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

dioceses according to diocese statistics (p. 255). By 1912 in the empire as a whole Klibanov estimates there were 679 Baptist congregations and over 100,000 Baptists, of whom 48,000 were of a non-Russian nationality (pp. 274-76). 29 Brandenburg, p. 93. 30 PP 2/28/1. On the spread of Pashkovism in the Ukraine and the Don region, see Heier, pp. 140-41. 31 Klibanov, p. 287. As a general point of comparison for all these figures, Curtiss cites the empire's population in 1897, excluding Finland and Poland, as over 117 million. He estimates that of this number in that year the entire sectarian population, including Old Believers, was 17.5 million. See Curtiss, p. 139. 69 sectarianism were related to the general process of industrialization then taking place. These factors, included the mobility of migrant workers and seasonal laborers and the rise in literacy, which increased the opportunities for spreading sectarian teaching. 32 Other causes of growth support the view that sectarianism was an expression of protest against the status quo. Ukrainian nationalism has been cited as an element in the early Stundists' interest in forms of worship outside the official church. 33 J. S. Curtiss attributes Stundism's rise partly to "a longing on the part of some sections of the peasantry for a faith that insisted on the puritan virtues." He cites the opinion of Orthodox priest Rozhdestvenskii who "in his study of the Stundists declared that this movement appeared to be a reaction against the drunkenness, theft, and immorality prevalent in the south of Russia." 34 Prugavin, as a populist commentator, examined the phenomenon of sectarianism among the narod as a protest against the sources of corrosion in the foundations of the social organism, against deficiencies in the clergy and the schools, in the political 32 Religious dissidence also encouraged literacy among its practitioners. Both the Old Believers and evangelical sectarians depended heavily on reading for the preservation and practice of their faith. See Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read . Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1985, pp. 25- 27; 36-38. 33 Heier, p. 140. 34 Curtiss, p. 165. and social system. 35 Thus, socio-economic factors and a desire for a more active spiritual life encouraged the turn to sectarianism. But what direction did this protest take? Is it clear that, as Prugavin's analysis implies, in the case of the peasants, at least, they were reacting against the incipient capitalism of the later nineteenth century? Some aspects of peasant sectarianism would suggest otherwise. In regard to the Stundists, Walter Kolarz notes the "social-economic" attractions of the German colonists' prosperity in addition to the "spiritual-religious" incentives to adopt their beliefs. 36 Increased prosperity and sectarianism often seem to have been linked. The Old Believers had given rise to successful merchan