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

ts and to two prosperous industrial and merchant communities in Moscow, whose communal system fell prey to secularism and its own prosperity. The Molokans were known for their industry, honesty, and general prosperity. To explain the Old Believers' economic success, William Blackwell considers the application of Max Weber's thesis of a rational religious ethic's encouragement of modern capitalism. According to Weber, "rational calculation was the decisive feature of modern capitalism." 37 Calvinism was rational in its 35 A. S. Prugavin, Raskol i sektantstvo v Russkoi narodnoi zhizni . Moscow, 1905, pp. 42-3 and 55. 36 Kolarz, p. 284. 37 Samuel H. Baron, "The Weber Thesis and the Failure of Capitalist Development in 'Early Modern' Russia," Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas . XVIII (1970), p. 326. 71 "methodical quality of ethical conduct", and the "concept of calling of ascetic Protestantism" led to the necessary "rationalization of conduct within this world, but for the sake of the world beyond." 38 As other conducive factors one can also note Protestantism's opposition to "absolute unscrupulousness" 39 and the individualistic nature of Calvinism, stemming from the believer's reliance on God for salvation rather than on other mediators or rituals. 40 Blackwell cautions against applying such a thesis uncritically in the Russian context, however. For the Old Believers, both "an outcast legal status which opened to them a commercial freedom not permitted the traditional, recognized classes of society" and their life "as a matter of belief and survival... in austere, disciplined, self-sufficient religious communities" were among the reasons for their prosperity. 41 Nevertheless, the Old Believers' ascetic practices were one factor in their prosperity, and the evangelicals' Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism . trans. by Talcott Parsons, London, 1930, pp. 124-25; 154. Sociologist Tom Bottomore notes that Weber, to demonstrate his thesis more fully, would have had to show that no other ideas (besides the Protestant ethic) influenced the new economic attitudes of the European bourgeois. Yet he does credit Weber with showing, unlike Marx, that ideologies affect the pace of change. See Tom Bottomore, Elites and Society . Routledge, London 1993 (originally published 1964), p. 18. 39 Baron, p. 325. 40 Weber, pp. 105-06. 41 William L. Blackwell, "The Old Believers and the Rise of Private Industrial Enterprise in Early Nineteenth-Century Moscow," in W. L. Blackwell, ed., Russian Economic Development from Peter the Great to Stalin . New Viewpoints, New York, 1974, pp. 157. First appeared in Slavic Review . vol. XXIV, 1965, pp. 407-24. 72 individualistic understanding of salvation and their emphasis on moral conduct also placed them in a position .to. achieve economic success. Pashkov himself was not averse to economic gain and adopted the Protestant attitude