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INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK;
BRILLIANT: A NEW PLACE FOR A WAY OF LIFE

Story by: Ernie Verigin & Natalie Lucas
Illustrations by: Natalie Lucas

The Doukhobors originated in Russia over three hundred years ago during the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century. The first Doukhobors were simple, illiterate peasants. The name ‘Doukhobor’ or ‘Doukhobortsi’ means ‘Spirit Wrestler” and was given in anger as a derogatory label in 1785 by the Ekaterinoslav Archbishop Ambrosius Serebrennikov of the Russian Orthodox Church. He claimed the Doukhobors wrestled against the Holy Spirit and should be shamed and classed as heretics. Doukhobors adopted the name saying that they wrestle with and for the Spirit of God against all injustices, and in struggle for a better life they would use only the spiritual power of Love.

The Doukhobors are pacifists. They regard each human being to be a living temple wherein dwells the Sprit of God. This is why the Doukhobors believe it is wrong to kill. The Doukhobors rejected the Russian Orthodox Church, which was the state church of Russia, and refused military service. As a result, the Doukhobors endured centuries of persecution by church and state, which only strengthened their faith. During their exile in Transcaucasia, the Doukhobors prospered under the outstanding leadership of Lukeria Kalmikova. Lukeria prepared Peter Vasilyevitch Verigin (peter the Lordly) to lead the Doukhobors after she died. Inspired by the high ideals and dynamic leadership of Peter Lordly Verigin, the Doukhobors made a decisive stand against militarism and all forms of violence. On June 29, 1895, in three central areas of the Caucasus Mountains, the Doukhobors burned all of their weapons as a symbolic act and, from that day forward, refused to take human life for any reason.

For their refusal to bear arms and serve in the military, many Doukhobors were exiled to remote, barren regions of Georgia or Siberia, and families were split up. This was a time of great hardship. During a three year period nearly one thousand Doukhobors did not survive the harsh conditions under which the Tsar forced them to live. With the help of the famous writer and humanitarian, Leo N. Tolstoy, and his colleagues, the Society of Friends (Quakers) and others, the Doukhobors were allowed to move to a new country Canada.

In 1899, seven thousand five hundred Doukhobors immigrated to Canada and settled in the region that today is known as Saskatchewan. They were joined by several hundred more Doukhobors who were released from their Siberian exile in 1905. In the early years of life in Canada all immigrants, including the Doukhobors, needed to find employment in order to earn money to live. The majority of men worked away from home on the construction of the railway through the prairies. While the men worked on the railway, the women, children and elders were left to construct the villages and do all of the work at home. The Doukhobors had no horse or oxen and in order to plough the virgin land for planting their first gardens, the women pulled plough guided by older men. The women voluntarily hitched themselves to the ploughs – fourteen pairs to a plow.

During the first few years on the prairies the Doukhobors constructed 61 villages. In each village the land was farmed in common, and the Doukhobors tried to live according to their spiritual principles. In 1906, the Canadian government required each Doukhobor family to sign for its own 160 acres and swear allegiance to the British Crown. Otherwise, the land would be confiscated. Adhering to their basic principles of not swearing oaths to any state and rejecting the concept of private land ownership, the majority of the Doukhobors decided to leave their cultivated lands in Saskatchewan and move to British Columbia. In B.C. they bought land collectively, and thus, they did not have to swear an Oath of Allegiance.

Between 1908 and 1915 approximately six thousand Doukhobors relocated to the Kootenay and Boundary region of Southeastern British Columbia. Land was purchased in the following areas: 3,649 acres in Brilliant and Ootischenia, 1,092 acres in Glade, 2,465 acres in Pass Creek, 927 acres in Champion Creek, 1,320 acres in Krestova, 837 acres in the Slocan Valley, 321 acres in Shoreacres, and near Grand Forks, 4,182 acres in Fruktova, and 527 acres in North Fork named Cederovoye.

Under the exceptional guidance of Peter Lordly Verigin and his slogan of “Toil and Peaceful Life”, the Doukhobors established a communal way of life know as the Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood Ltd. (CCUB). This communal enterprise, the largest of its kind ever to be attempted in North America, spanned the three western provinces, for the interior of B.C. across the Prairies to Manitoba. The Doukhobors built sawmills, flour mills, brick and jam factories, grain elevators, a wooden pipe factory, roads, and bridges, and irrigation systems; in addition they cultivated crops, gardens and orchards. A total of 90 communal villages flourished at the height of the CCUB era.

A typical Doukhobor selo (village) consisted of two double-story buildings and a U – shaped annex. Behind the annex stood a large barn for horses and a cow. Next to the barn was the blacksmith shop, and quite often one blacksmith shop served the needs of the two to three neighbouring villages. Behind the barn was a banya or steam bathhouse with and adjoining laundry room. On the other side of the barn stood a woodshed large enough to store sufficient wood year round for the entire selo.

Brilliant: A New Place For A Way of Life is a children’s historical novel depicting life in one Doukhobor communal village circa 1914 within the Lordly era of 1908 to 1924. Although the main characters in the story are fictional, their experiences are authentic. Many of the characters are named after family members dear to us and some are named after other people who have shared their childhood experiences of growing up in this pioneer era. The family surname “Koochin” was selected because the Koochins are an authentic family that lived in the village portrayed in this story. Please make reference to the glossary that explains the terms that appear in bold print throughout the story.

The following is a few pages from the story:

In a land of mountains and valleys, creeks and rivers, tall trees and open meadows, not to long ago, lived a boy named Petya Koochin. His home was a large building with many bedrooms next to another building with many more bedrooms. This was home to 84 other people including his parents. Prokofi and Anyoota, two sisters Masha and Varyoosha, a brother Vasya, and his grandparents, Alyosha and Polya.

They had not always lived here. When Petya was little, he lived in Petrovka, a small village on the vast Canadian prairie. But in the Spring of 1910, when Petya was just four years old, he was told he had to leave his home and travel hundreds of miles west to a place called the Kootenays.

“They want us to promise something we don’t believe is right,” Petya’s father told his family, “and if we don’t, they will take our land. So I say, let them take it.”

Dedooshka agreed “We have made this our home and we can do it again in British Columbia.” So they loaded up their wagon, and together with other families and their wagons, set off across the wide prairie towards the setting sun, a place Petya heard his Babooshka call Brilliant.

On their arrival, even though Petya was very young, he remembers how his father and other men had to clear this beautiful green land of timber. They had very few horses and no machines so their tools consisted of saws, axes, picks, and shovels. They dug up the roots and pulled the trees over and out, leaving no stump in the ground. This was extremely hard work. To small to use these tools, Petya, Vasya and Masha helped collect the ferns and branches into piles. At the sawmills the Doukhobors built, the trees were cut into lumber which was then used to build villages, factories, buildings, furniture and wagons. Nothing was wasted. Petya also remembers how he, his mother, his brother and sister, together with other women and children, helped plant orchards of fruit trees, garden plots of vegetables, and fields of wheat, rye, flax, lentils, millet and other grains.

After supper Petya’s mother and Masha clean up and sweep the kitchen and dining room. Petya’s father has already gone to the barn to feed the horses. Petya, Vasya and other children play a quick game of hide and go seek. Babooshka and Dedooshaka join other on the front proch to sing. Varyoosha likes to sit on her grandmother’s lap and join in the singing. She doesn’t know the words but pretends she does.

The singing stops and Petya hears his grandfather’s voice begin to tell a story. Petya stops his playing and runs over to sit next to his grandfather. He never tires of hearing Dedooshka’s stories of when he was a boy in Russia, of how they burned all of their weapons, of the cruelty and beatings they endured afterward, and of the courageous voyage across an endless ocean to Canada. Soon Varyoosha begins to rub her eyes and cuddle her doll, and her grandmother knows it is her bedtime.

“Tselooy Dedooshkoo ee piedyom spat,” Baba says to her. Varyoosha gives her grandfather a hug and kiss goodnight, takes her babooshka by the hand, and goes quietly to be tucked in. Petya and Vasya get to hear another story and then they too head for the banya to wash up for bed. Their feet are especially dusty and dirty from being barefoot all day. Tomorrow is another day of getting up early and getting ready for work. The day has come to an end and everyone is tired. Before climbing into bed, Petya and Vasya each recite a psalm for Babooshka Polya, and she rewards them with on of her all-embracing hugs. With Varyoosha’s soft little snores at his ear, and the nearby murmuring of others reciting their psalms, Petya falls asleep, blanketed by the darkness of night and embraced by the star-filled sky.

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