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

as both underground and officially recognized organizations during the Soviet regime. The study of the nineteenth-century origins of this longstanding minority religious presence in Russia has received comparatively little attention. This can be attributed in part to the rise and ultimate success of the revolutionary struggle in its various forms, to which much study has naturally been devoted. Yet the adoption by aristocrats and peasants alike of a religious belief different from that of the Orthodox Church was a revolutionary step in its own right. Like the political revolutionaries, the new believers were a potential force for social change and attracted government opposition. But as a primarily religious movement, in both their philosophical outlook and their practical activities they differed markedly from their fellow opponents of the status quo. 4 Interpretations of Pashkovism Existing studies and sources concerning the Pa.shkovite religious movement among the St. Petersburg aristocracy in the 1870's fall into two broad and sometimes overlapping categories. The first contains those works which are primarily accounts of the movement's history. The second contains works which, while recounting its history, focus mainly on the movement's literary connections, that is, on the response of various prominent writers of the day to this new religious interest in St. Petersburg high society. Contemporary observers of or participants in the Pashkovite movement provide the first documents of its history and give useful information about its religious and practical characteristics. In 1914 Mrs. E. Trotter chronicled the life of her recently deceased friend Lord Radstock, the founder of the evangelical movement in St. Petersburg. 1 In her account we read of Lord Radstock's conversion to evangelical Christianity while recuperating from an illness contracted in the Crimea, where he was serving with the British army during the Crimean War. From that point in his youth, he increasingly devoted 1 Mrs. Edward Trotter, Lord Radstock. An Interpretation and a Record , London, 1914. In the West, the term "evangelical" refers to "certain Protestant churches emphasizing the authority of Scripture and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual" (New Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 1989). It can also connote an emphasis on belief in the doctrine of salvation by faith. In the Russian context, it thus refers to those sects, such as the Pashkovites, Baptists, Stundists, and Molokans, who emphasized the study of Scripture and rejected Orthodox rituals. When capitalized, it usually refers to the Pashkovites' successors, whose non-denominational emphasis on the salvation message and on Scripture differed from the more defined practices of the Baptist denomination. 5 more.and more time to preaching his new-found faith and to philanthropy. Lord Radstock was invited to come to St. Petersburg in 1874,