries theologians and secular researchers have been citing the work carried out by Orest Markovich Novitsky, along with his principal source of reference, the “Note of 1791 submitted by the Doukhobors of Ekaterinoslav Province to Governor Kakhovsky”. True, as early as 1806 Prefect Evgenii of the Aleksandr Nevsky Monastery (who would later become Metropolitan of Kiev) noted that it was written not by the Doukhobors themselves, but by a rather well-educated sympathiser. Novitsky repeated this argument and supposed that this person might have been the Ukrainian philosopher Grigory Skovoroda – a supposition which has been repeated more than once in the literature on the subject. At this stage we are interested not so much in the authorship of this note, but to what extent it reflects actual Doukhobor teachings.

Let us start with the assumption that the “Note of 1791 submitted by the Doukhobors of Ekaterinoslav Province to Governor Kakhovsky” was never actually submitted. It is known only in copies; the original has never been discovered. We have ascertained, however, that the first copy was made from a document belonging to Senator Ivan Vladimirovich Lopukhin, who is known to have made an inspection tour of the Province of Sloboda-Ukraine in 1801 and, after meeting with the Doukhobors there, to have petitioned Alexander I to allow their relocation to Tauride Province (now the Crimea).

Senator Lopukhin was a prominent and active Mason, who had a multitude of religious-philosophical works and translations to his credit. It is surprising that one who played such a major role in the Doukhobors’ destiny, if he indeed had such a document about them in his possession, not only did not make use of it but failed even to mention its existence in his memoirs.

Lopukhin was accused by the Orthodox hierarchy of helping the Doukhobors and of predisposing Alexander I favourably toward the sect. Right at the time he needed to justify himself, there appeared the “Note of 1791”, painting the Doukhobors as a religious-philosophical movement completely loyal to the authorities.

A comparative analysis shows strong similarities between the “Note of 1791” and the Masonic writings of Lopukhin himself. Kiev Metropolitan Evgenii and later Novitsky were quite correct in observing the influence of the Masons in the Note, but attributed it to the peculiarities of the teachings of the Ekaterinoslav Doukhobors rather than the peculiar world-view of the Note’s author.

Both Novitsky and Klibanov draw attention to the literary nature of the verses cited in the Note. Klibanov goes so far as to identify the cited quatrains as “inherent to Skovoroda’s poetry, in both form and content”. After considerable investigation we were able to determine that these verses came from a German poet held in high regard by Russian Masons by the name of Johann Scheffler, who was also known as “the Angel of Silesia”. A collection of his poetry was published by a Mason named Novikov in Moscow in 1784 under the title Rayskie tsvety [“Flowers of Paradise”], and was familiar to a narrow circle of supporters in St. Petersburg and Moscow at the time. An examination of the main idea of each quatrain shows remarkable similarities with the concepts outlined in the “Note of 1791”.

It is unlikely that the author was Lopukhin himself, however, as the language of the Note suggests someone very close to the South Russian ecclesiastical hierarchy. But neither are the language and style characteristic of Skovoroda’s writings. While the question of authorship is still undecided, there is no doubt that the teachings contained in the Note are Masonic rather than Doukhobor, although the two movements most definitely shared common elements – the doctrine of the “inner church”, for example.

Another factor against the Doukhobors’ own authorship of the Note is the naming of their teachers – Kirill and Petr Kolesnikov (still alive at the time) – something the Doukhobors themselves would never have done.

The author of another “Note on the Doukhobors living in the Melitopol’ district of Tauride Province” [Zapiska o dukhobortsakh, obitayu-shchikh v Melitopol’skom uezde Tavricheskoy gubernii], written in 1841, upon enquiring of the Doukhobors living at Molochnye Vody (“Milky Waters”) as to what they knew of the note outlining their faith that was to have been submitted to Governor Kakhovsky in 1791, was told that “they had absolutely no idea whatsoever”.

There is no doubt the author of the “Note of 1791” was personally acquainted with the Doukhobors. Certain historical facts and tenets contained in the Note (though possibly misinterpreted) have been actually confirmed through other sources, but cannot be considered on the whole to represent a statement of Doukhobor teachings.

Another document usually cited by researchers into early Doukhobor history is an 1805 note entitled “Several characteristics of Doukhobor society” [Nekotorye cherty ob obshchestve dukhobortsev], quite justifiably ascribed either to an unidentified Mason or directly to Senator Lopukhin. For some reason, however, the fact that the two basic documents on the Doukhobors’ history and teachings have both turned out to be connected with the Masonic order has never caused anyone to doubt their validity as historical source-materials.

Such investigations have served to emphasize the necessity of selecting undisputedly reliable sources. The past few years have brought to light a significant number of previously unknown documents on the history of the group at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, which were not accessible to earlier researchers.

Our research has led to the following conclusions:

In the second half of the eighteenth century the teachings of the four main groups of Doukhobors (in Sloboda-Ukraine, Ekaterinoslav, the Don River area and the Tambov-Voronezh region) were essentially the same. The few differences were not serious enough to warrant sub-classifications of Doukhoborism or to categorize their development as incomplete. One can, for example, note the relatively radical stance of the first group in their attitudes toward supreme authority and defence of the state compared to the more moderate Tambov-Voronezh Doukhobors. This is apparently attributable to the social psychology of the Cossacks who were more prevalent in the first group.

Following the doctrine of the inner church and the worship of God in spirit and in truth, the Doukhobors uncompromisingly rejected material forms of worship, especially the external church with its icons, the cross, sacramental rituals, sacred relics and making the sign of the cross. The temple of God was none other than the believer himself or herself. The congregation of true Christians was Christ’s apostolic church, in which all the sacraments were commemorated spiritually, worship was directed toward the image of God shining within and Christ himself was master and head. The Doukhobors endeavoured to interpret everything connected with faith in a spiritual sense.

Even back in the 1760s and 1770s the Doukhobors declined to consider the Bible a God-inspired book. They doubted that God’s word could be contained in the Scriptures, maintaining that it was capable of being written only in the heart and soul of a believer and not on paper; others declared that the Scriptures represented “baby’s milk”, while their teacher was God Himself. The Doukhobors did know by heart, however, certain passages from the New Testament which, in their opinion, confirmed the rightness of their teachings.

The non-Biblical canon was rejected completely. Doukhobor teachers read and interpreted the Scriptures at meetings as they were inspired by the Lord – i.e., within the framework of their teachings. They sought out especially obscure spiritual meanings, and the New Testament, which even in its earlier form abounded in parables, was transformed in their teachings into a set of allegories. It appears that this was not so much the result of a rationalistic approach to the miracles described in the Bible as a desire to transpose everything connected with religious life into the realm of the spiritual. Doukhobor rationalism consisted in the holding of reason to be the highest criterion by which to evaluate the correctness of one’s perception of Biblical revelation. Finally, the Doukhobors rejected reading and interpreting the Scriptures altogether during their first years at Molochnye Vody in the Tauride Province.

Up until now scholars have been generally inclined to consider the Doukhobors to be anti-Trinitarian, i.e., as refusing to recognize the Holy Trinity. Even though Doukhobor psalms constantly affirmed worship of one God in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – scholars have maintained that the Doukhobors view the Trinity not in the form of three persons dwelling inseparably in the one God, but as powers of some kind emanating from God. In fact, God, in their understanding, was not a personality but some kind of substance spread everywhere without an independent existence, a Universal Mind, a Supreme Wisdom. One might go so far as to say that the Doukhobors believed in God as a single personality, appearing in the roles of three persons. In their interpretation God the Son – created before time – and the Holy Spirit – which proceeds from the Father – were still inferior to God the Father in terms of divinity, but that is a different matter.

The Doukhobors have been called pantheists, as they maintained that there was no place where God is not, and their psalms constantly feature images suggesting a God spread throughout the universe: God the Father represents height, the Son – breadth, and the Holy Spirit – depth. In their understanding, however, the one God, while embracing the whole world, was greater than the world; He was not limited to His presence in it, but was personified in an unfathomable being. The Doukhobors’ pantheism was on an extremely limited scale.

According to Doukhobor teachings, God the Son was never embodied in human form in Mary’s womb; she did not bear a God-man. She bore Jesus of Nazareth, whom God had chosen as His anointed – Christ, whose body was occupied for thirty years by God the Son, and not by some kind of Mind or Spirit. After Jesus’ corporeal death God the Son (Christ) ascended and appeared to the apostles in a different fleshly form that they failed to recognize at first, and only later identified as God through the miracles they witnessed. The Christ-figure of the Trinity continued to be embodied in each Doukhobor leader in turn, each of which represented Christ, the true God. In Orthodox teachings the God-Son, embodied in human flesh in Mary’s womb, actually ascends with this same flesh, dwells in it in heaven and will act as judge at the Last Judgment, sitting on the throne at the right hand of the Father. The Doukhobor Trinity, on the other hand, appears to have been divided before the Last Judgment, at which point this Christ-God, having sojourned in various fleshly forms, will sit close by the Lord’s throne (but not at the right hand, as in Orthodoxy) and judge the people, or rather their souls, as the Doukhobors do not believe in the resurrection of the flesh. Even thus exists the Christ-man, in whom dwells the true God-Son – the living God mentioned over and over again in Doukhobor psalms and in recorded Doukhobor testimony.

The Doukhobors did not recognize original sin, since God the Son came into the world not for its redemption, but to show people the pattern of suffering for the truth. His flesh died on the cross; hence it was quite logical that in the Eucharist wine could not be transformed into Christ’s blood or bread into his flesh.

The other Doukhobor tenet which has always provoked a multitude of interpretations is that of God dwelling in man. A Doukhobor psalm says that God created the human soul in His image and likeness, in the sense that the soul, like God, is immortal, self-governing and intelligent. God is spiritual and Trinitarian, hence His image in man is also spiritual and threefold. God gave man three blessings: memory, mind and will. In terms of memory the human soul resembles God the Father, in reason – the Son, and in will – the Holy Spirit. And just as these three blessings, three qualities of the soul, constitute one and the same soul, even so the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one and the same God. These three qualities of the soul are also the image of God (not God Himself) which is to be worshipped.

In some psalms, however, the word upodoblyaetsya (“resembles”) is omitted and it is simply stated: God the Father [is] in memory. God the Son in mind. God the Holy Spirit in will. In some of the psalms and recorded testimony the Doukhobors also declared: “God is in man”. This is an indication that not just the image of God is to be found in man, but the impersonal God Himself dwells in man, thereby creating a mystical union between God and man. In such a case, however, denominational worship and psalm-reading would be totally unnecessary: it would be enough to pray to one’s self.

It is still not clear whether Doukhobors felt it simply unnecessary to explain that it is the image of God that is meant here, or whether the concept of likeness gradually gave way to actual dwelling. After all, God’s image in man and God in man are two completely different things.

The Doukhobors held themselves to be God’s chosen children, selected by God Himself; they held that Christ (their living God) was their pastor, and that the Holy Spirit guided them, but in all their documents and practices I have never encountered any indication that they believed in the incarnation of God in each individual Doukhobor.

During their services, while carrying out a particular ritual of thrice bowing to one another, the Doukhobors would say that they were worshipping God’s image shining within, that man was the temple of God, containing not hand-made icons but the image of God, and in the place of the usual candles was ardent prayer. The more perfect a person was, the greater was this Godlikeness of the soul in him and the closer he was to God. Hence it would seem completely wrong to take the words “God is in man” only in their literal sense.

It must be emphasized that we are not talking here about the teachings of the Doukhobors today, who have far removed themselves from their traditional doctrines; hence it would be wrong to apply our conclusions to them.

Novitsky’s identification of Doukhobor teachings with faith in some kind of impersonal God, as well as his treatment of the doctrine of Christ not as God the Son incarnate in man but as an ordinary mortal endowed “with a divine quality of intelligence but in the highest degree” were to have tragic consequences. In the 1880s Novitsky’s book and the “Note of 1791 submitted by the Doukhobors of Ekaterinoslav Province to Governor Kakhovsky” came under the studious eye of Prince Dmitry Aleksandrovich Khilkov and formed the basis of a series of manuscripts he penned on the Doukhobor sect.

Believing the Doukhobor teachings to be virtually identical with those of their mentor, the followers of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy were already beginning to prepare for their “missionary activity” among the Doukhobors. The Tolstoyans fanned the flames that had been dying out in Doukhobor society. The Tolstoyan dream of building the Kingdom of Truth on earth cost the Doukhobors dearly. The disenchantment felt by the Tolstoyans upon learning that they were not kindred spirits to the Doukhobors hurt them sorely and in some cases led to a breakdown of their own beliefs.

One cannot examine the doctrine regarding Christ without touching upon the question of the Virgin Mother. Without accepting the incarnation of God in the Virgin Mary’s womb and without venerating her as the Mother of God, the Doukhobors still retained her titles of Virgin and Mother of God (devaBogoroditsa). Mary had borne God’s anointed, Jesus, whose body had been chosen by God, which made her (perhaps not from time immemorial, and to some degree formally) the mother of the God-man. Every Doukhobor woman, bearing a man of God, a child of God embodying God’s image, is likened to Mary and in this sense she is also a mother of God.

Virginity was something the Doukhobors saw not as a family status or a physiological condition of the female organs but as purity, codified by the unpleasantness of the church’s marriage ceremony. Before being relocated to Molochnye Vody in the Tauride Province the Doukhobors were obliged to be married in churches, but did not accept the sanctity of this ceremony. It is interesting that the concept of virginity is reflected not only in the psalms but also in the Doukhobor women’s outward appearance. There is evidence by contemporary eyewitnesses dating from the period 1768-97 that Doukhobor girls did not change their dress or hairstyle after marriage, as did those of the Orthodox faith.

One question only sketchily explained in the Doukhobor teachings relates to the creation of souls. Nowhere in their psalms, in the research materials or in personal conversations was there any indication, even indirectly, of a belief in the creation of souls in a pre-material world, as stated in the “Note of 1791”. There were, however, a number of contemporary accounts of the Doukhobors’ faith in the transmigration of souls after death. This is fairly clearly stated in Psalm 79 of the Book of Life of the Doukhobors, and is also confirmed by their funereal and memorial ceremonies.

For all the emphasis on the spiritual, the Doukhobors’ teachings include no dichotomy of soul and flesh. In their view, our bodies are by no means dungeons, as is suggested by the author of the “Note of 1791”, where the soul is punished for its fall. In contrast to the soul, which is divine, the body is taken from the earth, and if one is to “walk in the flesh” and indulge the appetites, “your flesh will tarnish you as it did Adam and Eve”, but along with that, man’s body is also seen as the temple of God, the temple of the soul, and even flesh is purified by a pure spirit. Besides, it is the presence of the body that enables one to do good works, without which faith is dead. Hence the Doukhobor faith was not characterized by any special asceticism.

The Doukhobors were not averse to caring for private property acquired by honest, preferably manual labour, although greed was always to be condemned. And in order that greed should not become the stimulus of hard work and that the virtue of brotherly love should not be forgotten, Doukhobors were to help each other financially. In 1768, the Tambov Doukhobors went so far as to declare that anyone might freely take from his brother anything he had need of.

The question of the Doukhobors’ attitude toward military service did not figure significantly in the eighteenth century. Their numbers included many Cossacks: from the Zaporozhye, Don River area, Ekaterinoslav and Kuban, both soldiers and pikinery (similar to halberdiers). They all performed military service, many of them in the Russo-Turkish wars of the eighteenth century. It is known that some Doukhobors refused service in the Russo-Turkish war of 1787-91, but their motivation is not clear. The Cossack Doukhobors maintained that they were obliged to ‘defend themselves on the borders” against the enemy, but not to attack or kill. Recruits’ refusal to swear the oath of allegiance was explained on the grounds that Doukhobors in general refused to swear oaths, all the more so in church.

During police investigations the Doukhobors would declare that all people were equal, horrifying their interrogators, but this referred only to social equality and not equality in terms of spiritual value, since the Doukhobors considered themselves a step above others and less sinful. For God’s chosen people who recognized Christ as their head, no human authority was needed. However, the degree of explicitness with which they directly denied human authority varied depending upon how their relationship with such authority unfolded at any given period. The question of defence of the Empire and the Empress and the Doukhobors’ allegiance to her was tied to the degree of mercy she bestowed upon them and the freedom she allowed them to hold their services. In other words, these two questions took on much more of a political than a religious tone.

Our outline of Doukhobor teachings thus far is based primarily on documents dating from the second half of the eighteenth century. Of course this teaching was formed over the course of many decades, and its ideological origins must be sought in the second half of the seventeenth century. But where does one begin this search?

Researchers have found parallels between the teachings of the Doukhobors and those of various Christian sects. Contradictions and ambiguities in the Gospel texts have given rise to similar dissident movements, although each succeeding period has introduced its own modifications.

Among Western Protestant teachings there is no template to be found from which Doukhoborism could have been taken as an exact copy. There is no such template, for Doukhoborism selected and re-worked a whole set of ideas from Western Protestant motifs, and not just Protestant ones.

It may be concluded that the Doukhobor doctrine is closest to Polish-Lithuanian Socinianism. It is quite likely that some influence was also exerted by German Anabaptists. The question then arises as to how Socinianism and other Protestant ideas could have penetrated the hearts of so many ordinary Russians. There is no doubt that some representatives of these Western sects played a personal role in the formation of Doukhoborism.

There are legends about an aged foreigner who preached in the village of Okhochee in Sloboda-Ukraine, and about the Pole who hid in the house of the Doukhobor leader Illarion Pobirokhin in the village of Goreloye in Tambov Province. However, the most convincing evidence in favour of such contact was, strange as it may seem, the very non-Russian hairdos worn by the Doukhobor women, similar to those we discovered among women of the modern German Anabaptist sect known as the Hutterites.

In addition to direct contacts and preaching, we have reason to believe that Western Protestant ideas made their way into Russia through Ukrainian Orthodox preachers and writers who had been heavily influenced by such teachings spread throughout the Polish-Lithuanian Empire (including what is now Belarus and Western Ukraine). They may have also come through both original and translated literature produced by Orthodox and Socinian printing houses in Ukraine and Belarus. Most probably, the influence trickled in through all the channels here mentioned.

It is quite possible that the Doukhobor teachings were born out of ideas drawn from Socinian books printed on Radivil Cherny’s estate not far from Slutsk, in a hybrid language of Belarus and Church Slavonic used in the Nesvizh district – in particular from the works of Simeon Budnyj and Martin Chekhovich. The Polish-Lithuanian Socinians believed that the principal source of faith was revelation, and that the Scriptures could be understood and interpreted by anyone so gifted; hence priests and especially church hierarchies were unnecessary. God was a Spirit and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth; He paid no heed to homage from human hands. It was the human being, made in God’s image, that was to be venerated instead of icons. Jesus Christ, in their view, was an ordinary man, chosen by God. In support of this view Budnyj presented twenty-six arguments. The Holy Spirit was upon Christ, and thus he was the son of God and mankind’s only advocate before God; since he was not God, he could not offer a sacrifice of redemption.

The Socinians rejected the doctrine of original sin; they did not consider communion and baptism to be sacraments but only symbolic rituals; they did not recognize the saints and did not appeal to them for help; they maintained that faith by itself was insufficient for salvation, that good works were required; they allowed for the need to defend one’s self in war, but held attacking and killing to be wrong.

The main difference between Socinianism and Doukhoborism lay in their approaches to the substance of the Trinity and Christ. The Socinian doctrine with its rather radical basic tenets was adapted to the perception of Ukrainian Cossacks and Russian peasants who had up until recently been Orthodox, and who found it difficult to part with the tradition of a three-person God. This modification, however, did not significantly change the basic doctrine. The Belarus-Lithuanian reform movement showed a considerable radical influence on the part of German Anabaptists and Hussites, especially in respect to attitudes toward church and state, as well as a certain element of mysticism. They fomented a left-leaning tendency in Socinianism which promoted universal equality and rejected private property along with state authority and the officials who exercised it.

All these radical Protestant ideas received broad circulation in Ukraine, which at the time was strongly under the influence of Polish Catholic scholasticism. The scholastic preachers searched for hidden meaning in the Scriptures, interpreting entirely realistic subject matter as allegories and taking significant liberties with the texts in their quest for picturesque images. It is virtually impossible sometimes to determine whether their allegorical interpretations are based on the canons of scholasticism or on a rationalistic approach to a divinely inspired book.

The Moscow church authorities understandably adopted a very cautious approach to the ideas of the Ukrainian priests, whom they regarded as heretics. Some Ukrainian publications were banned from entry into Russia or even destroyed. The works of some South Russian Orthodox writers most certainly influenced the development of Doukhobor teachings.

The German economist and historian August Haxthausen, who visited the Molochnye Vody settlements in 1843, took note of two books held in great regard by the Doukhobors. One of them he described as “Key to the understanding or to the mysterious” [Klyuch k urazumeniyu i k tainstvennomu]. Novitsky mistakenly thought this was a reference to Eckartshausen’s mystical work Klyuch k tainstvam natury [“Key to the mysteries of Nature”]. In fact it was Ioannikii Galyatovsky’s Kljuch razumeniya [“Key to the understanding”], which was very popular in Ukraine and southern Russia, having gone through three editions. In the “Note of 1791” it is also mentioned that the Doukhobors read “Key to the understanding” and other ecclesiastical books.

Galyatovsky, who was constantly speaking out against the so-called Arians (as the followers of Socinianism were known), was himself accused of Arianism. Galyatovsky was particularly famous for his free interpretations of Scripture and giving a different meaning to traditional concepts – something very common in Doukhobor practice. Giving words a second meaning was characteristic not only of the scholastic school but also of Russian apocryphal literature. Similar phenomena may be noted in Galyatovsky’s works and in Doukhobor psalms and apocryphal pieces. In “Key to the understanding”, for example, Galyatovsky writes that an angel took a golden censer and filled it with fire from the altar, explaining that the censer was the body of Christ and the fire was God’s love. In one Doukhobor psalm in answer to the question “What is incense?” it is stated that “Incense is doing great works”. The dialogue continues:

The theme of the image of God in man was a favourite among the Ukrainian preachers. Under the influence of humanistic ideas, they endeavoured to help their hearers and readers grasp hold of their human destiny, believe in the possibility and necessity of self-perfection and see the divine image in themselves and their neighbour. They argued that since man is made in the image and likeness of God, and the one God contains the whole Trinity, so too the divine image in man’s soul is threefold.

In his Evangelie Uchitel’nom [“Students’ Gospel”] the Ukrainian theologian Kirill Trankvillion listed the powers of the God-like soul – will, reason, thinking – and in another place in the same book: mind, conscience and will. There is a dichotomy in the thoughts of man because of his earthly origin and divine soul: he is at once both heaven and earth.

In his Katekhizis (“Catechism”) of the end of the 17th century the well-known writer Lavrentii Zizaniya also remarked that man’s soul contains the whole Trinity: in our minds we have the spirit and the word, just as God the Father has the Spirit and the Son, and just as they are inseparable, so our soul is an integral whole. For Ioannikii Galyatovsky man’s God-likeness lay in the fact that his soul, like God, was immortal and possessed reason and will.

It was from Ukrainian religious literature that the Doukhobors borrowed the concept of the God-likeness of the human soul. Witness the following example from a Doukhobor psalm: The soul is God’s image; through it we too have threefold power in one and the same being. The powers of the human soul are: memory, reason, will. In memory we are like God the Father, in reason – like God the Son, in will – like God the Holy Spirit. Just as in the Holy Trinity there are three persons, so in the one soul there are three spiritual powers – one God.

Novitsky perceived the similarity of this psalm to the heathen beliefs of the ancient peoples of North and South America, and attributed it to the Doukhobor leader Kapustin. In fact it is taken from the writings of a Ukrainian preacher who later became Metropolitan of Rostov and a Russian saint, Dmitry Tuptalo:

…the soul is God’s image, inasmuch as it possesses a threefold power but it is one and the same being; the powers of the human soul are: memory, reason, will. In memory it is like God the Father, in reason – God the Son, in will – God the Holy Spirit. And just as in the Holy Trinity there are three persons, but not three Gods, only one God, so in the human soul there are three spiritual powers, so to speak, but not three souls, only one soul.

Dmitry Tuptalo repeatedly wrote about these three powers of the human soul at various stages of his life – “wherefore one is also obliged to glorify God in one’s own self, in the three persons of Him who exists, but in the one Deity”.

Dmitry Tuptalo also wrote that God created the soul to be like Himself: “self-governing, intelligent and immortal, companion to eternity and in union with the flesh”. The Doukhobors incorporated these words into one of their psalms. While not rejecting outward worship, Dmitry gave preference to the inner, hidden communion with God in one’s heart. He held that the Scriptures were to be understood through spiritual reasoning. Dmitry Tuptalo understood the essence of Christ in accord with Orthodox doctrine, but there are many ambiguities in his writings, many unorthodoxly arranged nuances, as well as obvious departures from Russian Orthodoxy, which made his works popular among the Doukhobors. The Doukhobor teachers also borrowed from him two splendid poetic variations on the psalms of David.

One may well ask how the affirmation of the similarity of man’s three spiritual qualities to the divine Trinity and other unorthodox concepts found their way into the writings of Dmitry Tuptalo. In 1675-77, Dmitry Tuptalo was preaching in an Orthodox monastery in Chernigov, which had belonged to Poland since 1618. In 1677-78 he preached in an Orthodox monastery in the town of Slutsk in Belarus, then part of Lithuania. It was about that time that a Calvinist pastor in Slutsk had in his service a man by the name of Jan Belobodsky, who later came to Moscow. In his Vyznanie very (Confession of faith) he admitted that he did not accept the most fundamental Orthodox doctrines, maintaining that:

…God’s image is in man and the human soul has three powers: reason, will and memory, but one and the same being: in memory it is like the Father, in reason – like the Son, in will – like the Holy Spirit; and God’s likeness in man lies in the fact that God gave man an incorporeal and immortal soul, a companion to eternity, and man can accept wisdom, grace, bliss and the vision of God.

At a church council meeting in 1681, Belobodsky was condemned as a heretic. The influence of Polish religious tendencies of the period are palpably evident in the writings of Kirill Trankvillion, Ioannikii Galyatovsky and Dmitry Tuptalo, who succeeded each other in turn as Archimandrite of the Eletsky Monastery in Chernigov.

Protestants of various persuasions who reject the external church and call worship of icons and the cross “idol-worship”, often support their arguments by referring to the Biblical story of the three Babylonian lads:

Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (also known, respectively, as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego — see Daniel 1:6,7; 3:1-30). They were thrown into a “burning fiery furnace” for their refusal to worship an idol, but were miraculously saved. Hans Hutter, the founder of the Hutterite sect, compared himself to these lads as he was led to his death at the stake. Galyatovsky’s “Key to the understanding” includes many references to the story. The Doukhobors recognized therein an all-too-familiar pattern.

In response to prosecutors’ questions as to where they had acquired their “criminal thoughts”, the Doukhobors would sometimes say that they had been enlightened by the Lord, but sometimes admitted that they had heard them from a priest or a sexton or learnt them from some church books, without specifying which ones. They claimed to have obtained these books from country preachers. These books were being used for proselytizing and stirring up people who were inclined to reflection on religious matters.

For assimilating and reflecting on new religious teachings, as well as for working out new religious systems, a certain degree of literacy, preparation and Scriptural knowledge was required. There was no prohibition in Russia against individual parishioners reading the Bible on their own, but this became possible for ordinary people only after the creation of the Russian Bible Society at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It should be taken into account, moreover, that few peasants were literate. It is likely, therefore, that the Doukhobor teachings must have come through the ideas of the lower ranks of clergy, monks and lay brethren – i.e., people acquainted with the Scriptures.

In southern Russia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were many itinerant preachers, usually a wandering preacher or monk, spreading dissident ideas. One of these may well have been Grigory Skovoroda, whose writings show a good deal in common with the ideas of Dmitry Tuptalo, as well as with Doukhobor teachings, confirming the widespread circulation of Protestant religious ideas in Ukraine.

The followers of the Doukhobor teachings were recruited from the ranks of Orthodox parishioners. The promoters of the new teachings, therefore, endeavoured to maintain the popular traditional forms of psalms and catechisms. For their psalms the Doukhobors made extensive use of Russian popular religious verse, including those by Ukrainian writers, as well as Polish canticles they translated into Russian.

The evidence here presented, we believe, is sufficient to conclude that the Doukhobor teachings may trace their origin to the Protestant teachings and dissident ideas of the seventeenth century, widely circulated in the territories of the Polish Republic and popular among Ukrainian Orthodox writers.

The organization of Doukhoborism as a sect began not long thereafter in Sloboda-Ukraine (approximately the same territory now occupied by Kharkov Province in eastern Ukraine), probably toward the end of the seventeenth century or at the beginning of the eighteenth, and paralleled the development of a religious system.

Sloboda-Ukraine can be considered the cradle of Doukhoborism for several reasons. In the seventeenth century it was populated by Ukrainians who had fled there from Polish domains, bringing with them their Protestant dissident ideas. Sloboda-Ukraine was situated far from Russia’s centre, and for a long time neither secular nor religious authorities were able to exert any meaningful control over the lives of its population. It was a place where the libertarian traditions of the Zaporozhye Cossacks held sway.

In the 1680s Russian military-service people began moving to Sloboda-Ukraine as odnodvortsy (“smallholders”). They came primarily from the southern Great Russian provinces to protect the empire’s southern flank from the Poles and Crimean Tatars. In return for their service the Cossacks and smallholders were granted land – not, like the peasants, on terms of community ownership without right of sale or inheritance, but land which was both private property and inheritable – like the land granted to noblemen, only without peasant serfs.

The fast-growing settlements were populated with a mixture of Russians and Ukrainians. The smallholders and especially the Cossacks on the southern flank who were risking their lives defending the Russian fatherland felt a keen pride and awareness of their self-worth, as well as a spirit of freedom. Attempts by the state to infringe upon their rights, to turn them into peasant wards of the state, fostered a mood of opposition on the part of these social classes and prepared the soil for reception to a teaching which elevated people’s sense of self-worth, proclaimed universal equality and denied the need for authority and an external church.

Another fertile ground for adoption of Doukhobor teachings was to be found among the Don Cossacks, especially since their territory bordered on Sloboda-Ukraine. Another border territory was Novorossiya (“New Russia”), which at the beginning of the eighteenth century witnessed an influx of Ukrainian and Russian smallholders. In the 1780s, this group gave rise to the Ekaterinoslav Cossacks. History shows that the growth of religious pluralism in any given territory is determined by the intensity of missionary activity, the socio-psychological makeup of the population affected – i.e., its readiness to assimilate new teachings – and the particular characteristics of individual preachers.

Russian smallholders who had settled in the south and adopted the Doukhobor teachings also brought the new doctrine with them when they visited their former places of residence. There is no doubt that Doukhobor teachers from Sloboda-Ukraine were carrying on missionary activity in neighbouring territories at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

The question naturally arises as to how Doukhoborism became so strongly rooted in the Tambov and Voronezh areas. At the beginning of the eighteenth century these areas were flooded with a great many Ukrainians (or Cherkassians, as they were called), who could have been not only carriers but also preachers of the new teachings. According to a number of accounts, Doukhoborism was introduced to Russian villages by Ukrainians who had come in search of work.

In addition, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the population of Tambov Province included a great many smallholders who were characterized, as mentioned above, by a special social status and psychological makeup. Doukhoborism flourished almost exclusively among the free classes. Later, during the second half of Catherine the Greats reign, several settlements of state and noblemen’s peasants in the Tambov and Voronezh Provinces (where Doukhobors were also living) were handed over to their residents as private property. Hence the number of serfs among the Doukhobors was extremely limited.

As far as Doukhobors in other territories are concerned – places where they were discovered to have resided at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries (e.g., Astrakhan, Tauride and Caucasus Provinces) – the majority of these were migrants from Sloboda-Ukraine, Novorossiya or Tambov Province. The Penza Doukhobors lived in territories formerly belonging to or adjoining Tambov Province. The Belgorod district of Kursk Province, where Doukhobors were found residing at the end of the eighteenth century, bordered on Sloboda-Ukraine. Doukhobors were exiled and served forced-labour terms in Arkhangelsk and Ekaterinburg Provinces, as well as in the Baltic Sea region, but this does not mean the sect actually grew there. The Doukhobors were actually rooted in an extremely limited geographical area, attracting far fewer numbers (because of the radicalness of their teachings) than, for example, the Molokans or Khlysts.

Active missionary campaigns on the part of Doukhobor preachers began in the 1730s and 1740s. It has been said that Doukhobor proselytizing in the village of Okhochee in Sloboda-Ukraine in the 1740s was led by an unknown foreigner, a retired non-commissioned officer. There are indirect indications that at this time Doukhoborism, probably including some established organization, was already prevalent in the Voronezh area. There is documentary evidence showing that Doukhobors were living in the Tambov district of the Voronezh area in 1762, and that the Doukhoborism prevalent there in the 1760s and 1770s had the status of an actual sect rather than simply an amorphous religious persuasion.

According to F.V. Livanov, who had access to archives that have since been lost, in 1733 there appeared at the home of Illarion Pobirokhin, who lived in the Tambov village of Goreloye, a Pole named Semen (or, in other sources, a “Polish Jew”). The word Pole, however, could refer to a Russian who had fled to or been imprisoned in Poland or Lithuania; it could also refer to a Ukrainian from western Ukraine, which at that time was under Polish domination. Of course, he might have been a real Pole or a Polish (or Ukrainian) Jew.

Apparently he was an itinerant preacher who had converted the then young Pobirokhin to his faith, and the two preached for some time together in the Tambov district. The argument that Pobirokhin was not the first Doukhobor leader, but had received the teaching already formulated, is supported by a legend recalled by elderly Doukhobors about Pobirokhin receiving all the teaching and wisdom from his saintly father, who had in turn received it from sources unknown.

Is it not possible that this Pole who preached in the Tambov area and the retired officer from Okhochee in Sloboda-Ukraine might be one and the same person? Both were foreigners and preached at roughly the same time.

And this brings to mind the Doukhobor legend of one of their early leaders named Edom. The name is not included in the Doukhobor psalm about their “righteous progenitors” – i.e., their leaders – but it does figure in other psalms, for example, in those declaring that Doukhobors adopted “marriage – holy, mysterious and divine – from Edom, his holy soul”. Edom is a variant of the Biblical name Esau – i.e., the son of Isaac the patriarch, whom the Doukhobors revere as wise, holy and immortal. This legend and its inclusion in the psalms may be seen as confirming the account of the Polish Jew who taught truths to the Doukhobors in the village of Goreloye.

Another Doukhobor legend says that Illarion Pobirokhin spent his youth in Kiev, where he built an Orthodox cathedral. It is possible that the young Illarion might have been in Kiev, and might have travelled through the villages of Sloboda-Ukraine where he could have become acquainted with the Doukhobor teachings, along with the preacher (Edom) with whom he would later appear in Tambov and eventually replace.

It is known that in 1765 the Tambov Doukhobors were paying special homage to Pobirokhin. Interestingly enough, Pobirokhin was never registered as a resident of Goreloye; he lived there illegally. After 1765 we lose track of him, and his name is not mentioned in a single court case. Apparently he moved away from Goreloye to some other place, probably to Ekaterinoslav Province, where the centre of the Doukhobor faith also moved to in the 1770s – specifically, to the village of Bogdanovka.

There seems to be no reason to consider Siluan Kolesnikov, mentioned in the “Note of 1791”, a “Doukhobor Christ” as Pobirokhin was held to be, and Edom before him. Kolesnikov was simply an ordinary Doukhobor preacher. Following Pobirokhin there appeared a new leader – Savely Kapustin, who is often referred to as Pobirokhin’s son, though most likely a “spiritual son”. There is reason to believe that Edom, Pobirokhin and Kapustin were all generally recognized Doukhobor leaders, whose collective activity spanned the whole of the 18th century.

The level of organization of the Doukhobor sect in the 1760s and 1770s is indeed amazing: passport control, poor roads and a lack of means of communication notwithstanding, the Doukhobors of various regions knew where their fellow sect members lived; they had common financial resources which they could use to bribe their members’ way out of prison and afford them monetary assistance; as in secret conspiratorial societies they had passwords and degrees of admission into secret circles. Unlike the Molokans, the Doukhobors had no dissidents. All of which testifies to the unusually strong sacred authority of the leader.

The questions surrounding the early period of Doukhobor history are far from being exhausted. If we delve into other periods of their history there is no doubt that we shall find a similarly vast area ripe for scientific research. Unfortunately, Doukhobor history has not only been poorly studied, but it has been largely mythologized, and we shall be still breaking down myths and filling in the gaps well into the twenty-first century.

Dr. Svetlana A. Inikova is a senior researcher at the Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.  Considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Doukhobors, Svetlana has conducted extensive archival research and has participated in several major ethnographic expeditions, including field research among the Doukhobors of Georgia and Azerbaijan in the late 1980’s and 1990’s and a North American ethnographic expedition on the Doukhobors in 1990.  She has published numerous articles on the Doukhobors in Russian and English and is the author of History of the Doukhobors in V.D. Bonch-Bruevich’s Archives (1886-1950s): An Annotated Bibliography (Ottawa: Legas and Spirit Wrestlers, 1999) and Doukhobor Incantations Through the Centuries (Ottawa: Legas and Spirit Wrestlers, 1999).

To order copies of the book in which this article was originally published, The Doukhobor Centenary in Canada, A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective on their Unity and Diversity, contact: Penumbra Press, Box 940, Manotick, Ontario, K4M 1A8, Tel: (613) 692-5590, Web: http://www.penumbrapress.ca.

For more online articles about the Doukhobors by Svetlana A. Inikova, see Doukhobor Holidays and Rituals in the Caucasus as well as Leo Tolstoy’s Teachings and the Sons of Freedom in Canada.

The Dukhobortsy, 1822-1828

by Daniel Schlatter

Daniel Schlatter (1791-1870) was a Swiss missionary who lived among the Nogay Tatars on the Molochnaya River in South Russia between 1822 and 1828. During that time, he had opportunity to study and observe their neighbours, the Dukhobortsy. Schlatter was sharply critical of the Dukhobortsy, whom he viewed as materially prosperous but in spiritual decline and discord. He maintained a journal and recorded his impressions, which he later published in Swiss German in “Bruchstücke aus einigen Reisen nach dem südlichen Russland in den Jahren 1822 bis 1828: Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Nogaÿen” (Huber, 1836). Available for the first time in this exclusive English translation, Schlatter’s account provides a rare, penetrating glimpse into this little-known period of Doukhobor history. Translated by Gunter Schaarschmidt for the Doukhobor Genealogy Website. Afterword by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

Other neighbours of the Nogay Tartars are the Dukhobortsy whose self-identifying name means “Spiritual Ones; those born [sic] from the Spirit”. They are a sect that split from the Russian-Greek [Orthodox] Church and its members now reside in large and pretty villages on the right bank of the Molochna [Molochnaya] and of Lake Molochna. They are people who were no longer satisfied with the ritual and ceremonial practices of the Church and who believed they had sought and found something better. Especially by reading the Holy Scriptures (which had been spread in Russian by Bible societies that arose all over the Empire), they had been awakened out of their slumber and led to contemplating. A large part of them had been scattered all over the Empire even before the spread of the Bible.

A significant number of people, of both sexes, from various Russian provinces, in particular also from Finland and from the more enlightened Don Cossacks, separated from the great Mother Church. Neither forced exile nor imprisonment deterred them. As usual, resistance increased their zeal and the dissemination of new teachings and principles. Since all efforts to make them return to the Church failed, the authorities granted them freedom and allotted them landed property on the Sea of Azov. However, a few of them had to leave behind wives and children in the retention of the great Church. The reasons for the split [from Orthodoxy] as well as the religious beliefs among the dissenters were understandably not very uniform.

A mass of people who descended from various regions of the wide Russian Empire and differed in customs, practices and character, could not stay united. The character and views of the Cossacks in particular did not agree with those of the remaining resettled groups [of Dukhobortsy on the Molochnaya]. What kind of partial or religious motives may have caused a split [among themselves]?

Yet at the time of the foundation of this colony there certainly were truly enlightened or, even if labouring under a delusion, upright and well thinking people who were striving to worship God in spirit and in truth instead of in lifeless hypocrisy and formalism. However, gradually these [people] passed away; the spirit was extinguished and people got benumbed – and what started in the spirit ended in the flesh.

They rejected almost all outward means for [spiritual] revival and edification; they completely lacked religious instruction for youth; they relegated God’s written word – all this soon led to a great decline, disorder, irreligiosity, and even indifference to religion.

Many began to want to return to the Greek Church, or, separating again, hope to form a new sect. Many families returned to the Mother Church and left the colony either because they desired a physical worshipping of God or due to pecuniary advantage because the Government imposed severe punishment in order to maintain at least an external order. Yet others formed their own sect named Molokans and received new landed properties in the middle of the regions of the Nogay Tartars.

The Dukhobortsy are for the most part handsome, physically well-shaped people. They dress well and are industrious and capable farmers. Their villages give evidence of wealth. They engage a lot in cattle-raising and agriculture. A large part of them, however, indulge in envy, quarrels, indecency and all sorts of sensual pleasures. At the same time they consider themselves to be spiritual, to be sons of God, and to be God themselves.

If you ask them about their belief system, they give evasive or shrewd answers. And how could they account for their belief system since they do not know what to believe, are in disagreement among themselves, and, to be sure, may of them do not believe in anything at all. They have not accepted a proper Symbolum (creed).

Germans who served under them as farm-hands and others who have business dealings with them, say that the Dukhobortsy have meetings every now and then in which they sing psalms. It is also reported that they live in partial abstinence and that they still have many adherents in the interior of Russia and especially in the Caucasus. In addition, they are reported to have no proper teachers but recognize a supreme leader. Few of them are reported to keep Bibles, and if so, then in secret. Finally, a small better group is afraid of the larger group which exerts a lot of pressure on the former. Visiting English and American Quakers who were hoping to find similarities with their own principles among the Dukhobortsy already many years ago, were painfully disappointed in their expectations. 

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

Afterword

Daniel Schlatter (1791-1870) was raised in St. Gallens, Switzerland, where he gained a sophisticated education and a deep immersion in Pietist religious belief, which emphasized personal faith and salvation through piety, Bible study and prayer rather than church doctrine and theology. He was also strongly influenced by ecumenical religious belief, which promoted unity within and among different Christian churches and groups, as well as by physiognomic ideas that people could be physically and morally transformed through education.

From his earliest years, Schlatter was gripped by a passion for travel and adventure coupled with a fervent desire to perform missionary work among non-Christian peoples, and in doing so, influence and benefit them religiously and economically. To this end, at age 29, Schlatter set out for South Russia in 1822 to promote Christianity among the Nogay Tatars.

Schlatter arrived in the Molochnaya River region in Autumn 1822. He found himself a position as a servant in a Nogay Tatar home, shed his western clothing in favour of Nogay robes, and pursued the religious enlightenment of his host. He also became a frequent visitor of the home of Johann Cornies, leader of the Mennonites settled on the upper left bank of the river, with whom he formed a close friendship and enjoyed a lengthy discourse on Christianity. Schlatter spent much of the next six years on the Molochnaya, departing briefly to Switzerland in 1823 and England in 1827, before making his final departure in June 1828.

During his time on the Molochnaya, Schlatter came to observe and study the neighbouring Dukhobortsy living in nine villages on the right bank of the river. He obtained his information about them in part from his Nogay hosts, in part from the Mennonite Johann Cornies, from German labourers in the employ of the Dukhobortsy, and partially from the Dukhobortsy themselves.

Schlatter wrote approvingly of the Dukhobortsy’s industry and capability in agriculture and animal husbandry. He admired their “large and pretty” villages which displayed “evidence of wealth” and abundance. Schlatter also noted that the Dukhobortsy were “handsome, physically well-shaped people”; observations that no doubt stemmed from his interest in physiognomy.

At the same time, Schlatter’s Pietist and ecumenical beliefs made him sharply critical of mainstream Dukhobortsy society, which in his view, suffered from “a great decline, disorder, irreligiosity, and even indifference to religion”.

From a Pietist perspective, Schlatter was strongly sympathetic to the early founders of the Dukhobortsy colony, “upright and well-thinking” people who had been spiritually “awakened out of their slumber”, and were dissatisfied with the “lifeless hypocrisy and formalism” of Church ritual and ceremony. In Schlatter’s view, these “truly enlightened” people were “led to contemplating” and strove “to worship God in Spirit and in truth”. In doing so, they “believed they had sought and found something better”. However, with the passing of these early founders, the spirit of truth and enlightenment declined among the Dukhobortsy and was slowly extinguished. In Schlatter’s opinion, while the Dukhobortsy of the 1820’s “consider[ed] themselves to be spiritual”, they showed little evidence of the spiritual enlightenment of their founders.

Equally disconcerting for Schlatter, from an ecumenical point of view, was the lack of unity among the Dukhobortsy regarding their belief system. Disagreement over religious creed had led some members of the sect to leave the colony and return to the Orthodox Church, while others joined the rival Molokan sect situated on the lower left bank of the Molochnaya River. Those remaining in the colony could not, in Schlatter’s estimation, properly account for their creed “since they do not know what to believe”. This stemmed from the fact that the Dukhobortsy had been resettled on the Molochnaya “from various regions of the wide Russian Empire” and differed in their “customs, practices and character”. Their reasons for joining the sect were also varied. Thus, the religious beliefs of the dissenters were, from Schlatter’s viewpoint, “understandably not very uniform”.

For Schlatter, the roots of the spiritual decline and discord among the Dukhobortsy lay in the absence of religious education; sentiments derived from his physiognomic beliefs. He censured the sectarians for having “no proper teachers” among them and for completely lacking “religious instruction for youth”. He was disturbed by the lack of scriptural study and noted that “few are reported to have Bibles, and if so, then in secret.” In the same vein, he disapproved of their rejection of “almost all outward means” of spiritual revival and edification.

If Schlatter was a harsh critic of the Dukhobortsy, he reported much the same of the Mennonites he encountered on the Molochnaya, writing that their faith was “superficial”, formalistic, and showed little evidence of “true belief”. His comments must therefore be taken at face value, in the context of his particularly aggressive Pietist evangelical religious beliefs.

Schlatter recorded his observations during a period of rapid and profound transition within the Dukhobortsy colony. Prior to 1820, under the able leadership of Savely Kapustin, the colony was organized on a communal basis, was well administered and reasonably united, and relations with Tsarist authorities were cordial. The period following Kapustin’s death in 1820, by contrast, was marked by the abandonment of communal institutions, weak and ineffectual leadership, the decay of internal administration, disunity within the sect and a deterioration of relations with Tsarist authorities.  Schlatter’s writings reflect these changes, and are among the very few sources of published information for this little-known and little-explored period of Doukhobor history.  Therefore, Schlatter’s work is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the period.

To read more, search, download, save and print a full PDF copy of the original Swiss German text of “Bruchstücke aus einigen Reisen nach dem südlichen Russland in den Jahren 1822 bis 1828: Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Nogaÿen” by Daniel Schlatter (Huber, 1836), visit the Google Book Search digital database.

Report of the General Meeting of the Doukhobor Community held in Nadezhda Village, February 28, 1904

Yorkton Enterprise

During the first decades of the twentieth century, the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood was governed by general meetings that were held early each year to receive the annual report and financial statement prepared by the representative committee and to vote on various matters of policy and practice brought before them. These gatherings were typically attended by two delegates from each village, the administrators in charge of community affairs and the leader Peter “Lordly” Verigin. The following is a rare extant report of the general meeting of the Doukhobor Community held at Nadezhda village, Saskatchewan, on February 28, 1904, as published in the Yorkton Enterprise, Vol. 8, No. 16, April 21, 1904. The minutes provide extraordinary insight into the administrative matters of the day, including the naturalization question, financial assistance to the Yakutsk exiles, the need for a Quaker-sponsored school, establishment of a brickworks and large warehouse near the C.P.R, the use of steam-powered agricultural machinery, the necessity of tea and sugar in the diet, and various capital expenditures. In addition, the general account leaves no doubt of the extent of the material growth of the Community under Verigin’s leadership, one year after his arrival from exile in Siberia.

As well as other matters, the following questions were dealt with –

1. Concerning Naturalization. Decided to refer the matter to all members of the community for their consideration and decision whether they desire to be naturalized or not.

2. Concerning Local Improvement Taxes. Decided to pay the tax of $2 per homestead demanded for 1903 but to send to Regina a deputation of two men to request for Doukhobors the right to perform work in lieu of taxation.

3. Decided to remit $500 to the Yakoutsk brethren for use of the sick and aged. Decided also to send further money, should it be needed, for the transportation of men allowed to come to Canada.

4. Accounts of receipts and expenditure for the past year were read and confirmed.

5. Decided to purchase the following for spring work:

Seeders

2 saw mills (1 for Good Spirit Lake and 1 for South Colony)

1 planning machine for Thunder Hill lumber mill

           

6. Decided to buy one engine for steam plowing for trial whether more profitable than horse power.

7. Decided to buy one brickmaking machine.

8. Decided to try, in spring, to make and burn in each village, tiles for roofing.

9. Decided to build seed oil mills in each village.

10. Decided to build at each flour mill flax beaters as at Otradnoe; also stable and good rooms for men coming to mills.

11. Decided to buy for breeding purposes, in summer, 100 milch cows and 100 Angora goats.

12. Decided to buy, in spring, locally near Yorkton, 80,000 pounds of wool for weaving.

13. The question being raised whether, as the committee have no more money, it was desirable to buy sugar, it was decided by a majority of the meeting that tea and sugar were necessary foods and should be bought.

14. Decided to build a warehouse by C.N.R. near Vera village, logs to be hauled before the winter trails go.

15. Decided that one man must always be at warehouse near Vera, and that until said warehouse is ready, he shall be at Yorkton as during last summer, where the work of Ivan Podavilnikoff was of great advantage in buying goods cheaply.

16. Decided that the proposal of the Quakers to build a training school for Doukhobor teachers was unnecessary.

17. Decided that every village shall appoint two men as elders as was done last year, but that these men should not take a very strong part in the management of affairs.

18. Elected to effect all purchases of supplies for the entire community: Nikoloy Ziboroff and Vassili Potopoff and Peter Verigin, and to be English interpreter and to attend all correspondence, Simeon Reiben.

19. Elected to superintend all matters affecting the horses of the community, Paul Planidin and Feodor Souhotcheff.

20. Decided to hold the next meeting in the fall.

21. Elected to superintend all matters affecting the sheep of the community, Andrei Semenoff and Ivan Verigin.

An account of Receipts and Expenditures of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood in Canada for 1903.

Receipts

 

1.   To cash in hands of Paul Planidin and Nikoloy Ziboroff

 

      at date of Peter Verigin’s arrival                                                                     

$426.00

2.   To sale, by Dominion Government, of cattle set at liberty, less

 

      expenditure by Government on behalf of brothers and sisters

$9,120.00

3.   To cash received from Prince Albert brothers                                              

$8,776.00

4.   To cash received from all villages being half of cash in hand

$5,956.00

5.   To sale of young cattle and steers

 $6,052.00

6.   Loan from Bank at Yorkton for transportation of workers                           

$2,000.00

7.   To cash received from villages, being balance of cash in hand                       

$1,852.00

8.   To earnings of workers of all villages

$111,679.00

9.   To earnings from community contract

$7,786.00

10. To sales of senega root

$10,033.00

11. To cash received from Prince Albert Colony in payment of

 

      homestead entries                                                                                       

$1,100.00

12. To sale of useless horses                                                                                

$121.00

13. Loan from Bank at Yorkton                                                                        

$2,000.00

Total Receipts                                                                                              

$166,901.00

Expenditure

 

Part I. – Land

 

1.   By entry fees for homesteads                                                                    

$21,370.00

2.   By purchase of 13 sections of land near village Vera: paid deposit

$10,000.00

3.   By purchase of 3 quarter sections of Hudson’s Bay CO. land

 

      near villages Otradnoe, Nadeshda and Smirenovkaj paid deposit                    

$360.00

Total payment for land                                                                                    

$31,730.00

Part II. – Stock

 

1.   By expenses in connection with the transportation of 36 horses

 

      received from Prince Albert brethren                                                                

$65.00

2.   By purchase by Paul Planidin in Winnipeg of 35 horses at $200 each           

$7,000.00

3.   By purchase of 5 stallions                                                                            

$3,150.00

4.   By purchases, 300 horses at $75 each, 10 saddle horses at $65 each,

 

      9 mares for breeding ($1,900) and two teams with wagon, tent, etc.          

$25,969.00

5.   By purchases from Buchanan 7 horses and from Plaxin 2 horses                  

$1,200.00

6.   By expenses: freight from Winnipeg, cost of driving, payments to

 

      guides, supplies, etc.                                                                                      

$750.00

7.   By purchase of sheep                                                                                  

$1,461.00

Total expenditure for stock                                                                             

$39,322.00

Part III. – Implements and Machinery

 

1.   By purchase of 6 engines with seperators                                                  

$15,290.00

2.   By purchase of 2 saw mills                                                                             

$900.00

3.   By purchase of 50 binders at $125 each                                                      

$6,250.00

4.   By purchase of 20,000 lbs binder twine @ 13c                                           

$2,600.00

5.   By purchase of 32 mowers @ $46

$1,472.00

6.   By purchase of 59 walking plows @ $24

$1,700.00

7.   By purchase of 50 gang plows @ $34

$1,700.00

8.   By purchase of 30 disc harrows @ $36 and 15 @ $31

$1,545.00

9.   By purchase of 20 shoe drills @ $70 and $90                                             

$1,560.00

10. By purchase of 16 wagons, 10 @ $65 and 6 @ $72                                   

$1,082.00

11. By purchase of 152 sleighs: 102 @ $21.50 and 50 @ $22.65                     

$3,325.00

12. By purchase of two cutters                                                                             

$136.00

13. By purchase of 234 sections drag harrows @ $11.50                                  

$2,691.00

14. By purchase of 12 fanning mills @ $35                                                           

$420.00

15. By repairs for engines and separators and engineers’ supplies                      

$1,100.00

16. By expenses of transport of machinery from Yorkton, lubricating oil etc.

$507.00

17. By expenses of setting up machinery, etc.                                                       

$145.00

18. By expenses for flour mills                                                                              

$868.00

19. By repairs and other expenses for saw mills                                                    

$585.00

Total expenditure for implements and machinery                                              

$43,682.00

Part IV. – Dry Goods, Hardware and General Supplies

 

1.   By dry goods                                                                                            

$29,338.00

2.   By flour and garden seeds (spring 1903)                                                     

$2,761.00

3.   By purchases of wheat (spring 1904)                                                          

$7,500.00

4.   By purchases oats (spring 1904)                                                                 

$2,080.00

5.   By purchases of harness and shoe leather                                                  

$13,445.00

6.   By purchases of winter footwear                                                                 

$4,913.00

7.   By purchases of hardware, crockery and tools                                            

$5,830.00

8.   By purchases of sugar, tea, etc.                                                                   

$2,295.00

9.   By purchases of salt, coal oil and glass                                                        

$2,725.00

10. By purchases of wool                                                                                 

$1,526.00

11. By purchases of soap                                                                                  

$1,780.00

12. By purchases of butter                                                                                

$1,772.00

13. By minor purchases in Yorkton and Swan River by all villages                  

 $10,943.00

Total                                                                                                              

$86,908.00

Part V. – Sundries

 

1.   By remittance to Yakoutsk for aged and sick brethren                                    

$500.00

2.   By remittance to V. Tchertkoff in acknowledgement of help to

 

      Doukhobors in their immigration                                                                     

$500.00

3.   By remittance to A. Maude, repayment of loan                                            

$1,250.00

4.   By payment to Joseph Konstantinovitch for his journey                                   

$300.00

5.   By remittance to Moscow, to Dorieff, for books                                             

$200.00

6.   By remittance to Leo Tolstoy for assistance to Pavlovtzi in penal

 

      servitude                                                                                                        

$300.00

7.   By remittance to brothers Sherbokoff, Fofonoff, and Novokshanoff                

$200.00

8.   By remittance to Tarassoff for travelling expenses                                           

$100.00

9.   By remittance to Vassili Zibin                                                                         

$100.00

10. By payment to C.P.R. for balance of fares                                                      

$105.00

11. By salary of German engineer and blacksmith for one year                              

$350.00

12. By payments to H.P. Archer, teacher at North Colony                                   

$165.00

13. By freight on goods purchased in Winnipeg, etc.                                         

 $1,580.00

14. By travelling expenses of Peter Verigin and assistants                                      

$855.00

15. By expenses of building house at Yorkton                                                      

$303.00

16. By payment of school taxes, Devil’s Lake                                                      

$747.00

17. By typewriter, stationery and postage                                                             

$285.00

18. By taxes for stables and fees for timber permits                                                

$85.00

19. By sundry payments in Swan River and Yorkton of outstanding

 

      debts of villages                                                                                          

$2,957.00

20. By living expenses in Yorkton of Vassili Potapoff and sundry

 

      expenses for freight of coal oil, leather purchases                                            

$402.00

Total                                                                                                              

$11,284.00

Summary

 

Total expenditure –

 

      Part I.                                                                                                       

$31,780.00

      Part II.                                                                                                     

$39,322.00

      Part III.                                                                                                    

$43,682.00

      Part IV.                                                                                                   

 $86,908.00

      Part V.                                                                                                     

$11,234.00

Total expenditure                                                                                          

$212,876.00

Total receipts                                                                                                

$166,901.00

Balance owing                                                                                                

$45,975.00

About half of the above balance is due for horses and balance of homestead entry fees; and the rest for supplies purchased in Winnipeg.

Peter Verigin

Nikoloy Ziboroff

Paul Planidin,

Committee

Simeon Reiben,

Interpreter

Notes

The Community was formally a democracy in which the general meeting was the supreme governance authority. However, in practice, while Peter “Lordly” Verigin’s formal powers were small, his real influence was immense. This was due, not only to his position as hereditary leader, but to his powerful personality, superior education and intellectual prowess. Resolutions at the annual general meetings never went contrary to his advice, and during the twelve months that elapsed between meetings, he and his advisors acted as an executive with sweeping powers to make almost any decision on behalf of the Community.

The general account reveals the dual financial structure within the Community, consisting of the central office and treasury and the villages. All village income, sales and other general transactions were dispatched through the central office. At the same time, assets were held by the Community as a whole as well as by the villages.

In 1903, the income of the Community as a business concern amounted to $166,901.00 and its expenditures amounted to $212,876.00, not counting a $4,000.00 bank loan, leaving a balance owing of $45,975.00. This balance marks the beginning of Verigin’s deficit financing program for the Community, whereby a planned excess of expenditure over income created a shortfall of Community revenue which was met by borrowing. The decision to create a deficit was made to build up the infrastructure of the Community as a self-contained entity through great investments in machinery and industrial plants.

The general account gives an incomplete idea of the overall productiveness of the Community, which, numbering over eight thousand people, was largely self-supporting. Many tens of thousands of tonnes of wheat were grown and ground into flour, vegetables grown for food, flax and wool produced, spun and woven for clothing, dairy products produced from the communal herd of cattle, and many buildings, equipment and household goods manufactured, all for internal use by the Community. None of this directly involved income or expenditure, assets or liabilities, and therefore, was not included in the general account.

Finally, in reviewing the general account it must be recalled that only four years prior, the Doukhobors had arrived in Canada with no capital but strong hearts and willing hands, none having even the faintest knowledge of the English language, Canadian law, or modern methods of business and agriculture. Peter “Lordly” Verigin had joined them from exile in Siberia in 1902, and the initial success of his leadership can be measured in material terms by the acquisitions of the Community by the end of 1903, a bare year after his arrival.

For more information on the general meetings and accounts of the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood, see the 1906 Report1910 Report and the 1912 Report of the General Meeting of the Doukhobor Community.

Quaker Visit to the Dukhobortsy, 1819

Passages by William Allen and Stephen Grellet

In 1819, two Quaker missionaries visiting Russia, William Allen and Stephen Grellet, at the suggestion of Tsar Alexander I, travelled to the Dukhobortsy living on the Molochnaya River. Both kept journals and recorded their impressions. The following accounts are reproduced from Grellet’s “Memoirs of the Life and Gospel Labours of Stephen Grellet” (Longstreth, Philadelphia, 1862) and Allen’s “Life of William Allen” (Longstreth, Philadelphia, 1847). Together they are the earliest surviving descriptions by western observers of Doukhobor religious practices.  They also reveal the Quaker missionaries’ distress at the deep doctrinal differences they encountered with their Doukhobor hosts.  Foreword and afterword by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff. 

Foreword

In 1818, two members of the Society of Friends, English philanthropist William Allen (1770-1843) and French-born American evangelist Stephen Grellet (1773-1855) embarked on an extensive missionary tour of Europe designed to establish a network of correspondents “who have at heart the promotion of real vital religion…”.  They visited most countries and were respectfully granted meetings with many rulers and dignitaries with whom they discussed their Quaker beliefs.

In November of 1818 Allen and Grellet arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia where they met with prominent members of the Russian nobility.  In February of 1819, they had an audience with Tsar Alexander I whom they first met in London in 1814, at which time he showed a great interest in the Quaker faith.  The Tsar warmly recalled their previous meeting “saying that this meeting provided for him cheer and firmness of spirit…”  When the Quakers informed Alexander of their intention to tour parts of the Russian Empire, the Tsar observed that they “should be pleased with some of the people (i.e. sectarians) in the South….”

Allen and Grellet travelled to southern Russia in the spring of 1819.  In Tavria province, the Quakers first visited the Mennonite village of Altona.  From there, on May 29 and 30, 1819, they journeyed about five versts (an Imperial Russian unit of measure equal to 1.0668 km) to the Doukhobor village of Terpeniye, accompanied by German-born Superintendent of the Tavria Colonies, Samuel Contenius (1749-1830) and their Mennonite host.  In Terpeniye, the visitors were conducted to the Sirotsky Dom (Orphan’s Home) where they met with a group of several Doukhobors.  They recorded the following accounts of their visit.

William Allen’s Account

In the evening, Contenius and our host accompanied us a distance of about five versts to Terpeniye, a village where there is a settlement of one of the sects of the Dukhobortsy.  We crossed the Molochnaya river, and on our arrival, were conducted to the house where they are in the practice of meeting on public occasions, and where we found several of the fraternity.  They were well dressed according to the custom of the country, but there was something in their countenances which I did not quite like.

William Allen (1770-1843)

We had some conversation through Contenius, and informed them that we had heard in England of the persecution they had endured, and also of the humane interposition of the Emperor, on their behalf, – that while we had felt sympathy with them in their sufferings, we wished to know from themselves what were their religious principles.  It soon appeared, however, that they have no fixed principles; there was a studied evasion in their answers, and though they readily quoted texts, it is plain they do not acknowledge the authority of scripture, and have some very erroneous notions.  I was anxious to ascertain their belief respecting our Saviour, but could learn nothing satisfactory.

Stephen endeavoured, through Contenius, to convince them of their errors on some points, but they appear in a very dark state; they have driven out from among them, all those persons called Dukhobortsy, who receive scriptural truth, and who are of the class with whom we were so much pleased at Ekaterinoslav.  My spirit was greatly affected, and I came away from them much depressed.

The following morning (First-day) was also spent with the Dukhobortsy; a considerable number attended what they called their worship, but some of their ceremonies were painful to witness.  They manifested great ignorance on the subject of religion, and the interview did not prove more satisfactory than that on the preceding day.  An opportunity was however afforded for some gospel labour among them.

Stephen Grellet’s Account

29th of Fifth month. This afternoon we went to the principal village of the Dukhobortsy; they inhabit several others near. We went to the abode of the chief man among them. He is ninety years old, nearly blind, but very active in body and mind. He appears to be a robust, strong man. Fourteen others of their elders or chief men were with him. We had a long conference with them. He was the chief speaker. We found him very evasive in several of his answers to our inquiries.

They however stated unequivocally, that they do not believe in the authority of the Scriptures. They look upon Jesus Christ in no other light than that of a good man. They therefore have no confidence in him as a Saviour from sin. They say that they believe that there is a spirit in man, to teach and lead him in the right way, and in support of this they were fluent in the quotation of Scripture texts, which they teach to their children; but they will not allow any of their people to have a Bible among them.

We inquired about their mode of worship. They said they met together to sing some of the Psalms of David. Respecting their manner of solemnizing their marriages, they declined giving an answer; but a very favourite reply to some of our questions, was, “the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.” We found however that they have no stated times for their meetings for worship; but that tomorrow, which is First-day, they intend to have one, and this, they said we might attend, and see for ourselves. We left them with heavy hearts and returned to Altona.

Stephen Grellet (1773-1855)

First-day, 30th. I had a sleepless night; my mind being under great weight of exercise for the Dukhobortsy. I felt much for these people, thus darkened by their leaders, and I did not apprehend that I should stand acquitted in the Divine sight, without seeking for an opportunity to expostulate with them, and to proclaim that salvation which comes by Jesus Christ. It appeared best to go back to their village, and see what opportunity the Lord would open for it, after their meeting, whilst they are all congregated. My dear Allen and Contenius felt very tenderly with me on the occasion. We rode again to their village in the morning; having previously appointed a meeting here among the Mennonites to be held in the afternoon.

The Dukhobortsy collected, at about ten o’clock, on a spacious spot of ground out of doors; they all stood, forming a large circle; all the men on the left hand of the old man, and the women on his right; the children of both sexes formed the opposite side of the circle; they were all cleanly dressed; an old woman was next to the old man: she began by singing what they call a Psalm; the other women joined in it; then the man next the old man, taking him by the hand, stepped in front of him, each bowed down very low to one another three times and then twice to the women, who returned the salute; that man resuming his place, the one next to him performed the same ceremony to the old man, and to the women; then, by turns, all the others, even the boys, came and kissed three times the one in the circle above him, instead of bowing. When the men and boys had accomplished this, the women did the same to each other; then the girls; the singing continuing the whole time.

It took them nearly an hour to perform this round of bowing and kissing; then the old woman, in a fluent manner, uttered what they called a prayer, and their worship concluded; but no seriousness appeared over them at any time.

O how was my soul bowed before the Lord, earnestly craving that he would touch their hearts by his power and love! I felt also much towards the young people. I embraced the opportunity to preach the Lord Jesus Christ, and that salvation which is through faith in him; “If ye believe not that I am He, (the Christ the Son of God,) ye shall die in your sins.” I entreated them to try what manner of spirit they are of; for many spirits are gone out into the world; and “hereby know we the Spirit of God; every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is not of God; but this is that spirit of Antichrist,” &c.

Whilst I was speaking, the old men appeared restless; they invited me several times to retire to the house, but I could not do so till I had endeavoured to relieve my mind of the great concern I felt for them; many of the people were very attentive, and the Truth appeared to reach their hearts. We then went into the house with the old men; they had a few things to say, but not to any more satisfaction than yesterday. We left them with heavy hearts, and returned to Altona.

Afterword

Allen and Grellet arrived in the village of Terpeniye the evening of May 29, 1819. A religious colloquy took place between the Quakers and the Doukhobors, during which the latter were asked to expound on their religious principles. The colloquy, which at times became more of a dispute, touched on the authority of Scripture, divinity of Christ, Doukhobor worship services and marriage rites. Allen and Grellet then returned to Altona for the night. They returned the following morning of May 30, 1819 and attended a moleniye (prayer service) which they dutifully described. The Quakers then attempted some “gospel labour” but the Doukhobors proved unresponsive to the missionaries’ entreaties. Allen and Grellet again returned to Altona “with heavy hearts”.

Remarkably, the names of the Doukhobors whom Allen and Grellet met with and held religious debate have been preserved in historical records. In Orest Markovich Novitsky’s classic work, Dukhobortsy: ikh istoriia i verouchenie (Kiev: Universitetskaia tip., 1882), widely regarded as the most substantial and comprehensive treatment of Doukhobor history in the nineteenth century, it is recorded that the Quakers met with those Doukhobors held to be the “main teachers” and “mentors” in their colony.  Their names are recorded by Novitsky as follows: from Terpeniye – Vasily Kalmykov, the son of Kapustin, Aleksander Krylov, Matvey Kuchaev, Grigory Malen’kov, Kirill Kolesnikov, Ivan Barbin, Fatei Zhikharev, Sergei Sukharev, Grigory Remez, Nikolai Zakharov and Stepan Tikhonov; from Goreloye – Abrosim Tomilin, Gavriil Sorokin, Ivan Ostryakov, Trofim Kalmykov and Ivlii Kudrin; from Orekhov (or Rodionovka) – Semeyon Perepelkin and his son Ivan; from Bogdanovka -Yakov Peregudov; from Kirilovka – Timofei Khudyakov and his son Ivlii, and Ivan Ishchenkov; from Troitskoye – Mikhail Bezlepkin, Mikhail Stroev; and in Spasskoye – Abram Samoylov. According to Novitsky, the discussion between the Quakers and Doukhobors was dominated by Grigory Malen’kov and Grigory Remez, who willingly joined in the religious debate, which lasted as much as half a day, and whose responses to the Quakers’ questions “did honour to the most clever sophist”.  The revered Doukhobor leader Savely Kapustin was not himself present at the debate, as he was then in hiding from Tsarist authorities. 

In any case, the visit proved to be deeply disappointing for Allen and Grellet. They found the Doukhobors to be “very evasive” in several of their replies to their inquiries. What the Quakers 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 the authorities or with passing strangers. On some points, however, the Doukhobors made no attempt to conceal their religious views. They “stated unequivocally” that they denied the divine authority of the Scriptures and looked upon Christ in no other light than as a good man; views which scandalized the evangelical-based Quakers. Moreover, the Quakers, whose own worship services were characterized by strict silence and solemnity, were prudishly upset by the lack of “seriousness” they observed at the Doukhobor moleniye and by the rounds of bowing and kissing which they found “painful to watch”. Overall, the Quakers’ disapproval of the Doukhobor variety of folk Christianity implies a certain intolerance and insensitivity, tinged with religious bigotry.

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

The Quakers did not return to Terpeniye, but they encountered groups of Doukhobors elsewhere. On May 24, 1819 in the city of Simferopol, Allen and Grellet met with “five or six of the people called Dukhobortsy”. This group, the Quakers decided, was “of the right sort” because they “prized” the Scriptures. Similarly, on June 10, 1819 in the town of Nikolaev the Quaker pair “met a number of the Dukhobortsy”. This group had read the Scriptures and had “seen the gross errors under which they had been.” The Quakers concluded, however, that “their eyes [were] only partially opened…”. The Nikolaev Doukhobors told Grellet that “several” of the Molochnaya Doukhobors desired to read the Scriptures and that “they [the Molochnaya group] think that they see farther than their old men and elders.” Unlike the Molochnaya Doukhobors, who under the magnetic influence of their leader Savely Kapustin (1843-1819) had rejected the divine authority of the Scriptures, these groups still maintained the earlier Doukhobor tendency to follow the Bible as well as their Living Book. Moreover, in Nikolaev, the Quakers also encountered a group of Molokans who “were originally Dukhobortsy…”. These individuals told Allen that “many” of the Molochnaya Doukhobors “read the Scriptures privately, and teach their children to read them.”

The visit of Allen and Grellet to the Molochnaya, while painfully depressing for the Quakers, was to become for the Doukhobors a fondly memorable event. Eighty years later, during the voyage to their new Canadian home in 1899, a group of Doukhobors gathered in the cabin of a steamship and spoke warmly with appreciation of the Allen and Grellet visit to Joseph Elkinton, an American Quaker assisting in their migration to Canada. Interestingly, the Doukhobors told of a prophecy, purportedly from Grellet, which foretold of their persecution, exile and final deliverance to a foreign country “among a people of a different language.” There, the prophecy continued, the Doukhobors would prosper and be visited by members of the Quaker brotherhood. While the prophecy is no doubt apocryphal, it demonstrates the spiritual significance which the Allen and Grellet visit acquired among Doukhobors over the years that followed.

To read more, search, download, save and print a full PDF copy of Memoirs of the Life and Gospel Labours of Stephen Grellet  by Stephen Grellet (Longstreth, Philadelphia, 1862) or Life of William Allen by William Allen (Longstreth, Philadelphia, 1847) visit the Google Book Search database.

With the Doukhobors on Cyprus

by Ivan Stepanovich Prokhanov

Ivan Stepanovich Prokhanov (1869-1935) was born into a well-to-do Molokan family in Vladikavkas, North Caucasus, Russia. After much studying and thought he converted to the Baptist faith in 1887, while retaining close links with his Molokan roots. He graduated in 1893 from the Technological Institute in St. Petersburg as an engineer. After graduation, he moved to the Crimea, where he founded a short-lived commune of Evangelical Christians. Driven by a strong sense of call to preach the Gospel to the masses, he soon gave up his career as an engineer. For three years, 1895-98, he studied theology in England (Baptist at Bristol, Congregational at New College in London), in Berlin, Germany, and in Paris. In 1898, Prokhanov travelled to Cyprus at the behest of the English Quakers to assist a group of 1,150 Doukhobors residing there. For several months, he worked among the fever-stricken settlers, assisting them with their medical, food and shelter needs, before returning to Russia in 1899. The following excerpt, reproduced from “In the Cauldron of Russia, 1869-1933: Autobiography of I.S. Prokhanoff (All-Russian Evangelical Christian Union, New York, 1933) recounts his work among the Doukhobors on Cyprus. 

In September of the year 1898, while in Paris, I received a letter from Mr. E. W. Brooks [an English Quaker industrialist and philanthropist], proposing that I should go to Cyprus to aid the Doukhobors.

I have mentioned before that the Doukhobors living in the Transcaucasus, under the influence of the Tolstoists [Tolstoyans], withdrew their soldiers from the army, publicly burned their guns and rifles and declared to the Government that they would never take up arms again. Some of the Doukhobors’ leaders were punished and they decided to emigrate from Russia.

After much negotiation Canada was chosen as the country to which they would migrate. The first party of Doukhobors, numbering 1,150 people, took ship at Caucasus, but they were held up en route because of an epidemic which broke out among them. All the Doukhobor passengers were disembarked on the island of Cyprus. There the epidemic continued.

Ivan S. Prokhanov (1869-1935)

There was on the island only one man who could act as an interpreter for the Doukhobors, Mr. [Pavel] Birukoff. but he had to leave Cyprus for some reason and return to England. Somebody was required to take his place, and the [Society of Friends Doukhobor] committee, of which Mr. E. W. Brooks was the chairman, proposed that I should go there. Count Sergius L. Tolstoy, son of the celebrated Russian writer and philosopher, came to Paris to see me on this question. I gave my consent, and in a day or so a peasant Doukhobor came to Paris from London in order to travel with me to Cyprus.

We sailed from Marseilles on a steamer of the “Menageries Maritimes” line. For the first time I voyaged over the western portion of the Mediterranean Sea and I enjoyed the experience immensely, delighting in the beautiful scenery, particularly the shores of Italy and Sicily, the groves of oranges and lemons and other things of interest.

Egypt, the Nile and the Pyramids

On our way to Cyprus the steamer called at Alexandria, where it lay for two days, and we also anchored at Port Said for two days. I took the advice of one of the ship’s officers and, with my Doukhobor friend, made an excursion to Cairo and from there to the Pyramids. At Alexandria we saw the column of Pompeus and also some remarkable orchards belonging to a rich Greek. For the first time I saw bread as thin as linen. When a servant approached our table, I thought he was carrying napkins on his arm, but it proved to be bread! The small coffee house where we dined had a veranda covered with grapes, large and very sweet.

With a feeling of awe I looked for the first time upon the River Nile and its fertile estuaries where the land of Goshen is situated. My awe increased when I beheld the Sphinx and the pyramids. We went out from the city of Cairo on hired donkeys, attended by Arab boy drivers, who ran behind, shouting very loudly. The donkeys were so small that I had much difficulty in keeping my feet from dragging along the ground.

The highest of the pyramids, as is well known, is that of Pharao Kheops. Special Arab guides took both of us and a group of other tourists to see this pyramid. We had to climb up a narrow subterranean passage, all the time ascending in the darkness. Our Arab guide was climbing ahead of us with a torch in his hand, the smoke from which was very unpleasant. The greater part of the way we had to climb on “all fours.” It was a very arduous journey.

When at last we attained our objective, the guide lighted a magnesium lamp and we saw a spacious room, much dust and flying bats. The atmosphere was stifling. It was the burying place of ancient kings. The coffins themselves, with the mummies, had been taken to a museum and we saw only the room. Of course, our impressions here were very strong! Were there not the odors of four thousand years in that cave!

The remarkable thing to me was the fact that the regular outlines of the pyramid had been preserved during forty centuries! For the first time I saw Arab Bedouins on their camels, and away in the distance the great Desert of Sahara. Sand! Sand! Sand without any end! This sight also inspired in me a feeling of awe. We returned from Cairo by railway to Port Said and again boarded our steamer.

Port of Larnaca, Cyprus, c. 1898-1899.

On our arrival at Larnaca, the port of Cyprus, I found there Mr. [Wilson] Sturge, the commissary of the Society of Friends, who was supervising all the help that was being rendered by them to the Doukhobors. He introduced me to the British Governor of Cyprus. I also saw Mr. Birukoff and I entered upon the fulfillment of my new duties.

An Oasis in the Sands of Cyprus

The population of Cyprus consisted of Turks, Greeks and Armenians. The tall and handsome figures of the fair-featured Doukhobors were conspicuous among these natives. The camp of the Doukhobors was in the interior of Cyprus. I traveled to the encampment on the back of another small donkey, like the one I had ridden in Egypt. When we left Larnaca I saw a wide, flat level of sand that became very hot from the rays of the burning sun, although it was in November. There was not even one tree and no grass. Sand! Sand!

After traveling several hours we saw at a distance a group of trees and vegetation. When we approached we found a grove of pretty palms, and also orange and lemon trees laden with their fruit. There was a small stream of water coming from the ground, and this was the reason for such luxuriant vegetation. I thought, “What a fine illustration of the living water of the Word of God, which regenerates men’s hearts!”

Among these trees we found tents and small wooden barracks, in which the Doukhobor families lived. At a distance of a few miles there was another small colony, also housed in wooden barracks.

I found the Doukhobors in a very sad condition. Most of them were ill with a strange disease, something like dysentery. A man would have blood issues, some swelling on the legs and in a few days he would die. Entering one of the barracks, I saw a low wooden platform built along one wall for the full length of the room, on which they usually slept, but on which now there were sick people lying, with some dead bodies in between them! About one hundred men and women had already died. A Russian cemetery had been made a short distance from the Doukhobor colonies.

A dusty track in rural Cyprus today, much as it appeared in 1898-1899.

Ministering to Sick Doukhobors

The doctor was an Armenian. He prescribed opium. The medicines were usually brought from Larnaca by an old man Mark, a Jew from Odessa, who spoke Russian, Greek, Turkish and even Armenian, all languages badly enough, but he was an indispensable person to the Doukhobors. He brought to them not only medicines but also small articles and all kinds of goods. Once more I was convinced that as long as our people remained uneducated they would need the services of Jews, who are always practical and energetic wherever they are.

My duties were to look after the general conditions of the Doukhobors, to secure improvements and to help them with their medicine. At once I insisted on putting into effect some measures which seemed practical and most important:

Simple Rules to Combat the Plague

  1. To remove all the dead bodies from the barracks immediately.
  2. To isolate the sick ones from those who were in good health.
  3. To keep the windows open as much as possible to secure ventilation. Usually they kept the windows closed and the air in the rooms was very stuffy and close.
  4. To keep the rooms and clothing clean.
  5. I tried to enforce upon everybody the necessity for observing many simple rules of home sanitation which were being neglected.
  6. I asked the doctor to increase the doses of opium for the sick ones, telling him that for a Russian treble quantity of medicines was required as compared with an Armenian. The doctor somewhat increased the portions and a beneficial effect was soon noticeable.

Whenever I had any free time I gathered around me the boys and girls and taught them the English language. Almost thirty years later, in 1926, when I visited the Doukhobors in Canada, one of them recognized me and said he would never forget my help in teaching him the English language.

By doing this work among the Doukhobors I attained some intimate relations with them. Mr. Sturge and Mr. Birukoff lived at the town of Larnaca, at some distance from the Doukhobors, and the latter left Cyprus soon after my arrival. Nobody really knew the conditions under which these people were living. I decided to live in their largest colony [Athalassa] and so I was able to closely observe their mode of life and to decide on means to overcome the plague and also to improve their condition.

Landscape in rural Cyprus today, much as it appeared in 1898-1899.

I Fall Ill in a Strange Country

I endeavored to banish all kinds of uncleanness and disorderliness, and gradually the condition of the Doukhobors began to improve, but I became ill myself with the same disease which was ravaging their colonies. I fell sick while in the town of Larnaca and lay in the house which had recently been occupied by Mr. Birukoff.

During my illness no one came to visit me. To become ill with a mortally dangerous sickness in a strange land, far away from friends, is a very trying experience. But the optimism of faith helped me through this time also. I did not give way to despair, but during my illness I thought a great deal about my country and my life, and I prayed to God that He might dispose of me according to His will. It was God’s will that I should recover. Gradually I began to mend, almost without any help, and at last I recovered. After this I resumed my work among the Doukhobors until a message reached us that a steamer [SS Lake Superior] was to come from England to take them to Canada.

I was asked by the English [Society of Friends Doukhobor] Committee whether I would be willing to go to Canada, but I felt that after the recovery of the Doukhobors they could very well get along without me. whereas the whole Russian people were in need of energetic workers and messengers of Christ. I felt I must return to Russia, where, although my father was still in exile and arrest might await me,  and although many others were suffering oppression and persecution, there were great possibilities for Christ.

Perhaps the call to service among the Doukhobors was the means God used to prevent my premature return to Russia during the time I was liable to be sent to exile. But now the call to return to my country was irresistible and so I declined to accompany the Doukhobors on their long journey to Canada.

My Decision to Return is Confirmed

Knowing the circumstances, Mr. E. W. Brooks and the others were greatly surprised at my decision, but I felt that it was the will of God with regard to me. Shortly after the decision had been made, a telegram came to Larnaca from my brother Vasily from Vladikavkas, calling me back home. The telegram itself surprised me more than the message, for under the conditions in Russia at that time I never thought such a message could have been sent. I took it for the voice of God confirming my decision.

After final conferences with the Doukhobors, Mr. Sturge and others, I boarded a steamer bound for Constantinople and to Odessa, and with a prayer I sailed for home. All my thoughts were directed to my poor country suffering for centuries and bound by the chains of spiritual darkness. I was ready to accept the worst things for myself if only I could be among my own people and have the privilege of preaching the Gospel to them.

Afterword

Returning to Russia in 1899, Prokhanov finally settled in St. Petersburg where he found employment in the St. Petersburg branch of the American Westinghouse Company. He now entered upon a remarkable career as preacher, writer, and leader. He reorganized the Evangelical Christians in 1908 as the All-Russian Union of Evangelical Christians, of which he served as President until 1928. He sought, without full success, to unite the Baptists and Evangelical Christians in Russia. In 1926, he travelled to North America, which included a little-known visit to the Doukhobors in Brilliant, British Columbia. In 1928, he was elected Vice-President of the World Baptist Congress. Prokhanov never returned to Russia because of the dangers there, but served the émigré Russian evangelical groups in Europe and America. He died in Berlin, Germany in 1935 and was buried there. To read the complete translated English test of Prokhanov’s 1933 autobiography online, see In the Cauldron of Russia and for the original Russian text, see В котле России.

A rare photographic record of Ivan S. Prokhanov’s visit to the Doukhobors in Brilliant, British Columbia in 1926.  BC Archives C-01547.

For More Information

For more information about the short-lived Doukhobor settlement experiment on Cyprus in 1898-1899, the factors leading to its establishment and the reasons for its ultimate failure, see: A Courteous and Well-Conducted Community by Carla King and The Doukhobors on Cyprus by Pavel Ivanovich Biryukov.

The Dukhobortsy in Transcaucasia, 1854-1856

by Heinrich Johann von Paucker

During the Oriental (Crimean) War (1853-1856), Imperial Russian Army regiments stationed on the Caucasian Front were billeted in Dukhobor settlements. One such soldier was Heinrich Johann von Paucker, a young Baltic German military cadet quartered in the village of Rodionovka.  Paucker kept a journal and recorded his observations of his Dukhobor hosts, with whom he came in regular contact. Having a keen ethnographic eye, he documented the geography and climate, historical background, religious beliefs, customs and practices and religious services of this unique people – virtually unknown to western members of the Russian Empire. His account was published anonymously in German as “Die Duchoborzen in Transkaukasien” in the Baltic journal “Baltische Monatsschrift” (Volume 11, Riga: Jonck & Boliewsky, 1865, pp. 240-250); republished under his name in the German journal “Deutsche Rundschau für Geographie und Statistik” (Volume, 4, Lepzig: October; November 1881, pp. 18-21; 66-69). Available in English for the first time ever, this exclusive translation provides the reader with an extraordinarily rare, in-depth glimpse into this little-known period of Doukhobor history, for which few other published sources exist. Translated by Gunter Schaarschmidt for the Doukhobor Genealogy Website. Afterword and editorial comments by Jonathan J. Kalmakoff.

When roaming through the Great Russian Empire in its more distant parts, one comes upon ethnic groups and religions that are not known at all, or only known by name, to we Western members of the Empire. These groups and religions still offer the investigator a large scope for study. Included in these groups is the sect of the Dukhobortsy in Transcaucasia with whom I came in frequent contact during the last Oriental War [Russian name for the Crimean War, 1853-1856] because the regiment in which I had the honour of serving had been assigned to their villages for a base-camp during the winters of 1854-1855 and 1855-1856. This small ethnic group which dwells so far from the Motherland at the border of European civilization (one could almost say outside this civilization) was of such great interest to me in its isolation that I felt obliged to record my observations in writing. Perhaps they deserve a more general interest, too, especially since everything concerning the Schism in Russia [the Raskol or splitting of the Orthodox Church into an official church and the Old Believers movement in the 17th century] is covered by a veil of secrecy that has been lifted only in very recent times.

Geography and Climate

The land of the Dukhobortsy, the so-called Dukhoborye is located in the Western part of the Akhalkalakian circle and occupies the entire plain adjoining the Turkish border. This plain, almost 3,000 feet above sea level and traversed by low mountains that are covered by early snowfalls, is open only towards the Turkish side and gives the impression of a lifeless desert. The snow usually begins to fall in September and disappears in March but sometimes lingers into April. Nonetheless the cold is moderate and seldom exceeds 10-12˚ Réaumur [-12.5˚ to -15˚ Celsius]. But the amount of snow is quite significant and it is so loose that drifts are caused by the slightest of winds and this drifting snow can at times last for several days in a row. In the winter 1854-55 an entire village was literally buried by such a violent storm and there was not enough manpower to shovel away the snow mass, so that it became necessary to tear away the straw roofs of the stables in order to drop food and water through the openings for the animals.

The inhabitants don’t have much of a summer – in the short season they have to hurry to bring in the hay crop and prepare for the winter months. The hay is usually stored in the backyard in large bundles. The Dukhobortsy employ a strange unit of measure when they sell hay: they sell it by the cord – the price is approximately 9-12 rubles depending upon the amount and the quality of the hay. Hay is extremely important as a merchandise among the Dukhobortsy since their only source of [outside] income are loads of hay delivered for Crown and private enterprises. The Dukhobortsy keep relatively few cattle although the latter would be very necessary for them because the Kisyak or manure must be used in these bare, woodless steppes not only as a heating fuel but also for construction – you don’t find any wooden buildings at all. The walls of the houses are produced simply from Kisyak cut into blocks and are carefully whitewashed. There is no ceiling; instead there is a plain roof consisting of rafters and covered with a thick layer of straw. Nonetheless the huts are roomy and bright. The local Kisyak does not give off heavy fumes when heating, like among the Armenians, probably because the Dukhobortsy dry it very carefully and store it wrapped in straw in a shelter – a process that the Armenians should copy from their neighbours.

There is no way to grow grain [wheat] in these areas although the inhabitants have never tried to grow it and most probably spared themselves unnecessary labour. The land here seems really not capable of producing anything but grass. The impression of this lifeless steppe is very sad – there are miserable individual villages but no forest, no field, no garden or lawn, in some places there are meagre vegetable gardens in the yards. The inhabitants must buy the necessary grain for their consumption from the bazaars of Akhalkalaki or Alexandropol which are approximately 60-70 versts [an Imperial Russian unit of measure equal to 1.0668 kilometers] away. The climate is on the whole very unhealthy: people suffer often from fevers and many die from typhoid every year. However, many doctors are of the opinion that the diseases are rather the result of the close living quarters and the damp dwellings than of the unhealthy climate.

Historical Background

The Dukhobortsy attract our attention because of their religion that differentiates them both from the Greek Orthodox Church and from the other sects of Russia as well as because of the mysterious nature of their religion. One could call them the Quakers of the Greek church since like the latter they believe in the direct effect of the holy spirit; their main teachings, however, consist in their peculiar conceptualization of the soul, the mind, and the heart. They do not possess any written records that would elucidate their religious beliefs. These are laid down only in their oral tradition. But since the individuality of each person who hands down the tradition plays an important role, their dogmas are not as clear as seems to be the case with other sects. If the authorities had found a written record among them in the years of persecution, such a record would of course have been incontrovertible evidence of heresy.

The 16th and 17th centuries in Europe were a time of general turmoil and politico-religious revolutions; Russia, too, was not exempt from this. In Russia, the revision of the parish registers by Patriarch Nikon caused different interpretations (tolki). The so-called Old Believers adhered to the [old] ritual to the letter and sought to maintain the sanctity and inviolability of the Orthodox Church. However, others became opposed to the dogma itself – this trend eventually led to the formation of the Dukhobortsy sect. The many foreigners that the Tsar had called into Russia no doubt contributed to feeding the spirit of the religious disputes by importing many ideas from their old country into their new home country.

In the first years of their existence the Dukhobortsy, i.e., Spirit-Wrestlers, formed a single sect with the Ikonobortsy, i.e., icon-wrestlers, because like the latter the Dukhobortsy rejected icons as attempts at idolatry; later, however, when they intensely developed the teaching of the effect of the holy spirit, they separated [from the Ikonobortsy] and adopted their present name. The Dukhobortsy derive the origin of their belief from the three boys in the fiery stove mentioned by the prophet Daniel [the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: Daniel 3:1-30] but designate a certain Siluan Kolesnikov, who lived in the village of Nikolskoye in the Province of Ekaterinoslav at the end of the last century, as the founder of their belief system. However, while they recognize Kolesnikov as a famous religious hero, others maintain that their sect had been founded already at the beginning of the 18th century and that its origin was in the Province of Tambov. It seems that the latter view is more correct because even though their traditions begin with Kolesnikov, these traditions existed already earlier and were widely spread in the southern provinces of Chernigov, Kursk, Kharkov, Ekaterinoslav, Voronezh, Tambov and Saratov. The Dukhobortsy, like all dissenters, had to endure severe persecution and oppression until a new star rose for them with the government of Alexander I.

In the year 1801 the government considered it necessary to resettle the adherents of this sect to a more distant area. For this purpose the Dukhobortsy were allotted a huge segment of untilled land called Molochnye Vody [Milky Waters] in the Province of Tavria in the district of Melitopol as a new residence. At first only 30 families were sent there. They started tilling the land with great zeal. Soon rumours about the free and happy life of the new settlers reached those left behind and caused them to ask for permission to move there as an entire group. This permission was granted. As a result the Dukhobortsy formed a colony consisting of 9 (nine) villages in the Crimea. The names of these villages can still be found today in the Caucasus, e.g., in the Akhalkalakian district: Bogdanovka, Troitskoye, Spasskoye, Rodionovka, Tambovka, and Goreloye, or, near Bashkichet or Elizavetpol: Akimovka, Terpeniye, and Gavrilovka. The Dukhobortsy reproduced so vigorously that by the year 1832 their number had grown to 800 families with 4,000 members of both sexes.

They could have lived happily and contentedly in Tavria especially since they excelled in considerable work ethic and good management but soon the old spirit of rebelliousness and of religious fanaticism was stirring among them. They began to interpret their resettlement to the Crimea as an apocalyptic event, openly preached their faith, and were disobedient to the authorities. Thus, for example, they refused to supply recruits to the Governor General of Kherson by arguing that those recruits would have to swear an oath of allegiance which oath would be prohibited by their religion. Punishing them achieved nothing so that the authorities arrived at an agreement that under such circumstances they would accept the Dukhobortsy’ word of honour. The numerous complaints and remonstrations by local authorities finally led to a decision in 1841 to resettle the sectarians to Transcaucasia, which decision was carried out in the same year.

Religious Beliefs

Let us now examine more precisely the religious notions of this sect. What is peculiar is their development of the doctrine of the Trinity and of Christ’s person. While they believe in a triune God [God in three persons], He reveals himself as such only in the human soul: God the Father in the power of memory, God the Son in the wisdom of reasoning, and the Holy Ghost in volition and conation. Their [the Dukhobortsy’] conception of the entire earthly life of our Saviour is symbolical and they interpret this life as a mystical habitation of Him in man’s heart. In accord with their doctrine He is conceived and born from the words of Archangel Gabriel in the soul of every person. Here He preaches the word of truth, suffers, dies, and rises again from the dead. Therefore even those who have never read the Gospel or heard about Christ must recognize His inner workings because Jesus is the human conscience that teaches everyone to distinguish between good and evil.

Furthermore, the Dukhobortsy are convinced that not only Christians but also Jews, Muslims, and non-believers enter the kingdom of heaven and that on Judgment Day all people will rise from the dead in spirit. Concerning the Day of Judgment, the torments of hell will consist in the eternal pangs of conscience. The soul is God’s image but after the fall of man the image disappeared, memory was weakened and man forgot what he had been before, reasoning became deadened, and the will was no longer governed by the Holy Ghost and thus turned towards evil.

The biblical story of Adam and Eve is regarded by the Dukhobortsy as a symbolic image of our earthly existence. The soul had already fallen earlier, before the creation of the world, together with the other evil angels. The world was created only as a prison to which they were transferred for their sin. Thus sin came into the world not with the fall of man but Adam and Eve were themselves already created as sinners. This teaching underlies the commandment not to mourn the deceased because they have been pardoned and death has redeemed them from wandering on this earth. They see in Abel’s fate the persecution of the just by the unjust or the Cains; [they see] in the march of the Israelites through the Red Sea and in the decline of the Egyptians the perdition of the sinners and the salvation of the believers.

They completely reject the sacraments; likewise they have no clergy and do not even attribute any importance to the decrees of the general councils which otherwise are recognized by most sects of the schism. They reverence the saints and apostles of the Greek Church as mere humans who, although born in sin, led a life pleasing to God. They consider crossing oneself a useless ceremony and therefore refrain from doing it; neither do they pray for their fellow-men and enemies; and they do not even mention those “who have power over us” in their prayers because everyone already has enough to pray for himself.

An important doctrine in practice is that of the equality of all people. Thus there are no masters and servants among the Dukhobortsy but only completely equal “brothers”. For this reason the children call their father simply “elder” and they call their mother “keeper”; the men use the term “sisters” when addressing their wives while the latter call their husbands “brothers”; none of them use the term “Dad” which is otherwise so popular in Russian because, as they say, all people are brothers, only God alone is our father. As an expression of thanks they use the phrase “may God help you”. They do not bear arms and further consider war a sinful and unjust activity, citing in support the doctrines of love and compassion in the Gospel as well as the Seventh Commandment. This view of religion demands that its adherents live in larger communities so that in case of someone’s mishaps everyone can help the individual. They must also avoid quarrelling and any kind of brawl as well as using indecent or abusive language. And while they must not drink wine or spirits, curiously they are allowed to smoke tobacco which is so taboo among the Old Believers. They do not practice fasting.

Once an elderly Dukhobor recounted to me a very charming symbolic story which I will try to render here in its entirety:
“Far, far away from here, in a region inaccessible to the human mind, there is an azure ocean and in that ocean there is an island. Once in a while, muffled in thick fog, it reveals itself to the seafarer but constant waves stir the ocean and prevent man from setting foot on the island. This ocean and the island represent human destiny which, obscure and dark, lies ahead of us until man forces his ship through the wild surf into the quiet harbour of death. On the island there is a high temple which is not man-made and has been here from the first day of creation. The vault [ceiling] rests on as many pillars as there are religions in the world. At every pillar there is a person who is in the process of professing the religion represented graphically on the pillar. One single pillar is made of pure gold – it is the symbol of the pure and true belief in God who created the island as well as heaven, earth, and water. All the other pillars are made of stone representing the false wisdom of the human spirit petrified in his sins. All these pillars including the golden one are covered with marble representing the ignorance of man that deprives him of an unobstructed view into the light of divine doctrine. And while nobody is able to see the gold, everyone tells the other that he is holding the golden shaft of belief in his hands. Centuries pass, the world ages oppressed by the wrath of the Creator of all things. And then comes the hour of the general and terrible decline – the billows of the ocean wallow blood and fire, the sky collapses, the earth’s joints tremble violently, and the magnificent temple, not man-built, falls. The marble chips off and the golden pillar glitters and it alone illuminates the entire world where there is only darkness and agony. Now all men recognize the gold and fall on their faces blinded by the light of divine truth. Woe to those who held a stone shaft in their hands while those who listened to their inner Christ will be saved because only in Him there is salvation. We are all blind and do not know who is holding the gold of true belief in his hands.”

Customs and Practices

Let us say a few words about the outward appearance of our Transcaucasian Dukhobortsy, about their practices and customs, and their domestic life! Most of them are tall and robust; all men, except the old ones, shave their beards leaving just a moustache. They cut their hair and, together with their clothing consisting of wide trousers and a cloth jacket, thus resemble the looks of the Germans who had settled in Transcaucasia. When you see one of these Russian sectarians drive by on a covered wagon with iron axles and harnessed with two horses, you could easily mistake him for a German colonist. The female sex deserves the epithet “fair sex”; however, it is not the usual type of a Russian village beauty, i.e., of robust health; rather in the pale, oval faces of these girls and women there is a somewhat nobler expression that harmonizes splendidly with their cleanliness, grace, and carefully selected clothing. The latter consists of a white, often very elegant chemise with wide, stitched sleeves and a coloured skirt; their head is covered by a low round small cap very artfully made of various coloured triangular flaps. Their hair is clipped a little in front – the married women hide their hair at the back under the cap, while the girls wear braids. The women are very industrious, get up early and, before sunrise, have already taken care of everything connected with domestic chores after which they usually busy themselves with some or other needlework. In the evenings they very much love socializing and gather under whatever pretext in someone’s house where before long the young lads show up and they spend the evening with work, fun, and laughter.

The character of the female sex is marked by a considerable vivacity and frivolity so that even marital fidelity is not held in high esteem among them. The passion for dressing up has contributed a lot to the decay of morals. The men view their wives’ conduct with lenience and do not on their own accord seek to punish them for being unfaithful. Incidentally, if one of the women goes too far and does not know how to hide her amorous adventures properly, she is subjected to a harsh punishment: she is led naked through the village streets and is pelted with excrement and dirt. Such a case occurred during our stay in Rodionovka and the procedure was stopped only through the intervention of the troop commander.

On the whole, the Dukhobortsy do not attribute any importance to matrimony. To get married requires only the good will of two adult persons of different sex, mutual love, and the parents’ consent. The transaction on such an occasion is roughly the following: the relatives and acquaintances of bride and bridegroom gather in the house of the bridegroom’s or the bride’s parents where the oldest family member pronounces the two man and wife, without any further promises or even written contracts. As a result divorce is very easy because just the simple desire of the married couple to get divorced is sufficient. After the completion of the divorce both parties are completely free. In spite of being so easy, however, divorce is a rare occasion.

In the old days the Dukhobortsy were known for their diligence and their good management but nowadays little has remained of that except a certain cleanliness and orderliness. In the Crimea they practiced extensive agriculture as well as cattle- and horse-breeding. Likewise they possessed large flocks of sheep and practiced the art of weaving. When they resettled to Transcaucasia they had to give up all of this because in many respects the character of the new region was not conducive to continuing these former activities. In this deserted steppe where trade was dominated by a few enterprising Armenians, there was no choice but to devote oneself to [wagon] cargo transporting since it was the most lucrative form of income.

This on the whole lazy life, we believe, has produced the now dominating addiction to alcoholic beverages which, after all, are forbidden by the doctrine of this sect. In Dukhoborye everyone, men, women, boys, and girls, drinks very heavily. No meeting proceeds without some hard drinking. When they visit one another, they sit down at a large table and discuss their everyday concern with a glass of brandy. The more they drink the more solemn and concentrated they become until their mood gives vent to the singing of an Old Testament psalm. Rocking back and forth, supporting their heavy heads with their hands, they keep sitting until one of them begins: “Oh brothers!” After that nothing makes sense any more since all words get absorbed by a lengthy monotonous screaming of the chorus.

Notwithstanding their drunkenness the Dukhobortsy are very frank and honest – they do not steal nor do they break their word of honour. Since they never swear oaths they instead value a simple promise that much more.

Like all Russian sectarians the Dukhobortsy, too, believe in religious customs: every morning, before and after a meal as well as at night before going to bed, the entire family forms a circle and the head recites aloud the Lord’s Prayer or a psalm.

Religious Services

Finally we shall say a few words about their divine service. Every person, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and non-believers, can visit the Dukhobortsy’ house of prayer because of their tenet that man cannot desecrate God’s temple by his presence but only by bad deeds. On a bright winter day on a holiday we set out to attend a divine service. The crowd of the devout, all in festive clothing, presented a very friendly picture. We joined the procession that was moving to the end of the village where the house of prayer was located. We entered with all the others. At the entrance the crowd divided – the men lined up to the left, the women to the right, apparently according to age. The room where we found ourselves was furnished in a very simple manner; at the far end there was a wooden table with salt in a wooden salt barrel and bread; otherwise there were no further ornaments.

After everyone had been seated as assigned, the choir leader began the psalm: “Thus speaks the Lord, the God of Israel” etc. whereupon the choir joined in. It is very noteworthy that their sacred songs consist of different biblical texts that are often taken out of context and occasionally arranged in a meaningless way. After the end of the singing the second-eldest stepped in front of the table, took the hand of the eldest, and both of them twice bowed very low to each other, then they kissed and bowed for the third time. After that the third stepped forward and began the same procedure with the former two, and then that procedure made the round, first for all the men and then the women. In spite of the long duration of this ceremony we had waited for it to end and, leaving the house, we addressed an elder with the request to explain to us the significance of those bows and kisses. He replied: “One must worship God’s image in one’s fellow man because man represents God on earth.”

Because of this doctrine the Dukhobortsy lapse into a peculiar form of idolatry in spite of the fact that they reject icons. That is because they select from their midst a handsome boy whom they call the “mother of God”, and whom they worship in superstitious awe like a deity. This custom may partially explain the demoralization of the female sex because this boy gathers around him a kind of court consisting of the young girls of all villages, and no girl can be wed without having spent some time there. It goes without saying that this mother of God generis masculini [Latin for “of the male sex”] is severely persecuted by the authorities but they seldom succeed in locating the boy in question and stemming this abuse.

In the above I have only attempted to put down my personal observations of a peculiar form of the Russian Schism and I implore the disposed reader not to try to measure this short sketch in terms of the standards of a thorough scientific treatise.

Afterword

Heinrich Johann von Paucker (1839-1898) was a Baltic German from the province of Estonia in the Russian Empire. As a youth, he received an excellent classical education at Revel (now Tallinn) and Mitau (now Jelgava). In 1855, at age sixteen, he joined the Life-Guards Lithuanian Regiment of the Imperial Russian Army as a cadet and was immediately transferred to the Caucasian Front of the Oriental (Crimean) War.

In the Caucasus, Paucker’s regiment was billeted in the Dukhobor village of Rodionovka in the Akhalkalaki district of Tiflis province during the winters of 1854-1855 and 1855-1856. During his stay there, the young military cadet came to closely observe and study his Dukhobor hosts, with whom he came in regular contact. He kept journals, and with a keen ethnographic eye, recorded his detailed observations of this unique people, little known to western members of the Russian Empire.

At the time, the Dukhobors had been settled in the Akhalkalaki district for less than a decade, having been exiled there from Tavria province in 1841-1845. This relocation had brought about profound and rapid changes in the social, cultural and economic life of the Dukhobors, who were still adjusting to the harsh realities of their new physical environment, as well as the disruption wrought by the Oriental War, when Paucker stayed among them.

Paucker described in detail the geography and climate of Dukhobor’ye – the “land of the Dukhobors” (which, significantly, is the first recorded usage of that name). The climate, he noted, was overall very unhealthy and many Dukhobors, not yet acclimatized to their new surroundings, suffered and died from fever. There on the high mountain plateau, spring came late and winter early; there was no way to grow grain in the short season. The Akhalkalaki Dukhobors, he observed, had thus abandoned their traditional agricultural economy and relied on contracts for wagon transport and the sale of hay for income, with which they bought grain for their consumption in nearby market towns. At the time of writing, they had not yet established the large horse and cattle herds for which they would later become known. He noted also that there were no wooden buildings in the barren, treeless region; the Dukhobors had adapted by constructing their homes from bricks of dried cattle manure.

Recounting their history, Paucker identified the Dukhobors’ origins in the Russian Schism of the 17th century; a time of general religious turmoil when some dissenters, imbued with new ideas introduced by foreigners, rejected the dogma and authority of the Orthodox Church. He traced the growth of the sect from early 18th century Tambov and Ekaterinoslav, through the severe persecutions and oppressions of later that century, to their settlement in Tavria at the beginning of the 19th century, whereafter they enjoyed an era of peace, toleration and prosperity. Later on, stirred by a spirit of “rebelliousness” and “religious fanaticism”, they began to openly preach their faith and disobey the authorities, which led to their exile to Transcaucasia.

Paucker gave a concise summary of Dukhobor religious philosophy, which rejected church institutions, sacraments, icons and clergy in favour of a simple, individual-based religion founded on egalitarianism, love and compassion. He noted the Dukhobor belief in the indwelling of God in every person, as well as their figurative, rather than literal, interpretation of the Trinity. They refused to bear arms and avoided quarrels and abuse. They did not possess any written records about their beliefs, which, he observed, were passed down by oral tradition.

Of particular interest is Paucker’s description of the outward appearance and character of the Dukhobors. The Dukhobor men, he observed, were tall and robust with clothing resembling that of the German colonists in Russia. The same observation had been made by earlier writers, and it is generally accepted that the Dukhobor men adopted aspects of their dress from their Mennonite neighbours while living in Tavria. He noted the noble beauty of the Dukhobor women, and their industry, cleanliness, grace and carefully selected clothing, of which he provided a full description. In general, he found the Dukhobors to be orderly, frank and honest, but lacking the diligence and good management for which they were renowned in Tavria. He also observed that many Dukhobors had lapsed from their prohibition against alcohol, and now drank heavily.

Paucker observed that the Dukhobor community played an important role in reinforcing the behavior and morality of its individual members “so that in case of someone’s mishaps everyone can help the individual”. For example, he recounted how, as punishment for infidelity, a Dukhobor woman was led through the village streets and pelted with excrement and dirt. Inexplicably, however, he inferred from this incident that Dukhobor women generally did not hold marital fidelity in high esteem; a sweeping statement unsupported by the historical evidence.

Paucker discussed the religious customs of the Dukhobors, noting the importance of prayer in their daily lives and describing in detail their unique marriage ceremony and religious service. He also noted the Dukhobor custom of bowing to one another, in reverence to the spirit of God that dwells within each man; a custom he mistakenly confused for idolatry.

Finally, Paucker made note of a boy whom the Dukhobors held in inordinately high esteem; who held court in the villages, and whom they referred to as Bogorodets (masculine form of Bogoroditsa or “Mother of God”). While not identified by name, this could only have been Petr Ilarionovich Kalmykov (1837-1864), the youngest in a line of hereditary Dukhobor leaders dating back to the time of Kapustin. Paucker noted he was severely persecuted by Tsarist authorities, however, they seldom succeeded in locating him; presumably he was concealed by his followers. His account thus provides significant insights into the early life of this important historical personage.

Paucker’s writings are among the remarkably few sources of detailed, published information about the decade immediately following the Dukhobor exile to Transcaucasia; a little-known and little-explored period of Dukhobor history.  His work is thus an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the era.

As for Paucker himself, following the Oriental War, he was promoted to the rank of officer and transferred to the Light-Infantry Battalion in Riga in 1858. He was subsequently promoted to the rank of Second Lieutenant. In 1860, he transferred to the Telegraph Corps and served as Chief of Telegraph Stations in Voronezh and later Yaroslavl. After receiving his discharge from the Imperial Russian Army in 1864, he settled in Wesenberg (now Ravkere), Estonia where he took up teaching and translation work. He also served as a civil servant for the Estonian Provincial Government. From 1865 until his death he published a large volume of translations and original works on various subjects.

Significantly, Paucker’s first published work was on the Dukhobors, which appeared anonymously (under the initial “K”) as Die Duchoborzen in Transkaukasien in the Baltic journal Baltische Monatsschriften in 1865. Anonymous publication was common in Russia at this time, as the state censorship regime was particularly severe and maintained a strict vigilance over the publication of written materials, removing or banning anything it considered even remotely ‘subversive’. Hence, many writers, fearing reprisals from Imperial censors, published their works under initials or pseudonyms.  Sixteen years later, in 1881, Paucker republished the article under his own name in the German journal Deutsche Rundschau für Geographie und Statistik.

Special thanks to Jack McIntosh, former UBC Slavic languages bibliographer, for identifying the anonymous author of the 1865 publication of Die Duchoborzen in Transkaukasien as being Heinrich Johann von Paucker.  

To read more, search, download, save and print a full PDF copy of the original German text of Heinrich Johann von Paucker’s “Die Duchoborzen in Transkaukasien” in Baltische Monatsschrift (Volume 11, Riga: Jonck & Boliewsky, 1865, pp. 240-250), visit the Google Book Search database.