Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

how God is punishing you. How many times have I told you that you are clothed in the devil and do not believe in Christ?” Another anti-Pashkovite article claimed that the works of charity were not done in love, but were “a type of payment for their betrayal of Orthodoxy”.* Yet such accusations were printed decades after Pashkov’s exile. Earlier enemies did not bring evidence of this type against him, and in fact there are recorded cases of Pashkov’s aid to Orthodox believers and others. Pastor Dalton in 1881 recorded that Pashkovite dona- tions were being distributed “with the sole desire that the Lord Jesus should be honoured in the person of the poor and the afflicted”. Publishing and Literature Distribution Lord Radstock, Colonel Pashkov and their followers were also aware of the growing literacy of the population and the unavailability of appropriate reading material, as well as the spiritual hunger felt by many during this time of change and social unrest. Following the example of the Religious Tract Society of London, they soon began printing and distributing litera- ture to assist people in their spiritual journeys.*° In 1876 they founded the Society for the Encouragement of Spiritual and Moral Reading, the goal of which was to make Old and New Testaments, as well as religious and moral literature, available to the common people.” During the eight years of the society's existence (1876-84), it published more than two hundred *” Bogoliubov, Kto eto Pashkovtsy, pp. 29-30. * Ornatskii, Sekta Pashkovtsev, p. 8. * Pobedonostsev, “Vypiska’, p. 8; “Sluchainaia vstrecha moia i beseda s Pashkovym (Iz dnevnika Missionera)’, Missionerskoe obozrenie, no. 1 (January 1896), p. 78; Bogoliubov, Kto eto Pashkovtsy, pp. 29-30; Dalton, “Recent Evangelical Movements in Russia’, p. 114. * Dalton, “Recent Evangelical Movements in Russia’, p. 108. *! “Pashkovtsy’, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’, vol. 23 (St Petersburg: I.A. Efron, 1898), p. 63. 66 ae brochures, some of which appeared in up to twelve editions. The society was founded with the approval of the Holy Synod and strove not to publish material in opposition to Orthodox teaching. They included among their publications Orthodox writers such as St Tikhon Zadonskii, which Pobe- donostsev approved wholeheartedly.” The first tracts published by the new society, however, were transla- tions from English and German tracts circulating in the West. Others were written by Radstock, and over time by the Pashkovites themselves. Not all their literature was initially successful. Early editions of popular English tracts were translated precisely, tolerating “no change of the Jameses and Johns of the original into the more current Jacob Fedorovitch and Ivan Ivanovitch of the language into which the tracts were rendered’. Yet the well-intentioned aristocrats of St Petersburg could perhaps not be blamed for this oversight, speaking French, German and English at home, a