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This Sons of Freedom Doukhobor delegation carried Doukhobors’ protest to the cabinet at Victoria in 1954.

‘< ‘Give our children back’ Doukhobor parents cry 3‘

a sages hpsscoke

Doukhobors
1e . 2,000
Doukt

are
hobors,
i as the Christian
and Brotherhood
Doukhobors

Reformed

a
Wot
D
ro

Reformed
Doukhobors dates back to 1950.

that their newly
chosen Stephen Soro-
ionary who

the war

called

ed person,

followers to reform.

implored them to
dynamiting and
irades in public. With
i of the provincial
governments, he
indreds of Free-
rison and obtained
10st of them that
the future, be
izens. On this
applied for

son,

ct

release were given their free-
dom.

up of Douk-

Ils itself the

iritual Com-

Mart axe

ism. In are like the
Freedomite group. But in lat-
s they have sent their

this, they
ter years
and have
from

school
themselves

children to
dissociated
the Sons of Freedom.

The third group is called
the Independents. These are,
in thea main, unattached Douk-

hobors.

The Reformed Doukhobors,
now claim they are the
only true Doukhobors, are op-
posed to sending their chil-
dren to public school on the
following grounds:

who

+ Our educational system
glorifies war.
+ Secular education will

lead to a “complete. detach-
ment of students from.way of
religion and Russian lan-

”

guage.

+ Our

life,

educational system
breeds social degeneracy, ju-
venile delinquency,’ exploita-
tion of man by man and a
materialistic conception of life.

*

was in the West
Kootenays recently, I ‘spoke
to many people, Doukhobors
and non-Doukhobors, about
the government policy of for-

When I

cibly taking Freedomite chil-
dren from their parents and

placing them in school, away
from their homes. The general
reaction of non-Doukhobors
was summed up this way: “We
send our children to school.
We have to obey the laws of
the country. Why should these
people be an exception?”

The people who voice these
opinions overlook three im-
portant facts:

@ We are dealing with some
2,000 ‘people whose- religious

convictions. place them in op-
position to our school system.

@ Every _ progressive-mind-
ed person must admit. that
there is a strong element of
truth in their criticism of our
educational system.

€ The Reformed Doukho-
bors want to leave Canada;
to take up frontier land, as
their people did nearly 60
years ago when they pioneered
in Northern Saskatchewan.

No civilised country can
find moral justification for the
act of forcibly’ separating chil-
dren from their parents. This is
especially true in the case of
the Doukhobors, who were
promised the right to live
according to their beliefs when
they first came to Canada at
the turn of the century.

It is no exaggeration to say

that the essence of Freedomite
philosophy is a form of utop-
ian, Christian socialism, of a
most primitive sort, as com-
pared with modern, scientific
socialism.

There have been many his-
tories of the Doukhobor peo-
ple in Canada, but. none has
started from the socialist view-
point, recognizing the Doukho-
bor experiment as dn experi-
ment in cooperative living.
When such a history is written,
it will be easier for the labor
movement to understand these
people and to grasp that so-
ciety has sinned against them
much more than they have
sinned against society.

*

When I was in the West
Kootenays last summer, I
visited Krestova, stronghold of
the Freedomite groups.

The roads are mere trails
and the homes are reminiscent
of shack towns in the depres-
sion. There are no stores, no
community centres, no post
office, no schools, no neon
lights and no industries.

The houses are small, made
of unpainted boards of split
logs,-in.some cases chinked
with clay. In every case, there
is an outside toilet.

cA visit to New Denver

On the lower level, the
~homes are grouped singly or
in clusters of two or three,
behind rough pole fences. Be-
side every home is a large
garden, worked mainly by the
women and children, because
the men go-a long way from
home to work, in order to bring
in cash money. Without irriga-
tion ,the soil is too poor to
support the seven or eight hun-
dred people who live there.

On the upper level, reached
by following the main road
that makes a circle through
Krestova from the highway be-
tween Nelson and Trail, the
houses are even more dilapi-
dated, and located closer to
each other, in larger groups.

Here you come across 4
structure that is house at one —
end and barn ~-at the other,
common in many parts of
Europe. Although these people
use a lot of dairy products and
eggs, because they are veget-
arians, I saw no chickens oF
cows.

When I asked what had hap-
pened to the communal homes
originally built by the Ortho-
dox Group, I was answered in
one word: ’’Fires.” ‘

I stopped at the home of one
woman: who had two children

-~ Continued on next page --

..., MAY 24, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE-~ “AGE 10