J.J. Verigin grew up among the Doukhobors, a pacifist religious group that migrated to Canada from Tsarist Russia. He remembered coming home from school to find naked elderly women attempting to set his family’s house on fire. One successful attempt in 1969 destroyed his family’s precious artifacts, including letters between his great-great-grandfather, a prominent Doukhobor leader, and the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, who was an early admirer of the Doukhobors’ pacifism and Christian morality.
These elderly women belonged to a small, radical splinter group within the Doukhobors who sometimes disrobed and lit fires on buildings to protest land ownership and materialism. According to Verigin, some of those who were charged with arson had another motive: to return to Mother Russia.
Today, with the ongoing war in Ukraine, most Doukhobors no longer aspire to return to Russia, according to Verigin, who leads the largest Doukhobor organization in Canada. He explained that pacifism is at the core of their beliefs, and the war in Ukraine has extinguished any residual desire to return to Russia, adding that Doukhobors empathize with their Ukrainian brothers and sisters since they, too, have experienced repression in Russia.
Dating back to the 18th century, Doukhobors rejected the icon worship of the Russian Orthodox Church and abstained from serving in the imperial military. In 1899, over 7,500 Doukhobors emigrated to Saskatchewan, Canada, after Leo Tolstoy used royalties from his book “Resurrection” to fund their settlement. They resettled in southern British Columbia in 1908, where they lived an ascetic, communal life parallel to that of Quakers or Mennonites. They were mostly vegetarian and teetotalers and followed the motto “Toil and peaceful life.”
Around 30,000 people of Doukhobor descent live in Canada, and many still speak Russian among themselves, attend Russian-language schools, sing Russian hymns, and eat traditional Russian dishes. However, Doukhobor life has been affected by intermarriage, urbanization, and a younger generation that is more interested in modern social media than the teachings of Tolstoy. Today, Doukhobors in Canada are professionals, athletes, lawyers, doctors, and even a drag queen.
Ernie Verigin, a Russian teacher, expressed concern about the challenges of preserving the Doukhobor faith. He noted that the younger generation wants a quick fix, but spirituality is a lifelong process, adding that it’s hard to compete with his daughter’s obsession with social media.
Mary Braun, a member of the extremist splinter group Sons of Freedom, was sentenced to six years in prison at the age of 81, after setting fire to a community college building in British Columbia. The group, which opposed property ownership and public schooling for their children, marched in nude protests since the 1920s and lit public buildings and houses on fire.
Nadja Kolesnikoff, a yoga instructor who grew up in a Sons of Freedom household, felt empowered by her upbringing, which taught her self-sufficiency. Although no longer part of the group, she learned valuable skills from her Doukhobor ancestors, such as storing vegetables and fruits underground in winter and using kerosene lamps.
AJ Roberts, who works as a video game designer in Vancouver, feels proud of his Doukhobor heritage, even though he is more ashamed today because the ongoing Ukraine conflict has led to discrimination against people with Russian backgrounds. He is learning to make borscht to preserve Doukhobor culture.
Doukhobors regularly hold spiritual meetings where they sing hymns in Russian and partake of traditional Doukhobor hospitality symbols such as bread, salt, and water. Elders claim that the preservation of the Russian language is key to the group’s survival.
Doukhobor identity today is complicated by the competing pulls of Canadian, Russian, and Doukhobor identities. Many Doukhobors have changed their Russian names to avoid stigmatization, and only 1,675 people identified themselves as Doukhobors in the 2021 Canadian census.
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