The experience of those Russian sectarians who came to be known as Doukhobors is an experience of suffering imposed from outside and above; of repeated exile, within and between Russia and Canada; of religious revitalization and social fragmentation. Theirs was a constant struggle to confirm a society in which the life of the individual may become indistinguishable from the life of Christ as told, not in books, but though ancient psalms and hymns carried on living human breath; a society in which the fruits of the earth and of men's toil suffice to sustain and embellish life, setting an example the rest of the world may follow.
