Slava Bohu : The Story of the Doukhobors

Hardcover with dust jacket. 438 pages, 5.5x8.5 in - 14x21 cm.

Gift inscription by author on front pastedown. B&W frontispiece, maps on endpapers. Spine bowed, bumped at head and heel. Brodart-wrapped jacket soiled; jacket front rubbed at edges and corners with small closed tear at bottom. Jacket spine bumped at head and heel with small closed tear at head. Frontispiece loose and laid in.

J. F. C. “Jim” Wright reported for Saskatoon’s Star Phoenix, wrote for the National Film Board, and edited the CCF’s Union Farmer periodical. In 1940 Wright added a Governor General’s Award to his accomplishments with “Slava Bohu,” a history of the Doukhobors. Wright traces the sectarian Christian group’s journey from Russia to western Canada in the 1890s in search of freedom from persecution. While the book’s first half explores the group’s clashes with religious/political authorities in Russia, the second half focusses on the Doukhobor experience in Saskatchewan. Throughout, Wright depicts the Doukhobors’ history as one of tension: religious convictions conflict with state obligations, newly arrived immigrants seemingly resist cultural integration, and leaders of Doukhobor factions create further schisms. Laid in is a 1941 newspaper clipping showing Wright visiting with another 1940 Governor General’s Award winner, Philippe Panneton. Peel(3) 6411.