Growing up among the Doukhobors, a pacifist religious group that immigrated to Canada from the Tsar, JJ Verigin would sometimes come home from school to find naked elderly women trying to burn down his family’s house.
One attempt, in 1969, was successful, lamented Verigin, 67, who recently retold the story. A fire destroyed precious family artifacts, including correspondence between his great-grandfather, a prominent Doukhobor leader, and Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, a early admirer on Doukhobors pacifism and Christian ethics.
Mr. Verigin explains that the elderly women are part of a small and radical group within the Doukhobors who periodically go nude and burn buildings to protest land ownership and what they see as ownership. excessive materialism. Some of those accused of arson, he said, had a different motive: deportation to Mother Russia.
Mr. Verigin, who leads the largest Doukhobor organization in Canada and studied in Moscow in 1979, said these days, with the Ukraine war raging, most Doukhobors no longer desire to return to Russia. get titleHe emphasized that such people in Canada, and the polarizing Doukhobors, are also a thing of the past.
“Peaceanism is at the core of what it means to be Doukhobor and the war in Ukraine has ended any lingering desire to return to Russia,” said Verigin, the organization’s executive director. Association of Spiritual Communities of Christ. “We feel the feelings of our Ukrainian brothers and sisters because we too have faced repression in Russia.”
In the 18th century, the Doukhobors (the name comes from a Russian phrase meaning “spiritual wrestlers”) refused to worship the icon of the Russian Orthodox Church. They also opposed serving in the imperial army; in 1895, thousands of Doukhobor soldiers burned their weapons, resulting in violent repression of the group and exile.
Tolstoy spends royalties on his novel”revive” to help finance the migration of the Doukhobors to Canada, and by 1899, more than 7,500 people had emigrated to what became of Saskatchewan to help farm the Canadian prairies. In 1908, most resettled in the mountainous countryside of southern British Columbia, in sleepy farm and factory towns such as Castlegar and Grand Forks.
An estimated 30,000 people of Doukhobor descent reside in Canada, and for decades they lived ascetic, communal lives reminiscent of Quakers or Mennonites, though imbued with Russian culture and traditions. Historically, many people were vegetarian and shunned alcohol. Their motto: “Life is hard and peaceful.”
Many Doukhobors in Canada still speak Russian among themselves; send their children to Russian language schools; sing Russian hymns in weekly spiritual meetings; Russian sauna; and eat traditional food like soup.
But Doukhobor’s lifestyle has been influenced by heterosexual marriage, the appeal of city life and the younger generation more attracted to TikTok than Tolstoy. Today, the Doukhobors are doctors, professors, lawyers, professional athletes, and at least in one case the queen of rowing.
“Assimilation is a challenge to our way of life,” said Mr. Verigin.
At a recent choir rehearsal at the Doukhobor cultural center, Jasmine Popoff, 34, a nurse with purple hair, led her choir in a vibrant version of “” by Leonard CohenHallelujah” — in Russian — followed by a lively English performance by Queen’s “Someone to love.”
“As Doukhobors, it is important that our culture evolves for us to continue to grow,” said Ms. Popoff.
As the discussion turned to war during rehearsal breaks, members of the choir of all ages said they opposed the authoritarianism and militarism of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. Kelly Poznikoff, a singer, said: “I don’t feel any connection to Mother Russia because Russia is not our mother.
Mr. Verigin said that, angered by the Ukraine conflict, a number of Doukhobors in recent months have been denied service at local shops in Castlegar.
In the past, prejudice against the Doukhobors in Canada has been fueled by radical splinter groups, children of freedom, which in the 1920s began marching in nude demonstrations and torching public buildings and homes. Members of the group oppose property rights and public schools for their children. In the 1950s, dozens of their children were forced to send to government boarding schools.
Among the last radicals was Mary Braun, who in 2001, at the age of 81, sentenced to six years in prison after setting fire to a community college building in British Columbia. Before sentencing, Ms. Braun stripped off her clothes in court. She has fasted several times in the past and lit small fires in the courtroom.
Nadja Kolesnikoff, a yoga instructor who grew up in a Sons of Freedom family, said she was confused at age 5 when her paternal grandmother burned her own home and was jailed for three years.
“We were supposed to stick together as a community,” she said. “I never asked her why she did it.”
But Ms. Kolesnikoff said her upbringing has also been empowering. Her family uses oil lamps and stores vegetables underground in the winter. The luxuries were frowned upon.
“I learned to be independent and to this day I feel there is nothing that I cannot do,” she said by phone from Costa Rica, where she now lives.
At the Doukhobor Discovery Center in Castlegar, museum director Ryan Dutchak said some Doukhobor people over the decades have changed their surnames to the Russian sound for fear of ostracism. In Canada’s 2021 census, only 1,675 people were identified as Doukhobors.
“The stigma has pushed some people away,” he said.
The elders say that preserving the Russian language is key to the group’s survival.
On a recent Thursday, dozens of Doukhobor gathered for a spiritual gathering. Dressed in colorful scarves, blouses, skirts and aprons, the women sit across from the men. On the table lay a loaf of bread, salt and a pitcher of water, traditional symbols of Doukhobor hospitality.
“Gospodi blagoslovi” — God bless us — they say before singing the Our Father in melodious Russian.
Standing in front of her classroom at an elementary school in Castlegar, Ernie Verigin, a Russian teacher, acknowledges the challenges of preserving the Doukhobor faith. “The younger generation wants a quick fix, but spirituality is a long process,” he said. “It’s hard to compete when my 14-year-old daughter is on Instagram and Facebook.”
The rivalry of Canadian, Russian and Doukhobor identities can be complicated.
AJ Roberts, 21, a video game designer in Vancouver who grew up in Castlegar, regrets that his Russian is very poor. But he’s learning how to make his own borscht, even as his mother brings him multiple jars each visit.
“I’m proud to be Canadian but I don’t mind saying I’m Doukhobor,” he said. “Because of the war, I am more ashamed to say that I am of Russian origin.”
