Doukhobors

The village of Gorelovka in southern Georgia, the "capital" of the Doukhobors of Transcaucasia (1893)

The Doukhobor worship place in Georgia

When Nicholas I succeeded Alexander as Tsar, on February 6, 1826, he issued a decree intending to force assimilation of the Doukhobors by means of military conscription, prohibiting their meetings, and encouraging conversions to the established church.[11][16] On October 20, 1830, another decree followed, specifying all able-bodied members of dissenting religious groups engaged in propaganda against the established church should be conscripted and sent to the Russian army in the Caucasus while those not capable of military service, and their women and children, should be resettled in Russia's recently acquired Transcaucasian provinces. With other dissenters, around 5,000 Doukhobors were resettled in Georgia between 1841 and 1845. Akhalkalaki uyezd (district) in the Tiflis Governorate was chosen as the main place of their settlement.[17] Doukhobor villages with Russian names appeared there; Gorelovka, Rodionovka, Yefremovka, Orlovka, Spasskoye (Dubovka), Troitskoye, and Bogdanovka. Later, other groups of Doukhobors were resettled by the government or migrating to Transcaucasia of their own accord. They also settled in neighboring areas, including the Borchaly uyezd of Tiflis Governorate and the Kedabek uyezd of Elisabethpol Governorate.[19]

In 1844, Doukhobors who were being exiled from their home near Melitopol to the village of Bogdanovka carved the Doukhobor Memorial Stone, which is now held in the collection of the Melitopol Museum of Local History.[20]

After Russia's conquest of Kars and the Treaty of San Stefano of 1878, some Dukhobors from Tiflis and Elisabethpol Governorates moved to the Zarushat and Shuragel uyezds of the newly created Kars Oblast to the north-east of Kars in modern-day Republic of Turkey.[21] The leader of the main group of Doukhobors, who arrived in Transcaucasia from Ukraine in 1841, was Illarion Kalmykov (Russian: Илларион Калмыков). He died in the same year and was succeeded as the community leader by his son Peter Kalmykov (?–1864). After Peter Kalmykov's death in 1864, his widow Lukerya Vasilyevna Gubanova (? – December 15, 1886; (Russian: Лукерья Васильевна Губанова); also known as Kalmykova) took his leadership position.[22]

The Kalmykov dynasty lived in the village Gorelovka, a Doukhobor community in Georgia .[23][19] Lukerya was respected by the provincial authorities, who had to cooperate with the Doukhobors. At the time of her death in 1886, there were around 20,000 Doukhobors in Transcaucasia. By that time, the region's Doukhobors had become vegetarian and were aware of Leo Tolstoy's philosophy, which they found quite similar to their own traditional teachings.[22]

The death of Lukerya, who had no children, was followed by a leadership crisis that divided the Dukhobortsy in the Caucasus into two major groups, which disputed their next leader. Lukerya wanted leadership to pass to her assistant Peter Vasilevich Verigin. Although most of the community—"the Large Party" Russian: Большая сторона, romanized: Bolshaya Storona—accepted him as the leader, a minority faction known as "the Small Party" (Малая сторона Malaya Storona) rejected Verigin, and sided with Lukerya's brother Michael Gubanov and the village elder Aleksei Zubkov.[22][24][16]

The doukhobor village in Slavyanka Azerbaijan 2018

While the Large Party was a majority, the Small Party had the support of the older members of the community and the local authorities. On January 26, 1887, at a community service at which the new leader was to be acclaimed, police arrived and arrested Verigin. He, along with some of his associates, was sent into internal exile in Siberia. Large Party Doukhobors continued to consider Verigin their spiritual leader and to communicate with him, by mail and via delegates who traveled to see him in Obdorsk.[22][24][25] An isolated population of exiled Doukhobors, a third "party", was about 5,000 miles (8,000 km) east in Amur Oblast.

At the same time, the Russian government applied greater pressure to enforce the Doukhobors' compliance with its laws and regulations. The Doukhobors had resisted registering marriages and births, contributing grain to state emergency funds, and swearing oaths of allegiance. In 1887, Russia extended universal military conscription, which applied to the rest of the empire, to the Transcaucasian provinces. While the Small Party cooperated with the state, the Large Party, reacting to arrest of their leaders and inspired by their letters from exile,[26] felt strengthened in their desire to abide by the righteousness of their faith. Under instructions from Verigin, the Large Party stopped using tobacco and alcohol, divided their property equally among the members of the community, and resolved to adhere to practice pacifism and non-violence. They refused to swear the oath of allegiance required in 1894 by the newly ascended Tsar Nicholas II.[11][24]

Under further instructions from Verigin, about 7,000 of the most zealous Doukhobors—about one-third of all Doukhobors—of the three Governorates of Transcaucasia destroyed their weapons and refused to serve in the military. As the Doukhobors gathered to burn their guns on the night of June 28/29 (July 10/11, Gregorian calendar) 1895, while singing of psalms and spiritual songs, government Cossacks arrested and beat them. Shortly after, the government billeted Cossacks in many of the Large Party's villages; around 4,000 Doukhobors were forced to disperse to villages in other parts of Georgia. Many died of starvation and exposure.[24][27]

The port of Batumi as it was in 1881. Here the Doukhobors embarked on their transatlantic journey in 1898 and 1899[28]

The resistance of the Doukhobors gained international attention and the Russian Empire was criticized for its treatment of this religious minority. In 1897, the Russian government agreed to let the Doukhobors leave the country, subject to conditions:

• emigrants should never return;
• emigrants must emigrate at their own expense;
• community leaders currently in prison or in exile in Siberia must serve the balance of their sentences before they could leave Russia.[11]

Some of the emigrants first went to Cyprus, which could not sustain a large migration. Canada offered more land, transportation, and aid to resettle in the Saskatchewan area. Around 6,000 Doukhobors emigrated there in the first half of 1899, settling on land granted to them by the government in modern-day Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. The Cyprus colony and others joined them, and around 7,500 Russian Doukhobor emigrants—about a third of their number in Russia—arrived in Canada by the end of the year.[29] Several smaller groups joined the main body of emigrants in later years, coming directly from Transcaucasia and other places of exile.[24] Among these latecomers were 110 leaders of the community who had to complete their sentences before being allowed to emigrate.[29] By 1930, about 8,780 Doukhobors had migrated from Russia to Canada.[30]

The Quakers and Tolstoyan movement covered most of the costs of passage for the emigrants; writer Leo Tolstoy arranged for the royalties from his novel Resurrection, his story Father Sergei, and some others to go to the emigration fund. Tolstoy also raised money from wealthy friends; his efforts provided about 30,000 rubles, half of the emigration fund. The anarchist Peter Kropotkin and professor of political economy at the University of Toronto James Mavor also helped the emigrants.[31][32]

The emigrants adapted to life in agricultural communes; they were overwhelmingly of peasant origin and had a low regard for advanced education. [lower-alpha 2] Many worked as loggers, lumbermen, and carpenters. Eventually, many left the communal dormitories and became private farmers on the Canadian plains. Religious a cappella singing, pacifism, and passive resistance were markers of the sect. One subgroup occasionally demonstrated naked, typically as a protest against compulsory military service.[34] Their policies made them controversial. The modern descendants of the first wave of Doukhobor emigrants continue to live in southeastern British Columbia communities such as Krestova, and in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. As of 1999, the estimated population of Doukhobor descent in North America was 40,000 in Canada and about 5,000 in the United States.[1]

Vosnesenia ('Ascension') village, NE of Arran, Saskatchewan (North Colony). A typical one-street village, modeled on those back in the Old World.

In accordance with the Dominion Lands Act of 1872, fpr a nominal fee of $10, the Canadian government would grant 160 acres (0.65 km²) of land to any male homesteader who was able to establish a working farm on that land within three years. Single-family homesteads would not fit the Doukhobors' communitarian tradition but a "Hamlet Clause" within the Act had been adopted 15 years earlier to accommodate other communitarian groups such as Mennonites. The clause allowed beneficiaries of the Act to live in a hamlet within 3 miles (4.8 km) from their land rather than on the land itself.[35] This allowed the Doukhobors to establish a communal lifestyle similar to that of the Hutterites. Also, by passing Section 21 of the Dominion Military Act in late 1898, the Canadian Government exempted the Doukhobors from military service.[35]

The land for the Doukhobor immigrants, in total 773,400 acres (3,130 km²) within what was to soon become the Province of [[Saskatchewan], came in three block settlement areas or "reserves", and an annex:[36]

• The North Colony, also known as the "Thunder Hill Colony" or "Swan River Colony" in the Pelly and Arran districts of Saskatchewan became home to 2,400 Doukhobors from Tiflis Governorate, who established 20 villages on 69,000 acres (280 km²) of the land grant.
• The South Colony, also known as the "Whitesand Colony" or "Yorkton Colony" in the Canora, Veregin and Kamsack districts of Saskatchewan. 3,500 Doukhobors from Tiflis Governorate, Elisabethpol Governorate, and Kars Oblast settled there in 30 villages on 215,010 acres (870.1 km²) of land grant.
• The Good Spirit Lake Annex in the Buchanan district of Saskatchewan received 1,000 Doukhobors from Elisabethpol Governorate and Kars Oblast, Russia, settled there in eight villages on 168,930 acres (683.6 km²) of land grant. The annex was along the Good Spirit River, which flows into Good Spirit Lake (previously known as Devil's Lake).
• The Saskatchewan Colony, also known as the "Rosthern Colony",[35] "Prince Albert Colony" and "Duck Lake Colony" was located along North Saskatchewan River in the Langham and Blaine Lake districts of Saskatchewan, north-west of Saskatoon. 1,500 Doukhobors from Kars Oblast settled there in 13 villages on 324,800 acres (1,314 km²) of land grant.

North and South Colonies, and Good Spirit Lake Annex, were located around Yorkton near the modern-day border with Manitoba; the Saskatchewan (Rosthern) Colony was located north-west of Saskatoon, a significant distance from the other three reserves.

In 1899, all four reserves formed part of the Northwest Territories: Saskatchewan (Rosthern) Colony in the territories' provisional District of Saskatchewan. North Reserve straddled the boundary of Saskatchewan and Assiniboia districts, and the other reserves were entirely in Assiniboia. After the establishment of the Province of Saskatchewan in 1905, all reserves were located within that province.

Doukhobor women pulling a plow, Thunder Hill Colony, Manitoba

Verigin persuaded his followers to free their animals, and pull their wagons and plows themselves. On the lands granted to them in the prairies, the settlers established Russian-style villages, some of which received Russian names after settlers' home villages in Transcaucasia; for example Spasovka, Large and Small Gorelovka, and Slavianka; while others gained more abstract "spiritual" names not common in Russia, such as Uspeniye (Dormition), Terpeniye (Patience), Bogomdannoye (Given by God), and Osvobozhdeniye (Liberation).[36] The settlers found Saskatchewan winters much harsher than those in Transcaucasia, and expressed disappointment the climate was not as suitable for growing fruits and vegetables. Women greatly outnumbered the men; many women worked on the farms tilling the land while many men took non-farm jobs, especially in railway construction.[35] The earliest arrivals came from three backgrounds, had varying commitments to communal life, and lacked leadership. Verigin arrived in December 1902, was recognized as the leader, and reimposed communalism and self-sufficiency. The railway arrived in 1904 and hopes of isolation from Canadian society ended.[37][38]

Canadians, politicians, and the media were deeply suspicious of the Doukhobors. Their communal lifestyle seemed suspicious, their refusal to send children to school was considered deeply troubling, while pacifism caused anger during the First World War. The Doukhobor faction known as Sons of Freedom conducted nude marches and carried out night-time arson attacks, which was considered unacceptable and offensive.[39] Canadian magazines showed strong curiosity, giving special attention to women's bodies and clothing. Magazines and newspapers carried stories and photographs of Doukhobor women engaging in hard farm labor, doing "women's work", wearing traditional ethnic dress, and in partial or total states of undress.[40] Doukhobors received financial help from Quakers. Clifford Sifton, the Minister of the Interior, wanted the Doukhobors in Canada; he arranged financial subsidies to allow them to migrate.[41]

Due to the community's aversion to private ownership of land, Verigin had the land registered in the name of the community. By 1906, the Canadian Government's new Minister of the Interior Frank Oliver started requiring the registration of land in the name of individual owners. Many Doukhobors refused to comply, resulting in 1907 in the reverting of more than a third (258,880 acres (1,047.7 km²)) of Doukhobor lands back to the Crown. The loss of legal title to their land became a major grievance.

Ten years after the Russian conscription crisis, another political issue arose because the Doukhobors would have to become naturalized British citizens and to swear an Oath of Allegiance to the Crown—something that had always been against their principles.[42]

The issue resulted in a three-way split of the Doukhobor community in Canada:[11]

• The edinolichniki (Independents), who in 1907 comprised 10% of the Canadian Doukhobors, maintained their religion but abandoned communal ownership of land and rejected hereditary leadership and communal living as non-essential to it.
• The largest group, the Community Doukhobors, sometimes called "orthodox Doukhobors" continued to be loyal to their spiritual leader Peter V. Verigin. They formed the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (CCUB), which reformed in 1939 as the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ (USCC).[43]
• The more radical Sons of Freedom group (originally Svobodniki (sovereign people), who were called "Freedomites" by the press, emerged in 1903; they embraced Verigin's writings in such a zealous manner he banned them from his community. Reporters often conflated them with law-abiding Doukhobors and focused on their sensational behaviors.

Of these groupings, the Independents integrated the most readily into Canadian capitalist society. They had no problem with registering their land groups and largely remained in Saskatchewan. In 1939, they definitively rejected the authority of Peter Verigin's great-grandson John J. Verigin.

In 1908, to remove his followers from the corrupting influence of non-Doukhobors and edinolichniki (individual owners) Doukhobors, and to find better conditions for agriculture, Verigin bought large tracts of land in south-eastern British Columbia. His first purchase was around Grand Forks near the US border. He later acquired large tracts of land further east in the Slocan Valley around Castlegar. Between 1908 and 1912, about 8,000 people moved from Saskatchewan to these British Columbia lands to continue their communal way of living.[36] In the milder climate of British Columbia, the settlers were able to plant fruit trees and within a few years became renowned orchardists and producers of fruit preserves. As the Community Doukhobors left Saskatchewan, the reserves there were closed by 1918.

Verigin Memorial

On October 29, 1924, Peter V. Verigin was killed in a bomb explosion on a scheduled passenger train en route to British Columbia. The government had initially stated the bombing was perpetrated by people within the Doukhobor community, although no arrests were made because of the Doukhobors' customary refusal to cooperate with Canadian authorities due to fear of intersect violence. It is still unknown who was responsible for the bombing. While the Doukhobors were initially welcomed by the Canadian government, this assassination, as well as Doukhobors' beliefs regarding communal living, their intolerance for schooling, and other beliefs considered offensive or unacceptable, created a decades-long mistrust between government authorities and Doukhobors.[44]

Peter V. Verigin's son Peter P. Verigin, who arrived from the Soviet Union in 1928, succeeded his father as leader of the Community Doukhobors. He became known as Peter the Purger and worked to smooth relations between the Community Doukhobors and wider Canadian society. The governments in Ottawa and the western provinces concluded he was the closet leader of the Sons of Freedom and was perhaps a dangerous Bolshevik. The governments decided to deport him, and use the justice system to impose conformity to Canadian values on the Doukhobors, and force them to abide by Canadian law and repudiate unacceptable practices. With a legal defence managed by Peter Makaroff, the deportation effort failed in 1933.[45] The Sons of Freedom repudiated Verigin's policies as ungodly and assimilationist, and escalated their protests. The Sons of Freedom burnt Community Doukhobors' property and organized more nude parades. In 1932, the Parliament of Canada responded by criminalizing public nudity. Over 300 radical Doukhobor men and women were arrested for this offence, which typically carried a three-year prison sentence.[35]

The Sons of Freedom used nudism and arson as visible methods of protest.[46] They protested against materialism, the land seizure by the government, compulsory education in government schools, and Verigin's assassination. This led to many confrontations with the Canadian government and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which continued into the 1970s. Nudism was first used after the Doukhobors' arrival in Canada.[47] They used violence to fight modernity, and destroyed threshing machines and other signs of modernity. The group conducted night-time arson attacks on schools built by the Doukhobor commune and Verigin's house.[48]

During 1947 and 1948, Sullivan's Royal Commission investigated acts of arson and bombing attacks in British Columbia and recommended a number of measures intended to integrate the Doukhobors into Canadian society, notably through the education of their children in public schools. Around that time, the provincial government entered into direct negotiations with the Freedomite leadership. W. A. C. Bennett's Social Credit government, which came to power in 1952, took a harder stance against the "Doukhobor problem." In 1953, 174 children of the Sons of Freedom were forcibly interned by the government agents in a residential school in New Denver, British Columbia. Abuse of the interned children was later alleged.[49][50]

In less than than fifty years, the Sons of Freedom committed 1,112 separate acts of violence and arson, costing over $20 million in damages; these acts include bombing and arson attacks on public schools, bombings of Canadian railway bridges and tracks,[51] the bombing of a courthouse at Nelson,[52] and the destruction of a power transmission tower servicing East Kootenay district resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Many of the independent and community Doukhobors believed the Sons of Freedom's arson and bombings violated the Doukhobor central principle of nonviolence, and that they did not deserve to be called Doukhobors.[53]

After the departure of the more zealous and non-compromising Doukhobors and many community leaders to Canada at the close of the Elisabethpol Governorate in the Caucasus Viceroyalty (now Azerbaijan); the former Doukhobor villages were now mostly populated by Baptists. Elsewhere, some Doukhobors joined nearby Spiritual Christian groups.[22]

Those who remained Doukhobors were required to submit to the state. Few protested against military service: for example, out of 837 Russian court-martial cases against conscientious objectors recorded between the beginning of World War I and April 1, 1917, merely 16 had Doukhobor defendants—and none of those hailed from the Transcaucasian provinces.[22] During 1921 to 1923, Verigin's son, Peter P. Verigin, arranged the resettlement of 4000 Doukhobors from the Ninotsminda (Bogdanovka) district in south Georgia into Rostov Oblast in southern Russia and another 500 into Zaporizhzhia Oblast in Ukraine.[24][54]

The Soviet reforms greatly affected the life of the Doukhobors both in their old villages in Georgia and in the new settlement areas in the Russian South and Ukraine. The state anti-religious campaigns resulted in the suppression of Doukhobor religious tradition, and the loss of books and archival records. A number of religious leaders were arrested or exiled; for example, 18 people were exiled from Gorelovka alone in 1930.[24] On the other hand, Communists' imposition of collective farming did not go against the grain of the Doukhobor way of life. The industrious Doukhobors made their collective farms prosperous, often specializing in cheesemaking.[24]

Of the Doukhobor communities in the USSR, those in South Georgia were the most sheltered from the outside influence because of the sheer geographic isolation in the mountainous terrain, their location near the international border, and concomitant travel restrictions for outsiders.[24]

In 2001 an estimated 20,000–40,000 people of Doukhobor heritage lived in Canada, some 3,800 of them claiming "Doukhobor" as their religious affiliation. Perhaps another 30,000 of Doukhobor heritage live in Russia and neighboring countries. In 2011 there were 2,290 persons in Canada who identified their religious affiliation as "Doukhobor". In Russia there were some only 50 persons by the mid-2000s.

CCUB, the Orthodox Doukhobors organization or Community Doukhobors, was succeeded by the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ, formed by Peter P. Verigin (Peter V. Verigin's son) in 1938. The largest and most active formal Doukhobor organization, it is headquartered in Grand Forks, British Columbia.[57]

During the Canada 2011 Census,[58] 2,290 persons in Canada (of which, 1,860 in British Columbia, 200 in Alberta, 185 in Saskatchewan, and 25 in Ontario) identified their religious affiliation as "Doukhobor." As the age distribution shows, the proportion of older people among these self-identified Doukhobors is higher than among the general population:

E.g., 28% of the self-identified Doukhobors in 2001 were over 65 (i.e., born before 1936), as compared to 12% of the entire population of Canadian respondents. The aging of the denomination is accompanied by the shrinking of its size, starting in the 1960s:[58][59]

The number of Canadians sharing Doukhobor heritage is much higher than the number of those who actually consider themselves members of this religion. Doukhobor researchers made estimates from "over 20,000" people "from [Doukhobor] stock" in Canada[59] to over 40,000 Doukhobors by "a wider definition of religion, ethnicity, way of life, and social movement."[60]

Canadian Doukhobors no longer live communally. Doukhobors do not practice baptism. They reject several items considered orthodox among Christian churches, including church organization and liturgy, the inspiration of the scriptures, the literal interpretation of resurrection, the literal interpretation of the Trinity, and the literal interpretation of heaven and hell. Some avoid the use of alcohol, tobacco, and animal products for food, and eschew involvement in partisan politics. Doukhobors believe in the goodness of man and reject the idea of original sin.

Peter Kalmykov's house in Gorelovka, Georgia

Since the late 1980s, many of the Doukhobors of Georgia started emigrating to Russia. Various groups moved to Tula Oblast, Rostov Oblast, Stavropol Krai, and elsewhere. After the 1991 independence of Georgia, many villages with Russian names received Georgian names: for example, Bogdanovka became Ninotsminda, Troitskoe became Sameba, etc. According to various estimates, in Ninotsminda District, the Doukhobor population fell from around 4000 in 1979 to 3,000–3,500 in 1989 and not much more than 700 in 2006. In the Dmanisi district, from around 700 Doukhobors living there in 1979, no more than 50 seem to remain by the mid-2000s. Those who do remain are mostly older people, since it is the younger generation who found it easier to relocate to Russia. The Doukhobor community of Gorelovka (in Ninotsminda District), the former "capital" of the Kalmykov family, is thought to be the best preserved in all post-Soviet countries.[24]

In 1802 the Doukhobors, and other spiritual Christian tribes, were encouraged to migrate to the Molochna River region, around Melitopol near Ukraine's Sea of Azov coast, within the Pale of Settlement neighboring settlements of anabaptists from Germany.[17][69] Over the next 10–20 years, the Doukhobors, and others, speaking a variety of mostly Southern Russian dialects arrived to the Molochna from several provinces located, primarily, in what is today eastern Ukraine and south-central Russia.[70] In the settlers' villages an opportunity thus arose for the formation of a certain dialect koiné, based on Southern Russian and Eastern Ukrainian dialects.[5][71]

Starting in 1841, the Doukhobors, and others, were resettled from southern Ukraine to Transcaucasia, where they founded a number of villages surrounded by mostly non-Russian speaking neighbors (primarily Azerbaijanis in Elisabethpol Governorate, Armenians[72] in Tiflis Governorate, and likely a mix of both in the later (post-1878) settlements in Kars Oblast). These conditions allowed the dialect to develop in comparative isolation from the "mainstream" Russian.[5]

With the migration of some 7,500 Doukhbors from Transcaucasia to Saskatchewan in 1899, and some smaller latecomer groups (both from Transcaucasia and from places of exile in Siberia and elsewhere), the dialect spoken in the Doukhobor villages of Transcaucasia was brought to the plains of Canada. From that point on it experienced influence from the English language of Canada and, during the years of Doukhobor stay in Saskatchewan, the speech of Doukhobor's Ukrainian neighbors.[5][73][74]

A split in the Doukhobor community resulted in a large number of Doukhobors moving from Saskatchewan to south-eastern British Columbia around 1910. Those who moved the so-called "Community Doukhobors" – followers of Peter Verigin's Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood – continued living a communal lifestyle for several more decades, and had a better chance to preserve the Russian language than the "Independent Doukhobors", who stayed in Saskatchewan as individual farmers.[5]

By the 1970s, as most Russia-born members of the community died, English became the first language of the great majority of Canadian Doukhobors.[75] Their English speech is not noticeably different from that of other English-speaking Canadians of their provinces. Russian still remains in use, at least for religious use among those who do practice the Doukhobor religion.[5]

Research into the Russian spoken by Canada's Doukhobors has not been extensive. However, a number of articles, mostly published in the 1960s and 1970s, noted a variety of features in Doukhobors' Russian speech that were indeed characteristic of Southern, and in some cases Central Russian dialects, e.g. use of the Southern [h] where Standard Russian has [g].[71][76]

Features characteristic of a number of locales in the East Slavic language space were noted as well, reflecting perhaps the heterogeneous origin of the Doukhobors' settlements in Molochna River after 1800, e.g., similarly to Belarusians, Doukhobor speakers do not palatalize [r] in "редко" (redko, 'seldom'). Remarkable was the dropping of the final -t in the 3rd person singular form of verbs. This can be considered a Ukrainian feature, and it is also attested in some Russian dialects spoken in Southern Ukraine (e.g., Nikolaev, not too far from the Doukhobors' old homeland on the Molochna). As with other immigrant groups, the Russian speech of the Doukhobors uses English loanwords for some concepts that they had not encountered until moving to Canada.[77][76]

• Doukhobors (1970). Collective creation at Theatre Passe Muraille.

• Marsden, Philip (1998), The Spirit Wrestlers: A Russian Odyssey, HarperCollins.
• Tarasoff, Koozma J (2002), Spirit Wrestlers: Doukhobor Pioneers' Strategies for Living, Legas.
• Woodcock, George; Avakumovic, Ivan (1977), The Doukhobors, Carleton University Institute of Canadian Studies, McClelland & Stewart.

• Reynolds, Malvina (1962), "Do As the Doukhobors Do", The Best of Broadside 1962–88, US (originally The Doukhobor Do) is about the Doukhobor nude protests. The song was recorded by Pete Seeger.
• In the bonus track "Ferdinand the Imposter" on the 2000 re-issue of Music from Big Pink by the Canadian roots-rock group The Band, the title character "claimed he was a Doukhobor" after being arrested.[80] The implication in the lyrics is that Ferdinand may have been apprehended for some public display of nudity in Baltimore, Maryland. He attempted to escape punishment by stating he came from the Doukhobors of Canada. Unfortunately for Ferdinand, the American officers were unfamiliar with the group and were unmoved by Ferdinand's plea.[81]

• Woodcock, George (1976), The Doukhobors (film), CBC/NFB. Two parts: The Living Book and Toil and Peaceful Life.[82]