Doukhobors

Doukhobors: see Dukhobors.

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Doukhobors

 or Dukhobors

(Russian: “Spirit Wrestler”) Member of a Russian peasant religious sect. Its members, most of whom originally lived in southern Russia, objected to the liturgical reforms (1652) of Patriarch Nikon and Russia's Westernization under Peter I. They had no priests or sacraments, and their egalitarian and pacifist beliefs provoked sporadic persecution from 1773 on. Leo Tolstoy won them the right to emigrate, and by 1899 7,500 had left for western Canada. In the early 20th century they clashed repeatedly with the Canadian government over noncompliance with land, tax, and education laws. The removal of Doukhobor children from their parents 1953–59 prompted legal action to obtain compensation in the late 1990s.