 |
Persecution of Doukhobors in South Russia, 1797
by
Joseph S. Elkinton
At the turn of the 18th
century, the Doukhobors were subjected to bitter persecution by church and
state. On account of their faith, members of the sect were harassed,
extorted, imprisoned, tortured, exiled and executed in barbarous ways. The
following excerpt, reproduced from Joseph S. Elkinton's book, "The
Doukhobors: Their History in Russia, Their Migration to Canada"
(Philadelphia: 1903) illustrates the persecutions suffered by Doukhobors in
South Russia in the 1790's.
...It
would be too distressing, as well as difficult, to narrate the many persecutions
of this people, yet their endurance and heroic fortitude under all the
adverse conditions which the Russian Government has imposed upon them for
more than a century, can best be appreciated by citing some particular
instances on record.
In
1797, Andrei Tolstoev and his wife were tried because of their adherence
to the Doukhobor principles, and after being punished with the knout, and
having their nostrils cut off (this inhuman punishment was frequently inflicted
on dissenters) they were sentenced to hard labour in the Government of
Irkutsk. This was about twenty years after the Cossacks of the Don, who
had first embraced the same faith, fell under the ban of the ecclesiastical
law as heretics.
The
renowned Senator Lopukhin (a Tsarist official sympathetic to the Doukhobors'
plight) wrote in 1806: "No sect has, up to this time, been so cruelly persecuted
as the Dukhobortsy, and this is certainly not because they are the
most harmful. They have been tortured in various ways, and whole families
have been sentenced to hard labour and confinement in the most cruel prisons.
Some were confined to cells in which one could not stand upright, nor lie
down at full length. This was boastingly told me by one of the officers
at a place where they were confined. Every procurator and general, on the
recommendation of the governor of a province, promulgated a ukase
for banishing whole families to various places for settlement or for hard
labour; and many families were thus expelled."
As
a sample of such an edict, issued at the end of the eighteenth century,
some thirty four Doukhobors, after prolonged sufferings during the investigation
made by their accusers, received their sentence in these words:
"As
the same prisoners remain inflexible to suggestion and persuasion, in order
to guard men from like superstition in the future, and also to retaliate
upon them for their renunciation of the Church, her sacraments and saints,
they shall receive, each man, thirty strokes of the knout, and each woman
forty strokes of the lash publicly. The Doukhobor Yakov Laktev's daughter,
Ekaterina, and Ivan Shalaev's daughter, Anastasia, as minors, are, in accordance
with the ukase of May 2nd, 1765, to be whipped with rods. After all these
criminals have been punished they are to be banished to Siberia, their
goods are to be confiscated and sold by public auction, and the money sent
to the treasury office in Perekop, to be entered to the account of public
revenue; the carrying out of which sentence is to devolve upon the police
court of Perekop."
The higher
criminal court, to which this case came up from the district court, altered
the sentence as follows: "the prisoners convicted of Dukhobortsy
heresy are to be put in irons without punishment, and sent to work perpetually
in the mines at Ekaterinburg, Siberia, excepting the younger children.
The bringing up of the children under ten years of age in the faith of
the Orthodox Church is to devolve upon the mayor of the town or of the
parish together with the priests."
Some
thirty one Doukhobors from another district were similarly sentenced in
1799, and in 1800 a ukase reads: "Everybody who shall be convicted
of belonging to the sect of Dukhobortsy shall be condemned to life-long
hard labour."
Tsar Alexander I,
however, was graciously disposed to restore them to their rights, after his
minister, Lophukin, had investigated the civil and other disabilities of this
sorely persecuted sect, and some of them came back from the places of
banishment. They conversed with Lopukhin on friendly terms, and he petitioned
the Emperor on their behalf for a place of settlement apart from the Orthodox
Russians. This was granted, with permission to emigrate to the "Milky Waters" in
the Melitopol district of the Tauride government (near the Crimea).
|
|
