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

anthropy and brotherhood .• . The philanthropy practised by the Pashkovites was evidence of their recognition of this need for works. Furthermore, their central doctrine of salvation by faith, containing as it did the belief in the universality of the need for this salvation, provided a new understanding of social relations. A new desire for social equality was among the Pashkovites' first concerns. This quotation from a talk given by Korf or Bobrinsky was reported by one listener (S. Glebov): We have sinned along with our fathers for generations and it is time to cleanse ourselves of all evil.... We have neglected our duty in this world. Around us are many sufferings [sic] and oppressed persons and therefore we ought to help them in word and deeds. In word, so that we may recognize our duty; and in deeds to prove that we have recognized our purpose in this world, which is the striving toward unity and brotherhood. And what do we have? Segregation. Society is divided into classes similar to those in an educational institution. As if the people are not equal, as if the same blood is not flowing in their veins, as if they were not all of the same mother nature created by our Lord, as if we were not all identical children of the Heavenly Creator.... This is our purpose for gathering here. 28 As Heier remarks, "The social implication of the repentant nobleman is unmistakenly apparent" in these words. 29 Under the influence of the ideas of the populist publicist N. K. Mikhailovsky, 3,000 "repentant noblemen", most of them S. Glebov, "Polkovnik Pashkov," Missionerskoe obozrenie (January 1904), I, p. 84; III, p. 313, as quoted in Heier, pp. 114- 115. 29 Heier, p. 116. 32 students, had gone into the Russian countryside in 1874, the year of Lord Radstock's first visit to St. Petersburg, to try to build a bridge between their intellectual world and "Russia's still primitive peasant empire." 30 They went to try to enlighten the peasants, to pass on some of the education with which they had tried to perfect themselves. 31 They also went in admiration of such institutions as the peasant commune (obshchina), by means of which Mikhailovsky hoped to create a socialist society without passing through Europe's capitalist stage. With no organized leadership and inspired only by the ideas of Mikhailovsky's journal |~ Otechestvennve Zaoiski ( The Fatherland Annals) 1 and the Chaikovsky circles, they mpved out from the cities and university centres like a vast army of itinerant missionaries, dressing and working as peasants while evangelizing the peasantry with the gospel of socialism and progress. 32 Yet there were significant differences in inspiration and aims between these two groups of repentant noblemen. The philosophical foundation of this movement lay in a basic article of belief for Mikhailovsky and for many Russian intellectuals, namely, the perfectibility of man. From this starti