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

toward his wealth as a trust to be used for good. 42 Instances of a new prosperity are credited to some of the Stundist leaders. Mikhail Ratushny, had been the village elder in Osnova before his conversion and was a relatively prosperous farmer, with a stone house, horses and oxen. Initially a poor shoemaker, he appears to have learned farming from his German employers in Rohrbach. Whether he completely abandoned this farm in his evangelizing travels is unclear from the sources used. His assistant, G. Balaban, originally a seasonal laborer in Osnova, and Ivan Riaboshapka, the founder of another, independently arising stunde in a village in the Elizavetgrad district of Kherson province, also became successful farmer. 43 Brandenburg claims that such economic success was typical of these Stundists, who "avoided the public house and card-playing. Thrift and hard work and a Christian sense of responsibility became evident on all sides. ,|44 Yet according to some accounts, the Stundists tempered 42 Weber, pp. 162; 176. 43 Brandenburg, pp. 79 and 81-2. It is unclear whether Osnova was ever organized as a mir . that is, a commune in which the land was held by the commune and periodically redivided between families. Brandenburg describes it as containing 80 farmsteads in 1887 (Brandenburg, p. 65). 44 Brandenburg, p. 80. 73 individual prosperity with a communal social organization. Prugavin describes them, unlike their German models, as opposed to kulachestvo (a kulak was a peasant who had become more prosperous than others). They insisted that all must work and that it was impossible to own the land, forests, and water. Land was to be held in common and divided only as necessary to make use of it. 45 Curtiss seconds this account, noting that they believed "that all government and all oppression were created by man, for God had created the blessings of this world for the equal enjoyment of all." Therefore, they sought to oppose the "exploitation of the weak by the strong" by, in Tolstoyan fashion, "establish[ing] by peaceful means a communal system under which all would live only by the sweat of their brow." 46 In a letter on the Stundists' behalf to the editor of Novoe Vremya in 1884, Pashkov refuted the claims that they repudiated government authority and held to any "communistic basis (nachal) . " 47 A combination of capitalist endeavor and communal dreams can be seen in the leadership of the Baptists and Evangelical Christians (the Pashkovites' successors), however. As has been noted, several of the early Baptist 45 Prugavin, pp. 49-52. "The Stundists demanded a new social order which called for the abolition of authority, confiscation of land by the peasants, and communal life" (Heier, p. 20). See also "A Short History of the Stundists," PP 1/6 (1895), pp. 3-4, on their "principles of brotherhood, love, and mutual help" which led them to be "accused of being Socialists." 46 Curtiss,