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

r to differentiate between the early Ukrainian strand and the Caucasian, more clearly evangelical and denominational Baptist movement. In an additional complication, in the twentieth century, the term "Baptist" can refer to any Russian of an evangelical religious persuasion. 22 Blane, p. 277. 67 early as 1860 or 1861. 23 From that time the Stundist movement experienced rapid growth. The Baptist movement's leaders tended to come from wealthy Molokan backgrounds. The baptism of one such merchant, N. I. Voronin, by a Baltic German artisan in the Caucasus in 1867 led to the founding of a Baptist congregation in Tiflis in 1868. 24 Subsequent baptisms followed. 25 Stundist believers had begun independently to debate the question of believers' baptism, under the influence of the German colonists once again; and the two currents' eventual fusion was underway. The Russian Baptist Union was established in 1884 and held its first conference that April. 26 Prugavin noted the astonishing success of the Stundists. 27 According to official statistics reported by Klibanov, between 1871 and 1881 the number of Baptists in the Elizavetgrad district of Kherson province had risen from 224 to 998. In the province as a whole, the period of 1875-1881 saw their numbers increase from 1,546 to 3,363. Kiev province's Tarashcha district saw an even greater jump between 1873 and 23 Brandenburg, pp. 64-66. See also Klibanov, pp. 231-32; Pollock, pp. 57-62. 24 Pollock, p. 63; Brandenburg, pp. 98-100. 25 Blane notes the additional German influence of the Baptist theological training in Hamburg of V. G. Pavlov, one of Voronin's first baptized converts, who became a prominent Baptist leader. See Blane, pp. 268-69. 26 Brandenburg, pp. 89-94. On contact between Stundists and Baptists leading to the formation of the Union, see Blane, p. 273. 27 Prugavin, p. 68-70. 68 1881—from 112 to 1,334. 28 By the early 1880's there were instances of Stundism throughout the south and southwest of the empire (in such provinces as Kherson, Bessarabia, Ekaterinoslav, and Kiev), extending to the Caucasus in the south and Tver in the north. 29 Fewer numbers are available to document the growth of the Pashkovite movement. Z. D. Zacharov, a New Molokan (i.e., evangelical Molokan) leader, sent Pashkov in 1884 a list of the numbers of Molokans of various persuasions. Baptists, and those of an "evangelical confession" in some of the southeastern provinces of the empire. These "evangelicals", sometimes quite few in number, were listed in the Don region and in Astrakhan, Saratov, Samara, Simbirsk, Tambov, Riazan, and Vladimir provinces. 30 By 1912, the Ministry of Internal Affairs counted 31,000 Evangelical Christians, with 4,500 of these in St. Petersburg. 31 Evangelicalism and economic practice Some of the factors that facilitated the growth of 28 Klibanov, pp. 236-37. By 1891 there were 5,000 Baptists each in Kiev and Kherson