The name Doukhobors, meaning "Spirit-wrestlers", derives from a slur made by the Russian Orthodox Church that was subsequently embraced by the group.

[12] In the 17th-and-18th-century Russian Empire, the first recorded Doukhobors concluded clergy and formal rituals are unnecessary, believing in God's presence in every human being.

They rejected the secular government, the Russian Orthodox priests, icons, all church rituals, and the belief the Bible is a supreme source of divine revelation.

Their modern name, first in the form Doukhobortsy (Russian: духоборцы, dukhobortsy ("Spirit wrestlers") ) is thought to have been first used in 1785 or 1786 by Ambrosius the Archbishop of Yekaterinoslav[13][15] or his predecessor Nikifor (Nikephoros Theotokis).

[16][a] The archbishop's intent was to mock the Doukhobors as heretics fighting against the Holy Spirit (Russian: Святой Дух, Svyatoy Dukh) but around the beginning of the 19th century, according to SA Inikova,[16] the dissenters adopted the name "Doukhobors" usually in a shorter form Doukhobory (Russian: духоборы, dukhobory), implying they are fighting alongside rather than against the Holy Spirit.

[13][18] The first known use of the spelling Doukhobor is in a 1799 government edict exiling 90 of the group to Finland;[13] presumably the Vyborg area, which was part of the Russian Empire at the time, for producing anti-war propaganda.

[20] In 1802, Tsar Alexander I encouraged the resettlement of religious minorities to the "Milky Waters" (Molochnye Vody) region around the Molochnaya River around Melitopol in modern-day southern Ukraine.

[19] When Nicholas I succeeded Alexander as Tsar, on February 6, 1826, he issued a decree intending to force the assimilation of the Doukhobors through military conscription, prohibiting their meetings, and encouraging conversions to the established church.

[13][18] On October 20, 1830, another decree followed, specifying all able-bodied members of dissenting religious groups engaged in propaganda against the established church should be conscripted and sent to the Russian army in the Caucasus while those not capable of military service, and their women and children, should be resettled in Russia's recently acquired Transcaucasian provinces.

[19] Doukhobor villages with Russian names appeared there; Gorelovka, Rodionovka, Yefremovka, Orlovka, Spasskoye (Dubovka), Troitskoye, and Bogdanovka.

Under instructions from Verigin, the Large Party stopped using tobacco and alcohol, divided their property equally among the members of the community, and resolved to adhere to the practice of pacifism and non-violence.

As the Doukhobors gathered to burn their guns on the night of June 28/29 (July 10/11, Gregorian calendar) 1895, while singing psalms and spiritual songs, government Cossacks arrested and beat them.

In 1897, the Russian government agreed to let the Doukhobors leave the country, subject to conditions: Emigrants initially attempted to settle in Cyprus.

However, the Cyprus experiment soon proved to be disastrous: beset by disease (made worse by insufficient food that met the Doukhobors' religious requirements) as well as internal disagreements over community organization, nearly ten percent of the colony died by early 1899.

The modern descendants of the first wave of Doukhobor emigrants continue to live in southeastern British Columbia communities such as Krestova, and in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

[37] The land for the Doukhobor immigrants, in total 773,400 acres (3,130 km2) within what was to soon become the Province of Saskatchewan, came in three block settlement areas or "reserves", and an annex:[38] North and South Colonies, and Good Spirit Lake Annex, were located around Yorkton near the modern-day border with Manitoba; the Saskatchewan (Rosthern) Colony was located north-west of Saskatoon, a significant distance from the other three reserves.

On the lands granted to them in the prairies, the settlers established Russian-style villages, some of which received Russian names after settlers' home villages in Transcaucasia; for example Spasovka, Large and Small Gorelovka, and Slavianka; while others gained more abstract "spiritual" names not common in Russia, such as Uspeniye (Dormition), Terpeniye (Patience), Bogomdannoye (Given by God), and Osvobozhdeniye (Liberation).

Their communal lifestyle seemed suspicious, their refusal to send children to school was considered deeply troubling, while pacifism caused anger during the First World War.

The oppression of the Russian Tsarist regime had entrenched its resulting pacifist beliefs into the Doukhobour tenets and they did not waver with the onset of either World War.

Tumultuous political posturing and years of polarized social disagreements eventually brought some Doukhobours to the point of protests aimed at maintaining their simple, non-materialistic, and autonomous communal living.

The Doukhobor faction known as Sons of Freedom conducted nude marches and carried out night-time arson attacks, which was considered unacceptable and offensive.

By 1906, the Canadian Government's new Minister of the Interior Frank Oliver started requiring the registration of land in the name of individual owners.

The "oath" issue resulted in a three-way split of the Doukhobor immigrants in Canada:[13][16] Of these groupings, the Independents integrated the most readily into Canadian capitalist society.

[48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55] During 1947 and 1948, Sullivan's Royal Commission investigated acts of arson and bombing attacks in British Columbia and recommended several measures intended to integrate the Doukhobors into Canadian society, notably through the education of their children in public schools.

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.

[26][65] 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.

[26] Doukhobor oral holy hymns, which they call the "Book of Life" (Russian: Zhivotnaya kniga), de facto replaced the written Bible.

[81] The Doukhobors took with them to Canada a Southern Russian dialect, which in the following decades changed under the influence of Canadian English and the speech of the Ukrainian settlers in Saskatchewan.

[19][82] Over the next 10 or 20 years, the Doukhobors and others, mostly speaking a variety of Southern Russian dialects, arrived at the Molochna from several provinces, most of which are located in modern-day eastern Ukraine and south-central Russia.

Remarkable was the dropping of the final -t in the third-person singular form of verbs, which can be considered a Ukrainian feature and is also attested in some Russian dialects spoken in Southern Ukraine (e.g., Nikolaev near the Doukhobors' former homeland on the Molochna).