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 then we’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 revolution too,” 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 again take 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 Dukhobors
Up in the Rockies: