Colonel V. A. Pashkov and the Late Nineteenth-Century Protestant Movement in Russia, Jan M. Surer, 1999

ality over militarism and dull middle-class or bureaucratic routine. It promised the triumph of humane cooperation over inhumane 22 exploitation. 23 With the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the intellectuals' social dreams were far from being fully realized. Former serfs still often depended on their gentry masters for land or employment, and the new "slavery" of industrial workers to factory owners was on the increase. The iconoclastic nihilists of the 1860's and the populists of the 1870's took up the socialist banner from the idealists of the 1840's. The social implications of Pashkovism In the "populist" decade of the 1870's the Pashkovite religious revival took place within the very social class the radical intelligentsia opposed. Several writers have noted its promise as a means of improving class relations. Leskov commented on the aristocratic converts' charitable works as part of the historical process of the democratization of the aristocracy. 24 In an acknowledgment of the aristocracy's more personal motives such as the wish to improve society, he notes that they turned to Protestantism for a model for the active parish life they wished to implement. 25 Also speaking of the aristocrats' separation from the common people. Pollock writes: "The evangelical revival could have done much to end this fatal detachment, for nobles and muzhik met as brothers. Here was a better road than that of Nihilist 24 25 Kimball, pp. 121-22. Leskov, Schism, pp. 42-44. Ibid., pp. 98-101. 23 revolutionaries." 26 Heier goes so far as to posit unique potential for the Pashkovite movement: The unification and the transformation of Russia on an ethical basis, the dream of the aristocratic Pashkovites, had to be initiated by a teaching which would solve not only problems of faith but provide also the answers to social interests and to public life in general. Though not possessing a definite social programme, as, for example, did the social revolutionaries, but merely advocating an evolutionary change with the Bible as their guidance, the Pashkovites were the only group of all social and religious societies of the 1880's which could have initiated large-scale changes within the Russian Empire. 27 What was this "better road" to social unity? Is Heier justified in his confidence in the potential of Pashkovism? Of all the issues of "public life in general", class relations and the struggle for social and economic equality were to prove the most significant for Russia. The relations of the Pashkovites and other evangelical sectarians to these issues will be the primary focus of this work. 27 Pollock, p. 68. Heier, p. 136. Chapter 3 Pashkovism: A Basis for Brotherhood. The participants in the Pashkovite movement were members of some of the leading families of St. Petersburg high society. Military and civil service, foreign travel, the supervision of their estates, and an acti