North America has been seen as the land of opportunity for almost 300 years. The continent, especially in its infancy, was a place of refuge for religious minorities fleeing persecution, such as the Quakers and the Mennonites. Sadly this group of religious dissenters, which like the aforementioned groups shared a communalist and pacifist outlook, did not fare well in Canada which they fled to from Tsarist Russia. This video is about the Doukhobors.
In the 18th century, Siluan Kolesnikov and others created a community of radical pacifist christians who rejected both the Russian Orthodox Church’s teachings and the authority of secular governments. They also eschewed private property, holding all their possessions in common and promoting a simple life as a source of Godliness. Taking their name from a derogatory slander against them, these Doukhobors (fighters with the Holy Spirit), faced considerable suppression in autocratic Russia. To diffuse the EVIL influence of pacifism they were encouraged to settle in Southern Ukraine along with other minorities around 1800 to secure the region for the Russian Empire. However, their refusal to serve the Russian Army especially brought down the boot of the Tsar, and in 1826 full conscription of Doukhobor men was undertaken in earnest and thousands of them along with their entire families were forcibly deported from Ukraine to modern day Georgia. The Doukhobors were undaunted by their new servile status, and in 1895 thousands destroyed their weapons in defiance of military orders and were savagely beaten as punishment.
By now, the Tsars were getting tired of dealing with these troublemakers, and Christian Anarchist Leo Tolstoy and Communist Anarchist Peter Kropotkin were instrumental in engineering a deal for the Doukhobors to emigrate from Russia. The Russians were most keen on a deal that would not let emigrants back into the country. After a failed attempt to resettle them in British Cyprus, Canada, full of unsettled western land, agreed to allow what became around 8000 Doukhobors to homestead parts of Saskatchewan starting in 1898. The Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers, financially aided the emigrants along with their anarchist allies. Fairly quickly, problems with the legal understanding of what the Doukhobors were doing came up in Canadian Courts, where the Dominion lands act of 1872 only provided for individual claims on property, not the communal economic structure the Doukhobors actually pursued. The Canadian Government, not interested in experiments in socialist property (even non-violent ones), refused to make concessions to the Doukhobors and the Christian sects numerous radical peaceful demonstrations (including hunger marches and displays of public nudity) failed to sway them. Many Doukhobors were arrested and some were even sent to insane asylums for their antics. In 1907, Doukhobor land shrunk from the 770,000 acres originally granted to the refugees, to about 117,000, something the group saw as totally unjustified and contemplated leaving their adopted home, which proved to be almost as callous as their old one.
The Doukhobor stayed however, and even weathered the war fever in World War One where their pacifist stance earned few friends in Western Canada full of bloodlust. Most of the remaining hardcore Doukhobors had moved to British Columbia starting in 1908 led by Peter Verigin (leaving what little land they had left), and they continued to face discrimination and mistrust (not to mention unwelcome attention by the police for their nudism). A more extreme sect called the Freedomites practiced arson and bombings to protest the materialism of the modern world and also attacked the main body of Doukhobors called the Community, and they gained notoriety in the first half of the 20th century. While the Freedomites did use property crime in their protests, the pacifist ideals of the Doukhobors prevented them from using physical violence against people, and no recorded deaths occurred at their hands. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (mounties) rounded up hundreds of Freedomite children and sent them to “residential schools” to forcibly assimilate the population starting in 1953. The Doukhobors protested to the UN that separation of children from an ethnic group violated the Genocide Convention, but the practice only ended in 1959. Today there are only about 2000 Doukhobors who profess the religion of their ancestors out of about 40,000 people of Doukhobor descent in Canada, a decline which began around World War Two (During which Doukhobors were compelled to fulfill “alternative service” or face jail time) and continues to this day.
The Story of the Doukhobors is in many ways similar but in many ways tragically different from the Mormons. While the Doukhobors survived in the martyr rich era of Tsardom, unlike the Mormons they could not hold fast to their traditions and face the outside world united. Is this because they were communitarians rather than individualists like the Mormons? Probably not, as the Amish have achieved a very high level of success in the U.S. and the Mennonites also have a strong presence in Canada. The most we can say about the failure of the Doukhobors to thrive is that they simply got on the bad side of the Government. Springtime of Nations does not believe any peaceful economic arrangement is morally wrong, and the tragedy of the Doukhobors is a reminder that a State can very easily simply make a people’s Way of Life illegal. We will always oppose that. Long live the Doukhobors, and may 1000 flowers bloom!