Doukhobors Celebrate Destruction of Guns in 1895

As 'de-Militarization and de-Natizification' is taking place in Ukraine, as the USA is struggling with gun violence, mass shootings and police brutality, and as Canada is proposing to ‘freeze…handguns’ and other safety measures, Canadian Doukhobors will celebrate the 127th anniversary of their ancestors burning their guns in Russia in 1895.

In Russia 127 years ago, pacifist Doukhobors burned all their guns once and for all. No weapons. No killing. For their protest they were severely punished. Many died. In 1898 they were given sanctuary in Canada and military exemption. About 8,300 came.

For over a century, Canadian Doukhobors have commemorated their 1895 burning of guns as a major annual holiday. This year ‘Peace Day’ will be held on Sunday, June 26th.

1895 Burning of Guns. Painting recreated by Michael M. Voykin, 1974.
On display in the Doukhobor Discovery Centre, Castlegar, British Columbia.

‘Peace Day’ gatherings, also known as 'Peter's Day' will take place in community halls in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. In Saskatoon, Saskatchewan at the Community Home, 525 Avenue I South, people will gather Sunday June 26th for a prayer service at 11 am, followed by a program and potluck. The Quakers, Tolstoy, the country they left and the country that saved them will be remembered. Facebook.com/DSSaskatoon, or contact elder Mae Popoff (email: maepopoff@sasktel.net). 

Canadian Doukhobors fully support the long overdue new law to ‘freeze’ guns, but recommend banning all weapons of mass destruction. They continue to promote a nonkilling peace as the way to the future of humankind. For them, war is madness. Money spent on wars should be turned into new institutions for the betterment of humanity. Demilitarization is the way for our future survival.

CBC podcast: '50 years after the Napalm Girl photo, what do you see?

"1973 Photo Contest, World Press Photo of the Year". By Nick Ut, Associated Press, 1972.

The madness of war as a criminal act was brought to my attention by the famous Vietnam war photo "The Terror of War", showing Phan Thi Kim Phuc running down a road near Trảng Bàng, Vietnam, after a napalm bomb was dropped on the village of Trảng Bàng by a plane of the Vietnam Air Force. The village was suspected by United States Army forces of being a Viet Cong stronghold. Kim Phúc survived by tearing off her burning clothes and running with her 2 brothers and cousins.

Kim Phuc Phan Thai, now lives in Ajax, Ontario, near Toronto. On June 22, 2022, she was interviewed on the 'Ontario Today CBC podcast: '50 years after the Napalm Girl photo, what do you see?' For me, it was a moving conversation about the power of this photograph on its 50th anniversary.

Napalm that nearly killed Kim was developed in 1942 in the USA as an 'incendiary weapon' to burn buildings, not people. Tears came to my eyes as I listened to Kim, a victim of war, who deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for revealing this horror of inhumanity. She spent 14 months in the hospital to regain her health from the terrible napalm fire she endured.

This 50-year-old image helps to educate us to work for a peaceful world. Kim says: 'Our responsibility is to make people know how horrible war is.’ The truth of the photo is painful, but important to see her today as mother, as grandmother, and as a survivor.

Posing with Kim on her left are Anne Chursinoff, Castlegar, and Lucy Tarasoff, Crescent Valley (right), who performed in the Friends in Unity and Krestova Ladies Kootenay Doukhobor women’s combined choir. Photo from 'Our Way Home Reunion ... Something's Happening Here', Purple Mountain Poetry blog by Linda Lee Crosfield, 10 July 2006.

BC Doukhobors met Kim in July 2006. She was a keynote speaker with Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, at the Our Way Home Peace Event and Reunion held at the Brilliant Culture Centre, Castlegar, British Columbia.

As we commemorate the 127th anniversary of the arms burning in 1895, let’s not forget the pain of countless wars in human history — and the urgent need to stop this mass murder from continuing and threatening our civilization. Wars must stop once and for all. As concerned citizens, we all need to add our energies to this sacred duty of saving ourselves and succeeding generations from the scourge of wars. NATO should cease, as should NORAD!

More

Historic 1895 Burning of Guns: descriptions, selections and translations, by Koozma J. Tarasoff with Andrei Conovaloff, June 24, 2009. Updated 28 April 2022.

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90 Years of Memories

On February 19, 2022, about 60 people and I celebrated my 90th birthday ONLINE!

My wife and our daughters arranged the event which featured prerecorded video messages, phone calls, and some sent an email or letter. Thank you all.

In early February my daughter Tamara and her husband John, and Kristina with her daughter Milena, decided to arrange a virtual party. They invited many people to submit short video messages at a website, or any way the guests would like. About 60 people participated resulting in a 1.5 hour video and more than a dozen emails, cards and letters.

Kristina wanted to create a photo album of my life, and we selected about 50 photos which became a slide show presentation of my '90 Years of Memories'.

See everything here:

• Videos submitted (1.5 hours) — Link to be added.
• Slide show of my life — Link to be added.
• Emails received

During the planning process, I began to reflect on my 90 years and listed these highlights of my life so far, a short version of my biography and 50 Years of Doukhobor Studies.

1. Born in 1932 in this farm house to parents and grandparents who came from Russian Doukhobor roots. Believed that hospitality, love and nonkilling are the way to a world without wars.
   
   
2. Met Tyrus R. Cobb world famous baseball pioneer. Invited for tryout in 1953 to Pittsburgh Pirates in California. Did not make it, but exercises that I learned from Lloyd Percival of CBC Sports College of the Air persist today 70 years later.
   
   
3. At the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, where I took my BA in Arts and Sciences in the 1950s, I produced 50 monthly journals of The Inquirer at my grandparent's attic next door, which led me to become a journalist, photographer, scholar, and peace activist.
   
   
4. After attending the World Festival of Youth and Students in 1957 in Moscow, this led me to make 12 additional trips to the Soviet Union and Russia as a bridge-building effort between the East and the West (1957, 1964, 1980, 1991, etc, ). The wisdom of getting to know the stranger persists today as one of key steps to help the people and the planet to survive.
   
   
5. In the early 1960s, at UBC in Vancouver, I was privileged to get my MA in Anthropology and Sociology, with my thesis on 'A Study of Russian Organizations in the Greater Vancouver Area' (PDF, 15 GB). The Cold War, I discovered, was the critical element in what brings people together and what splits them apart.
   
   
6. In 1964, as a Russian and English speaking grad of UBC, I was invited to the International Ethnological Congress in Moscow where I met anthropologists Margaret Mead and Sol Tax.
   
   
7. In 1980, as guest Doukhobor peacemaker and photo journalist, I reported on the Summer Olympics in Moscow as a Slavic representative for North and South America. What an awesome responsibility!
   
   
8. Over the past 60 years I have organized a number of scholarly ethnographic studies and exchanges across North America (including a 1990 3-month North American Ethnographic Expedition with Russian scholar Svetlana Inikova), the Soviet Union and Russia on my ancestors the Doukhobors and East-West understanding. Together with my work in the provincial and federal governments as social scientists, this led me to publish over 25 books and 50 articles; the gifting to the Saskatchewan Archives and BC Archives major collections of textual materials and photographs on Doukhobors, rural development, Native Indians, and ethnography; the creation of a Spirit Wrestlers website and blog with Arizona scholar Andrei Conovaloff.
   
   
9. In November 2007, I presented a paper on 'Tolstoy and the Doukhobors' at the First Leadership Forum in Hawaii where the Center for Global Nonkilling formed; and served as reporter and photographer for 13 Ottawa Peace Festivals.
   
   
10. In 1982 co-organized with Community Doukhobors, the First International Intergroup Symposium of Doukhobors, Molokans, Mennonites and Quakers, held in Castlegar, British Columbia, with many prominent people including the great grandson of Lev N. Tolstoy, a major world writer and proponent of nonkilling. The meeting endorsed a letter to the UN on disarmament and getting rid of wars.
    
    
11. With distinguished Doukhobor lawyer Peter G. Makaroff (the first non-Anglo-Saxon grad in Western Canada with a law degree in 1918), and participating Doukhobor, Quaker and Mennonite reps, in 1964 and 1965, I coordinated and helped organize four major peace manifestations in Western Canada urging the government to cease research and production of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, and work towards the survival of our human species.
    
    
12. Between 1996 and 1998, served as guest co-Curator with Dr. Robert Klymasz on 'The Doukhobors: Spirit Wrestlers' exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, commemorating the centenaries of the  Doukhobor destruction of weapons in 1895 in Russia and the January 1899 arrival of the first Doukhobors to Canada.
    
    
13. We all know that it takes a village to raise members of a family. My grandparents and parents along with my newly acquired families and offspring deserve praise for their support. Son Lev is professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland where he is modeling the last Ice Age and is searching the major parameters of climate change. Daughter Tamara, now retired as a museum professional, recently spent the last three years working in Nunavut as Project Manager, Wrecks HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site. Their spouses, Dorothee Bienzle is an accomplished researcher and doctor, and John Pinkerton is a retired international manager for Parks Canada. Their children Jaspar and Katya along with Tamara and John's offspring (Nicholas and Elena) are outstanding students, athletes and outdoors people like their parents. I always marvel at being so lucky to be part of their family circle. 
    
    
14. As well, I marvel at the challenge of keeping alive my 30-year marriage with Kristina Kristova, a pioneering journalist who once served for 24 years as anchor person with the Bulgarian National Television. Her daughter Milena is a music teacher in Ottawa, while son Orlin is in Sofia, Bulgaria, as a professional keyboard composer / musician. Kristina introduced me to her most fascinating Bulgarian community who have given me the title of 'Honourary Member' although I have not learned much Bulgarian language.
    
    
15. In the 90 years of my life, this family along with all the people that I have met around the world (in person, in books and in the media), I consider all of you remarkable and many are friends and wisdom people. Bolshoe spasibo! Thank you very much! You have taught me so much. I wish all of you to live at least to 90 with good health, joy, peace and happiness.
    
    
16. Personally, I look forward to many more years of productive life. In my work, I never got rich in money, but rich in ideas, in friendship, and in the vision of my ancestors for a peaceful world without wars.

Nonkilling Message at Global Colloquium

On June 28th, 2021, I was one of 13 people honored to address a 3-hour online international conference titled: ‘Creating an affirmative nonkilling world’. This was my presentation text, which you can watch me read on this video at time 2:24:00.

My presentation begins at time 02:24:00

Nonkilling Message at Global Colloqium June 28, 2021

Hello dear colleagues around the world in commemorating the birth anniversary of the Late Professor Glenn D. Paige — one of the wisdom people of the world — a prophet of nonkilling.

It is very appropriate that Dr. Paige’s birthday on June 28th has been designated as International Nonkilling Day. This date always reminds me also about the historical event of my Doukhobor ancestors. It was on midnight of June 28, 1895 that 7,000 of my Russian Spirit Wrestlers / Doukhobor ancestors burnt their guns in the first mass protest in history against militarism and wars. They reasoned that the spark of God and Love resides in everyone, therefore it is wrong to kill another human being.

Russian writer and philosopher Lev N. Tolstoy pioneered this idea in his book The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894); his message of getting rid of wars inspired the Doukhobors to drop their guns and then get rid of them. When persecution followed, Tolstoy, his intellectual friends and Quakers helped with the migration of one-third of the most persecuted (7,500) to Western Canada in 1899. My grandparents were part of this group.

 At the First Global Nonkilling Leadership Forum in Hawaii in 2007, I was honoured to add Tolstoy as one of the pioneers of Nonkilling to that of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and other world leaders and humanists. (Proceedings, page 207) Tolstoy absolutely condemned all wars and looked forward to a new vision of humanity. This vision in modern times came forth from Dr. Glenn D. Paige with the Nonkilling paradigm and hope for a new world order. 

Historically, Tolstoy and the Doukhobors both used the word ‘nonviolence’, but their real meaning, I discovered, was nonkilling. I am honoured that Glenn Paige gifted this insight to me which I have since adopted because nonkilling encompasses the broader notions of love including compassion, universal humanity, and world citizenship.

As a peace activist in many organizations such as the Canadian Peace Initiative and the World Beyond War Inc, I have often used the word ‘Nonkilling’ to describe what I consider to be one of the urgent needs of the day to save us from the scourge of war, terrorism and abuse  and preserve our civilization. Routinely, I end my emails with the words: ‘In search of truth and a nonkilling society.’ Let’s hope the new generation will embrace these important values that Glenn Paige pioneered for the sake of our children, our grandchildren, and the society of human beings.

With the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at 100 seconds to midnight, we must urgently work together to stop the slaughter of humanity. Nonkilling is the hope and the way to the future.

Update: Nonkilling Day June 28, 2025, 3 Jul 2025

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