Doukhobors significant person Peter Verigin
Doukhobors remaining in Russia
After the departure of the more zealous and uncompromising Doukhobors, and many community leaders, to Canada at the close of the Elisabethpol Governorate in the Caucasus Viceroyalty (now Azerbaijan), the former Doukhobor villages became mostly repopulated by Baptists. Elsewhere, some Doukhobors joined nearby Spiritual Christian groups.Those who remained Doukhobors were required to submit to the state. Few protested against military service; of 837 Russian court-martial cases against conscientious objectors recorded between the beginning of World War I and April 1, 1917, 16 had Doukhobor defendants, none of whom hailed from the Transcaucasian provinces. Between 1921 and 1923, Verigin's son Peter P. Verigin arranged the resettlement of 4,000 Doukhobors from the Ninotsminda (Bogdanovka) district in south Georgia to Rostov Oblast in southern Russia, and another 500 into Zaporizhzhia Oblast in Ukraine.The Soviet reforms greatly affected the lives of the Doukhobors, both in their old villages in Georgia and in the new settlement areas in southern Russian and Ukraine. State anti-religious campaigns resulted in the suppression of Doukhobor religious tradition, and the loss of books and archival records. Many religious leaders were arrested or exiled; for example, 18 people were exiled from Gorelovka in 1930. Communists' imposition of collective farming did not contradict the Doukhobor way of life. Industrious Doukhobors made their collective farms prosperous, often specializing in cheesemaking.Of the Doukhobor communities in the Soviet Union, those in South Georgia were the most sheltered from outside influence because of their geographic isolation in mountainous terrain, their location near the international border, and concomitant travel restrictions for outsiders.Canada
CCUB, the Orthodox Doukhobors organization or Community Doukhobors, was succeeded by the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ formed by Peter P. Verigin, Peter V. Verigin's son, in 1938. The largest and most active formal Doukhobor organization, it is headquartered in Grand Forks, British Columbia.During the Canada 2011 Census, 2,290 persons in Canada—of whom 1,860 in British Columbia, 200 in Alberta, 185 in Saskatchewan, and 25 in Ontario—identified their religious affiliation as "Doukhobor". The proportion of older people among these self-identified Doukhobors is higher than among the general population.