Soviet papers preserved
by Karen Brownlee, Leader-Post
The Leader-Post (Regina, Saskatchewan)
November 23, 2004 Tuesday
Final Edition
Doukhobor ancestors will soon be able to search centuries back into
their families’ histories to their Soviet homeland thanks to the
years of work of one of their own.
“I feel fairly strongly about documenting and preserving Doukhobor
history and making it available to other Doukhobor Canadians,” said
Jon Kalmakoff, a Regina-based researcher and genealogist.
Kalmakoff had around 3,000 documents unearthed from archives in the
Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, and Armenia and sent to Canada. They were
then translated from archaic Russian script to modern English.
He is making the documents available in a series of books, the first
of which will be available in a few weeks through Kalmakoff’s Web
site
“Taken all together, they allow most people of Doukhobor ancestry
to trace their families back to the early 19th century and the late
18th centuries,” said Kalmakoff, who is also making the copies of
the original Russian documents available in a special collection at
the Saskatchewan Archives .
The documents include census lists and tax lists, which “give us
a snapshot of what any particular family looked like at that time
period”, said Kalmakoff. Family names, their villages and in some
cases, occupations, are among the details listed.
Much of early Doukhobor history is obscure. They transmitted their
history through oral stories, rather than written records. Many at
that time were illiterate.
“It comes as quite a surprise, not only to find these records,
but that so many actually exist,” said Kalmakoff, who has used the
records to track his family history back to the 1600s.
“It’s quite a feat because unlike Anglo-Saxon genealogy, there just
isn’t the same number of records.”
Kalmakoff found the records after developing contacts with employees
at the archives where the documents were found. He personally funded
the searches for the documents.
“A lot of it was taking a shotgun approach just knowing certain records
were supposed to have been taken by the Russian Tsarist officials,”
he said.
“If we did find it existed, then arrangements were made for copies
to be made to be shipped over here,” he said.
The Russian peasants were persecuted for having political beliefs
different from their government in the late 18th century. They were
allowed to emigrate in the late 19th century.
Around 7,500 came to Canada and settled in Saskatchewan. Saskatoon,
Blaine Lake, Wadena, Watson, Buchanan, Canora, Kamsack and Veregin are
modern communities that coincide with the original areas of settlement,
said Kalmakoff.
A large group of the original settlers moved to B.C. after a dispute
over homestead titles with the federal government in the early
1900’s. Today, between 30,000 and 50,000 Doukhobor ancestors live in
western Canada, he said.
From: Baghdasarian
www.doukhobor.org