Word: verigin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...three years a small band of Doukhobors in Hilliers, on Vancouver Island, have struggled to establish a "Spiritual Community of Christ." It was started by Michael ("The Archangel") Verigin, who decided that other "Douks" were losing sight of original Doukhobor tenets and becoming worldly and materialistic. Unlike other British Columbia Doukhobors, the new community stressed the old precepts of non-violence and communal sharing of all property, including husbands & wives. Its ruling elders decreed that until the colony was economically self-sufficient, no children should be born to any member...
...hereditary leadership of the sect was bequeathed by a doting old woman to her lover, Peter Vasilivich Verigin, who had "the body of a Greek god, the face of a Tartar noble, and the pose of a martyred Christ." Verigin publicly insisted, "I am only one of the brothers, a humble slave of God. . . ." But to many Dukhobors he was the Kristos, to most he was the unquestioned dictator, and to the Russian Government he was a nuisance. Exiled to the province of Archangel, Verigin discovered at second hand the philosophy of Count...
Settling in Saskatchewan, far from Peter Verigin, the Dukhobors were baffled and confused, succumbed to faction, fanaticism, hallucination. With $30,000 from kind Philadelphia Quakers the Dukhobors bought horses, cows, tools-only to set free the animals and destroy the metal tools in a sudden burst of sympathy for their "little brothers" (the beasts) and "the men tormented in the mines." They even refused to kill grain-eating gophers, which they snared and then freed in other people's fields. Singing groups of Dukhobors often marched off into nowhere looking for the Promised Land...
...Peter Verigin rejoined his followers in Canada. Together Verigin and the Dukhobors conspired to preserve their ignorance, secrecy, gregariousness, in time achieved a mild communal prosperity in British Columbia and Saskatchewan. When Verigin was killed in an explosion in 1924, surly Dukhobors whispered that "the Government" had plotted his death. They set fire or blew up scores of schools, and 600 Dukhobors were imprisoned for refusing to send their children to school. More clothes were shed. The Dominion thought of putting the unassimilable Russians on a reservation, like an Indian tribe. The leadership succeeded upon Peter's son, Peter...