He participated in his share of injustice, including the oversight of propaganda efforts in support of the violent suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring. But within the upper ranks of the Communist Party, he was also waging a war to open up the Soviet Union, for example by allowing citizens to openly criticize the state. He frequently leveraged his connections to Brezhnev and other politburo members to prevent censors from banning articles in publications such as Novy Mir, the literary journal that first published Solzhenitsyn.
By 1972, Yakovlev had grown so disgusted with the increasingly power-hungry Soviet leadership that he published a long article criticizing the romanticization of the country’s pre-revolutionary past, one of the Communist Party’s most hypocritical policies. The stunt led to his demotion to ambassador and banishment to the Cold War backwater of Ottawa. He took over the Soviet embassy in July 1973.
But by the end of the 1970s, Yakovlev had again grown discouraged. His missives had gone unheeded, and Brezhnev had become an embarrassment — a sleeping-pill-addicted stroke victim who often drifted off during official appearances. Amid the resulting leadership vacuum, Moscow spent billions on the military and ignored the rest of the country, causing massive food shortages that required the expenditure of additional billions to import grain from the West.
Back home, Yakovlev’s brethren justified their tactics by insisting that the Russian people required autocratic rule. This line, still used by some to justify the Putin/Medvedev autocracy, holds that Russians have a strength of character that allows them to do remarkable things, such as single-handedly fighting off the “Nazi menace” in the Second World War. This line of thinking has an unfortunate corollary, however: the Russian strength of character also prevents the nation’s citizens from responsibly using the sorts of freedoms enjoyed in the West.
Yakovlev was one of the few in the Communist Party to reject such arguments. He thought Russia would only improve if the police state were lifted. But his hope waned still further when he learned that the Soviets were equipping silos in Eastern Europe with easily transportable nuclear missiles called SS-20s, each armed with three independently targetable warheads. Then, on Christmas Day 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan.
As the official representative of the Soviet Union in Canada, Yakovlev was forced to confront the West’s response to these moves. He’d grown accustomed to blaming America for the Cold War’s most provocative strategies, but his own country was now inching the world closer to nuclear war. He describes this dark period in his memoirs:
You make yourself out to be an active, smiling man, but in actuality you are being moved by some inner clockwork spring that is independent of your true state of mind. Life loses its creative source, moves ahead as if in automatic drive. Healthy curiosity about people and events disappears. More and more frequently, my head was filled with bitter thoughts that my life was already behind me, while my country more and more perceptibly was becoming petrified and rapidly was falling behind world development. And I could see no new day dawning.At around the same time, Yakovlev began hearing about an unusual community of Russian émigrés known as the Doukhobors. The group was receiving frequent mention in the media, thanks to the conflict with the Freedomites in British Columbia. It was then that the honorary chairman of the orthodox sect, John J. Verigin Sr., contacted him to request a meeting.
Even a nondescript town of strip malls and parking lots like Castlegar, home to the cultural centre of the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ (as the Doukhobors are formally known), improves when surrounded by mountain peaks and orchards, pastures and forest. The Doukhobors took a circuitous path to this inland paradise.
Details of the group’s earliest days are obscure because of the illiteracy of nearly all of its original members, but according to the scholars George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, the Doukhobor religion probably began as a response to Russian Orthodox teachings, taking root in rural Ukraine and then spreading to southern Russia. The first recorded use of the Doukhobor designation dates from 1785, when an Orthodox archbishop used the term, which translates loosely as “spirit wrestlers,” to indicate that the Doukhobors were fighting against the Holy Spirit. The sect soon reappropriated the name, taking it to mean that they were filled with the spirit of God as they wrestled their oppressors.
Comments (8 comments)
Peter H. Peters: To Editor:
I found this to be a most interesting article. I wonder what happened to the Doukhobor community that made the cultural transition to assimilation possible so swiftly. Is the former ambassador Yakovlev till alive and if so where is he today? Facinating!
Peter H. Peters
610-1712 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, MB May 12, 2008 08:36 EST
Ev Voykin: In my view, Mr. Shulgan has captured the very essence of faith most Doukhobors hold close to their hearts, and regardless of assimulation and drop in active members, there are thousands more of us who still maintain our beliefs, faith and heritage in our lives - regardless of where we may be living.
This is without question, one of the best articles I've read in decades on the Doukhobors - on the positive yet humble ways in which Doukhobors have impacted those throughout the world in our way of life, heritage and beliefs which we value so closely to our hearts.
In the last paragraph, Mr. Shulgan writes, "restored his faith in the benevolence of the Russian character". I know for me, your article 'reinforces in me, my neverending faith in the benevolence of my Doukhobor heritage'.
I remember when Mr. Yakovlev came to the Kootenays, and had the opportunity to meet him, along with my husband of two years, who is Mr. Voykin's nephew. It is wonderful to see this article on his trip and the impact it had on him - as in the family we all know what incredible hosts Peter and Lucy are.
June 01, 2008 00:12 EST
Laura: Very interesting article. The Doukhobor movement is still going on. Many of the Doukhobors and their descendents are participating in peace walks, communications, blogs and have a magazine,and web site which is assessible and read by the world population.
With the computer, every part of the world is assessible and maybe, someday, people will read and wake up to a better life and realize that toil and peaceful life is the answer. June 01, 2008 11:30 EST
John: This is very interesting. It might as well be interesting for the readers to eventually learn, (when the book is published) how a Canadian Doukhobor laid the foundation for the concept of multiculturalism and the eventual interculturalization that it is leading to in Canada.
Also, it was a Canadian Doukhobor who wrote the legal wording that is used to ban smoking in Canada.
As well, it was a Doukhobor who empowered the teaching of ethics to science students at UBC.
It was act of a BC Doukhobor that united the west and the east into the Canadian Peace Alliance.
It also was a Doukhobor who wrote a new, (more inspiring), anthem for Canada.
Yes, Doukhobors have enjoyed the pleasure of being instrumental in social engineering which is and will continue to help all Canadians, (through interculturalization) realize a new warless civilization.
I have fortune and pleasure of knowing when and how it was all done. In time, it will all be revealed.
June 03, 2008 23:52 EST
Stephan Samoyloff: Thanks for a very interesting article, with an interesting point of view. I and many of my friends benefited from the cultural exchanges with the Soviet Union you mentioned. Thanks especially for presenting the position of the majority of peaceful, law abiding Doukhobors, rather then painting us all with the radical brush of the minority as has been done in most other coverage. June 05, 2008 09:11 EST
V McNeil: Does anyone know if Yakovlev is still alive?
From this very brief article it seems that his views were slanted in the same direction as Tolstoy's.
It all comes down to the spirit of the person and their desire to share this spirituality with others. Spirituality and a spiritual community is so very difficult to attain and the Doukhabours at one time were successful with this. Of late their spirituality has dimmed and the finger pointed in part to asimilation in Canada. This justification is at odds when viewed in the context of other groups who's spirituality continues to thrive in Canada with assimilation.
True spirituality needs to be strengthened in the Douhabours in order to continue to catch the spirit of others like Yakovlev (and combat the Doukhabours declining numbers). June 07, 2008 10:54 EST
John Woodsworth: Ottawa, 20/6/08
As a Russian-English translator who has compiled, edited and/or translated a number of books and articles on the Doukhobors, I found Mr Shulgan's article most insightful. On my several visits to the Doukhobors, I was impressed with the considerable fluency many of them still have in Russian, even those of the third or fourth generation in Canada. This was particularly evident during a meeting with Tolstoy's great-great-grandson from Russia, Vladimir Il'ich Tolstoy, whose meeting with the Doukhobor executive (conducted entirely in Russian) I was able to attend. And the Doukhobors' philosophy and way of life have been all these years very much along the lines of Leo Tolstoy. See the book "Leo Tolstoy and the Canadian Doukhobors: an historic relationship" written by Andrew Donskov, the Director of the Slavic Research Group at the Univ. of Ottawa, with whom I have the privilege of working.
I might also mention that the community lifestyle, involving a close connection with the land, as Shulgan describes Yakovlev's discovery among the Canadian Doukhobors, is also reflected in another back-to-the-land movement popular in Russia today, thanks to nine books comprising the Ringing Cedars Series by Vladimir Megré. People are getting together to set up communities of their own 'family domains', where they are rediscovering an ages-old relationship of humanity to the land. The Series is now available in English translation - see http://www.ringingcedars.com - and I have heard of readers in the western world who are now following suit. In several talks and papers, I have taken note of the parallels between this movement and the Doukhobors, especially as related to the ideas they share in common with Tolstoy.
So the Canadian Doukhobors, at least those not completely absorbed into mainstream Canadian culture, may still be seen today as being on the cutting edge of a trend that will help many rise above dependence on oil, technology and a harmful exploitation of natural resources and rediscover an underlying humanity that finds satisfaction in living in harmony with nature instead of working against it.
June 20, 2008 19:18 EST
Patricia Khan: I met Koozma Tarasoff and his family and some of his friends in Ottawa and through him learnt about the Doukhobors. They have such strong spiritual values and a great sense of community.
One Thanksgiving, when I lived in Guyana,South America, I was asked to give a brief presentation on some aspect of Canadian life. I chose to talk about this wonderful group and it was of great interest to all present.
Koozma's book: The Spirit Wrestlers is a wonderful tribute to the Doukhobors. Check out his website for more information http://www.spirit-wrestlers.com/
Patricia Khan
Trinidad and Tobago
July 02, 2008 18:58 EST