In 1953, Russian doukhobors in Canada came to the attention of American intelligence. Yes, it is American intelligence, not Canadian, and not at all the ubiquitous CIA, but … the Office of Naval Intelligence of the US Navy. It’s weird, isn’t it? Let’s try to figure out what’s what.
The Doukhobors, whose teachings originated in the middle of the 18th century among the peasants of the Tambov and Yekaterinoslav provinces, were radically opposed to the official church and state policy in Russia. In 1895, in protest against conscription, the Doukhobors defiantly began to make bonfires out of weapons, mostly rifles. After that, the “sectarian” pacifists began to be oppressed, and as a result, at the end of the century before last, many of them packed up on the road. The farthest route was to Canada, where they settled in 1898-1899. The immigrants in the province of Saskatchewan were helped by Quaker Protestants who were close to them in their teachings, as well as the writer Leo Tolstoy, who spent the royalties for the novel “Resurrection” for these purposes.
In Canada, the Doukhobors lived in the same way as in Russia, mainly engaged in agriculture. Their spiritual leader was Pyotr Vasilyevich Verigin, who, in particular, ensured that the Doukhobors were released from military service.
But over time, relations between the state and the settlers became more complicated: the Canadian authorities set out to destroy the communal land ownership of the Doukhobors. The migrants who became individual farmers remained in Saskatchewan, while others went to the province of British Columbia and bought land there to organize a collective farm. But life didn’t improve in the new place either. The Doukhobors resisted when Canada demanded that their children attend local schools and that adults take the oath of office to the British crown. The answer was original: a protest march of naked men and women followed. Similar cases were multiplying. So, several women completely undressed in the courtroom and disrupted the meeting, the police barely managed to drape them somehow.
The radical group “Sons of Freedom” was formed within the Dukhobor community. The radicals not only rallied and marched naked, but also set fire to schools and their own (!) houses, and bombed bridges on railways. By the way, during the explosion of a train in 1924, Peter Verigin, the leader of the Doukhobors, died in a strange way. The case has not been solved to this day, perhaps it was an episode of a power struggle.
The report of a naval intelligence agent dated July 1, 1953 states that the wedding of one of the leaders of the community, Ivan (John) Verigin, the great-grandson of Peter Vasilyevich, took place the day before. The unimaginable was happening: “While thousands of Orthodox members of the sect celebrated the wedding with songs and feasts, the radical Sons of Freedom burned down ten houses with torches.”
It was a demonstration of the destruction of their own homes as a sign of disagreement with the actions of the local authorities. In the Canadian press, the Doukhobors were increasingly called “Russian fanatics,” and they were arrested and tried.
Many researchers of the history of this religious movement have long believed that the Canadian Doukhobors sought to return to Russia, which had managed to become socialist in their absence. In support of this hypothesis, words from a letter from members of the Doukhobor delegation who arrived in Soviet Russia in the summer of 1931 were cited.: “And now, for 33 years now, we have been living a full communist life in Canada and stubbornly building communism surrounded by capitalism. In view of all this, we ask you, dear Comrade. Stalin, allow us to enter the country.”
The quote ends at this point. For a long time, it was generally believed that Stalin simply refused the emigrants who wanted to join their native Russian birches.
But here’s what Russian writer and researcher Lev Simkin found out. He managed to find a book with the same letter in the USA and found there the ending of, as it turned out, a broken sentence. Here it is: “… allow us to enter a country where our fathers have already suffered for our common idea, in order to personally and directly talk with you and other comrades and jointly discuss urgent issues.”
That is, the Doukhobors asked for negotiations. About what? Lev Simkin discovered an article in the Russian newspaper Kanadsky Gudok, published in Saskatchewan, dated May 23, 1931. It tells about six delegates from British Columbia who left “to ask the Soviet government to give permission for the Doukhobors to leave Russia.”
Thus, the Doukhobors not only had no intention of returning, but, on the contrary, wanted to achieve the emigration of their co-religionists from the USSR. These sentiments intensified after, during collectivization, livestock and grain were taken from the remaining Doukhobors in Russia, property was requisitioned, the dissatisfied were evicted by their families to Siberia and Kazakhstan, and thrown into GULAG barracks. But the Doukhobor delegations failed to get help from the Soviet government in resettling their brethren overseas.
Doukhobors also remained a headache for Canadians: arson of their own property, strange nudism, conflicts with local authorities over land, children’s studies, etc. The police had enough trouble with them. But what does American intelligence have to do with it?
The year is 1953. The death of Stalin. The world is anxiously watching how events will develop in the USSR. The US authorities feared that possible democratization would lead to a new wave of immigrants to the country, including the Doukhobors (an example was nearby, in Canada). And it seemed dangerous to Americans: new immigrants would most likely bring with them the ideas and practices of Stalinist socialism and begin “stubbornly building communism surrounded by capitalism,” as the letter quoted said. In the mid-1950s, McCarthyism was rampant in the United States – communists were seen on every corner. So the special services were focused on searching for ideological enemies in their various forms.
But why were the Doukhobors being monitored by naval intelligence? Here we enter the realm of speculation, based on two declassified documents from the CIA archive. Perhaps, in that situation, the intelligence of the US Navy had stronger operational intelligence capabilities than the CIA. Simply put, informants were introduced into the Doukhobors’ environment or people indirectly connected with them (perhaps they were used in secret, through confidential conversations).
It was probably not so easy to receive regular information from the Doukhobor communities: about moods, plans, finances, the struggle for power and influence – this is exactly what can be found in the declassified documents. The naval intelligence officers shared this information with their colleagues from the CIA. In other words, it was a kind of interagency cooperation. However, this is just a hypothesis.
There was no influx of “builders of communism” in the guise of Doukhobors to either Canada or the United States. Ordinary Soviet collective farmers had no idea about visas, but about passports in general.…
The current descendants of the Doukhobors who came to Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries have fully integrated into local life, although they follow traditions and speak a somewhat archaic Russian language.