Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

e it. The stairways smelled like cats and sunflower oil. There were apartments in which each room was rented to several persons, each possessing only a corner. In order to conserve heat, no fresh air was allowed in, and the stench was suffocating... Yet my aunt [Gagarina] rejoiced in suffering this disgrace for the sake of the Lord.° Pashkovites regularly visited hospitals, where both Pashkov and Korff were reported to exercise the gift of healing. When visiting his estate in the Nizhnii Novgorod region, Pashkov held Bible readings in the village hospital each morning at ten oclock.® German Reformed Pastor Hermann Dalton recalled that a Pashkovite Bible reader regularly visited prostitutes receiving treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. Writing to the British public, journalist William Stead claimed that It was no uncommon sight to see a great lady, to whom all the salons of St Petersburg were open, scurrying through the streets on a humble droshky, to read and to pray by the bedside of some dying girl in the foul ward of the local hospital. No infection deterred them from the discharge of their self- imposed duties; no place was too dark for them to refuse to illumine it with the radiance of their presence.’ Unlike “slumming”, however, in which the upper classes visited the poor * Sophie Lieven, Eine Saat, die reiche Frucht brachte (Basel: Brunnen- Verlag, 1952), p. 43. ° Lieven, Eine Saat, p. 16; Modest M. Korff, Am Zarenhof: Erinnerungen aus der geistlichen Erweckungsbewegung in Rufsland von 1874-1884 (Wernigerode am Harz: Licht im Osten, 1927), p. 33; “Zapiska iz del kantseliarii ober-prokurora Sviateishego Sinoda o vrednoi dlia pravoslavnoi tserkvi deiatel’nosti obshchestva pooshreniia dukhovno-nravstvennogo chte- niia’, in Svedeniia, p. 13. ” Hermann Dalton, “Recent Evangelical Movements in Russia: Lord Radstock and Colonel Pashkoft”, The Catholic Presbyterian, vol. 6, no. 32 (August 1881), p. 110; William T. Stead, Truth About Russia (London: Cassell and Company, 1888), pp. 355-356. 55 for entertainment or to soothe a guilty conscience, Pashkovites established long-term relationships with social outcasts, inviting them even into their homes. Pashkov, for example, helped a young woman obtain permission to marry her fiancé, exiled to Siberia, and to accompany him into exile. He also presented her with Christian tracts and inquired about her soul. For five years young Madame Papova lived in exile with her husband, but health problems forced her to return to Moscow. Near death, she was visited in the hospital by the Pashkovite Countess Elena Shuvalova and recognised the booklets offered her as those she had received from Pashkov years before. Pashkov visited her regularly that summer, and when his family returned to St Petersburg for the winter, Papova returned with them, where she was treated in the nearby Mariinskii Hospital. Despite her suffering, this wife of a Nihilist became