Negotiated Memory: Doukhobor Autobiographical Discourse (review)

In the winter and spring of 1899, the largest mass immigration in Canadian history brought a group of some 7,500 Doukhobors from the Russian Caucasus to the Canadian prairies where, at the invitation of the Canadian government, they settled as collective homesteaders in a newfound freedom from the persecution they had suffered at the hands of church and state authorities for their pacifist and other non-orthodox beliefs. A major blow against the sect had come with an intensified enforcement of the law requiring its members to swear an oath of allegiance to Tsar Alexander III and perform compulsory military service. In 1895 the Doukhobors (literally 'spirit-wrestlers') responded by burning all the weapons in their possession in a mass demonstration, which in turn led to increased persecution - including police surveillance, incarceration, and physical torture.

Their emigration to Canada was supported both morally and financially by none other than Leo Tolstoy, who saw in their manifest pacifism and simple Christian approach to life a practical embodiment of his own ideals.

That their future was indeed assured may be seen in the swelling of their numbers in Canada to forty thousand strong today. Their course of development over the intervening hundred years and more, however, has by no means been smooth and without challenge. By the time their leader, Peter V. Verigin, was released from Siberian exile and allowed to join his flock in Canada in 1902, the Doukhobors were already experiencing conflict - not only with the Canadian authorities but also among themselves.

In 1902 a group of zealots, deciding that they should live free of any constraint whatsoever, turned their animals loose and began a trek to an unknown destination, believing that they would find more ideal living conditions somewhere else. They were persuaded to abandon their plans by the newly arrived leader, returning to the colony under RCMP escort. A few years later, the Canadian government reneged on its earlier policy of allowing the Doukhobors collective land ownership and forced them to register their homesteads individually and swear an oath of allegiance to the King - a requirement they had fled their homeland to avoid. These changes prompted Verigin to seek out new prospects in central British Columbia, where land could be purchased privately without an oath. While the majority of Doukhobors followed him west to retain their communal lifestyle, a number of sect members (known as 'Independents') decided to register as individual farmers, and even discovered an alternative to taking the oath of allegiance.

These were only the first of many problems the Doukhobors experienced during the twentieth century in overcoming both internal divisions and external barriers as they adapted to Canadian society. Their century-long quest for survival in unfamiliar surroundings - a story of persistent faith in time-honoured ideals coupled with a resilient flexibility of the human spirit - has today resulted in a relatively stable balance between preserving historical roots, traditions, and religious beliefs and a working accommodation (if not full assimilation) with the broader English-Canadian society around them.

It is only relatively recently, however, that the Doukhobors have been more than cursorily studied by professional historians, anthropologists, and other scholars in the humanities on either side of the Atlantic. One facilitating factor has been the vastly greater access over the past decade to Russian archival sources pertinent to the sect and their emigration. Dr Rak's latest book is unquestionably one of the best examples of these studies.

Drawing upon oral interviews, court documents, government reports, prison diaries, media accounts, and personal narratives, Dr Rak demonstrates the Doukhobors' own use of both classic and alternative forms of autobiography to communicate their thoughts on communal living, vegetarianism, activism, and spiritual life - not only for the benefit of the outside world but with a view to passing on their traditions to successive generations of their own.

Her study is particularly welcome in that it addresses significant issues - of identity, and of their past and their future as individuals and as a group - raised and responded...