Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

and lack of institutional structure. Homeless Shelters The Pashkovites also ran shelters for the poor. Iulia Zasetskaia opened the first overnight shelter in St Petersburg for both men and women in 1873, before Pashkov’s own conversion. She ran the shelter herself, personally financing what the five-kopeck nightly fee did not cover, and her efforts attracted the attention of such prominent people as Feodor Dostoevsky and Nikolai Leskov.* As well as the shelter at his estate of Vestoshkino, Pashkov ran a boarding house for women in one of his homes on Vasilevskii Island. Private rooms were available to women for eight roubles per month, and shared rooms for three roubles per month. Making use of every opportunity to discredit Pashkov and his followers, the St Petersburg Novosti [News] wrote about the suicide of a young woman residing at the shelter, indi- cating that the woman had gone insane due to religious pressure. Although he normally avoided public debate, Pashkov chose to make an exception in this case, since, as he explained, “The article does not attack me personally, but casts a shadow on the way of Truth.”*? Jenny de Mayer also opened a shelter for homeless ex-convicts on Sakhalin Island, and another on the nearby mainland at Nikolaevsk-na-Amure. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 provided unique opportunities for the believers to put their faith into practice. The war became first a catalyst for prayer meetings, with Pashkovites of all classes and nationalities meeting to pray that the shed of blood might be avoided.” It also became an oppor- tunity for acts of love and compassion. Pastor Hermann Dalton recorded *8 Nikolai Nasedkin, Dostoevskii entsiklopediia (Moscow: Algoritm, 2003), p. 596-597. See also McCarthy, Religious Conflict and Social Order, p. 133. *? Pashkoff Papers, II/1/a/19, pp. 19, 18-22. * According to a letter from Ivan Kargel, “Russians, Germans, Lithuanians, Swedes, Esto- nians, Finns and Englishmen found themselves together in Pashkov’s home for this pur- pose”. Cited in Jakob Kroeker, “Der achtzigjahrige Verfasser. Zur Einftihrung’, in Johann G. Kargel, Zwischen den Enden der Erde unter Briidern in Ketten (Wernigerode am Harz: Licht im Osten, 1928), p. ix. 64 that many society ladies left their comfortable homes to serve as volunteer nurses. When the wounded were brought to the hospital, Dalton recog- nised a “plainly-dressed lady” known only as a “Sister of Mercy” - actually a princess — reading the Word of God to a dangerously wounded soldier.*! Ada von Krusenstjerna recalled sewing for wounded soldiers, while some evenings were spent with soldiers in the Mikhailovskii Palace, which had been turned into a military hospital.** St Petersburg author Elizabeth Ward de Charriére based a novel on Pashkovite activities during the Turkish War. According to scholar Edmund Heier, the novel is fictional in its storyline alone, as