BURN YOUR RIFLES AND RETURN TO WORKXXXVI. DUKHOBORS
BURN YOUR RIFLES AND RETURN TO WORK
Wehad not anticipated coming into the neighbourhood of the Dukhobors. It was an interesting surprise. I had promised myself I would make a special pilgrimage some day to Western Canada just to find out what the Dukhobors thought about life, and how they were getting on now. And then to come on them accidentally.
The Dukhobors, or “Spirit wrestlers,” are a Russian religious community brought to Canadain 1898. They claim to have been in existence in Russia for over three hundred years. They are primitive Christians akin to Quakers, but more uncompromising. They are Communists, pacifists, anti-state, anti-church, anti-law. Theologically they consider Christ as a good man and teacher, but not divine. Tolstoy’s teachings show him very close to the Dukhobors in theory. He greatly sympathised with them in the persecution which they suffered at the hands of the Russian Government, and it was in part due to him, and more largely to the Society of Friends in England, that the expatriation of the Dukhobors was accomplished. Tolstoy is said to have put aside the profits of his novelResurrectionto defray in part the expenses of transporting the Russians. There are several thousand of them, and first they were taken to Cyprus where at least the British Navy got acquainted with them, as they were naturally a curiosity. Cyprus was not suitable, and so Canada was chosen for a habitat. The community was taken to Saskatchewan, and later migrated in large part to British Columbia. They did not find their path strewn with roses in Canada, and havehad a hard time. But despite persecution they have prospered. They are notorious for a naked procession they once made “in quest of the Messiah” some forty miles in bitter winter weather, displaying “the naked truth” to the Canadians—the pilgrimage to Yorktown which has been described with much gusto in the American and Canadian Press. They have refused to take steps to relinquish their Russian nationality, refused to fight, refused to pay taxes. So naturally they have been a thorn in the side of the Canadian.
The Rocky Mountains stretching away in their majesty must remind some Russians of the grand array of the Caucasus as seen from the north—and the prairie is the steppe. Far away you discern the white and brown buildings of a settlement, and then, ten times as large as anything else, pale-blue grain-elevators. The circumambient moor is many coloured, and a dove-coloured sky is flecked with softest cloud. There are snow fences at many points of the road to protect from drifts in winter. A neverceasing wind which brings no rain is driving over the corn-fields. As you approach the village you begin to see Russian peasant menand women working on the fields hoisting the wheat-sheaves to the harvesting carts, hoisting the sheaves to the top of the stacks. A stalwart peasant-wife in cottons stands on top of the stack, pitchfork in her hand, and she catches the sheaves as they come up to her. The grain-elevators rise mightily into vision, and then the words printed on them in large black letters—THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY OF UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD.
I soon met Pavel Potapof, the local headman, and I talked in Russian with a number of men and women who spoke no other language. They were raising wheat for themselves and for their wheatless brethren who live in the lumbering camps and villages of British Columbia, but represent a sort of a half-way colony between the original Verigin, Saskatchewan, and the main settlement of Brilliant, British Columbia.
Potapof was a boy at Cyprus, where his father enjoyed some authority. He is now a man in his thirties with brown moustache and close-clipped chin. If you are a Dukhobor you may not shave but you may clip with the shears. He remembered touching aMr. St. John at Cyprus, who used to call him Pavlushka.
Potapof spoke Russian with a soft Little-Russian accent, all g’s being h’s. He came from Tiflis province, and I talked first of the Caucasus, comparing them with the Rockies. Then naturally we discussed Russia, and a curious crowd gathered about us. Scarcely any spoke English—all were Russian subjects, and I much wondered what they thought of the Bolshevik revolution. For they also are Communists. I soon learned that an appeal had been made to them on behalf of the Bolsheviks to help to stem the famine in Russia. Some of the Dukhobors were for sending grain, some not. They blamed the Bolsheviks for their “two million men under arms.”
Most of them said: “Let those who are richer in Russia give to those who are poorer; there’ll be enough to go round.” Imagination did not show them the ghastly ruin of contemporary Russia, where, except for a handful of Soviet commissaries, there are no rich, no “better-off” people. Most of them also said: “Let them lay down their arms, and thenwe’ll think of feeding them.” But their deliberations crystallised in the following way. They decided on a symbolic act. They visited all their Ruthenian and Galician neighbours and any one who had a war-trophy to spare, and they made thus a collection of rifles, shotguns, pistols—some three hundred or more weapons. These they burned in a heap. Then they sent a wireless message to the Russian people describing this act, and added further the monition: “Do likewise; burn your rifles, and return to work!”
“They murdered Nikolai (rubili Nikolai) and his family for liberty,” said Potapof. “But now clearly there is much less liberty than ever there was before.”
Nevertheless I thought I detected a curious home-sickness among many of them. The violent rumours and persistent bad news of Russia comes to a primitive community that cannot read in a more disturbing and dramatic way than through newspapers. They complained sadly of conditions in Canada; of droughts, of plagues of grasshoppers, of bygone hardships and persecutions in Saskatchewan.
“Here there will be a Bolshevik revolutiontoo,” said one. “We shall not take part in it. But we know it is preparing. There is much discontent in the neighbouring settlements and in the mines. Oh yes, there is trouble brewing here too.”
This Dukhobor had been talking to brother Poles and Ruthenians, but he was quite out of perspective. I asked how the Dukhobors had faced under the Conscription Act. Apparently they did not suffer much; Canada did not trouble the Dukhobors. They had an easier time than their brothers the Mennonites in the United States. They told me there had been a considerable influx of Mennonites by way of the unguarded line: they also are pacifists and utterly oppose to personal service in war. So struck are they by what happened to them in America through the war that there is much talk of their deserting both Canada and the States and seeking a refuge in Mexico.
The Dukhobors, however, have a strong hold in Canada, and as long as Peter Verigin, their unofficial patriarch and leader, lives, they will most probably hold on to their settlements in British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Perhaps in a new era, a new Russia may againtake the Dukhobors to herself. Canada does not assimilate them. They do not assimilate Canada. And they are, and they feel, as Dostoievsky said, like “a slice cut out of a loaf.”
Fancy meeting the DukhoborsUp in the Rockies:A bit of old RussiaPlanted up there to meet me!Sure next time when I go to the CaucasusI’ll look to find a batch of English there,Trying to live their unmolested livesUnder the free institutionsOf old Russia.Tolstoy, in his story of the old pilgrim,Taught you could find Jerusalem in your native village,And did not need to pilgrimage afar.But he did not say you could find freedomIn your own village—in your own heart.O no, that’s political,You must go a long way to find that.
Fancy meeting the DukhoborsUp in the Rockies:A bit of old RussiaPlanted up there to meet me!Sure next time when I go to the CaucasusI’ll look to find a batch of English there,Trying to live their unmolested livesUnder the free institutionsOf old Russia.Tolstoy, in his story of the old pilgrim,Taught you could find Jerusalem in your native village,And did not need to pilgrimage afar.But he did not say you could find freedomIn your own village—in your own heart.O no, that’s political,You must go a long way to find that.
Fancy meeting the DukhoborsUp in the Rockies:A bit of old RussiaPlanted up there to meet me!Sure next time when I go to the CaucasusI’ll look to find a batch of English there,Trying to live their unmolested livesUnder the free institutionsOf old Russia.
Fancy meeting the Dukhobors
Up in the Rockies:
A bit of old Russia
Planted up there to meet me!
Sure next time when I go to the Caucasus
I’ll look to find a batch of English there,
Trying to live their unmolested lives
Under the free institutions
Of old Russia.
Tolstoy, in his story of the old pilgrim,Taught you could find Jerusalem in your native village,And did not need to pilgrimage afar.But he did not say you could find freedomIn your own village—in your own heart.O no, that’s political,You must go a long way to find that.
Tolstoy, in his story of the old pilgrim,
Taught you could find Jerusalem in your native village,
And did not need to pilgrimage afar.
But he did not say you could find freedom
In your own village—in your own heart.
O no, that’s political,
You must go a long way to find that.