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

See Blane, pp. 291-92. 53 Brandenburg, pp. 70-71. For a discussion of the influence of sectarianism, primarily of that of the Old Believers, on the populist radicals, see Billington, pp. 120-28. He notes the Old Believers' lack of receptivity to the populists' radical ideas (p. 123, n. 3) . 54 Klibanov, pp. 315 and 321, n. 16. 55 The largely Mennonite Union of Freedom, Truth and Peace advocated a popular representative assembly, universal, direct, secret, and equal suffrage, and compulsory free education; the party dissolved in 1906. I. S. Prokhanov's Resurrection Christian Democratic Party, founded in March 1917, advocated mediation 76 was no protection against government restrictions and persecution, however. In the eyes of Pobedonostsev and the tsarist government, the evangelical sectarians 7 defection from Orthodoxy was reason enough for repression. between striking workers and their employers, the giving of crown, monastery, and entailed-estate land to the people with compensation, the establishment of the eight-hour day, equal rights for women, and universal education. See Klibanov, pp. 318-20; 342- 44. Chapter 6 Persecution and Political Opposition As a social movement, Pashkovism has thus far been compared with prominent opposition movements such as populism and Tolstoyism. These movements necessarily acquired a political aspect, for marked opposition to the status quo in nineteenth-century Russia was in effect opposition to the State. The religious protest of Pashkovism and related sectarian movements was no exception. Explicit calls for political reform itself, however, often followed protests that began with other goals. Only with the formation of the populist revolutionary group Narodnaya Volya (the People's Will) in 1879 did political aims of replacing the Tsarist government with an elected constitutional government become a stated goal; terrorism in the form of political assassinations was one means to this end. 1 For Tolstoy, an integral part of his later writings was vehement opposition to the State, not just in its tsarist manifestation but in all guises, as a perpetrator of violence, slavery, and coercion. 1 Billington, pp. 108-09 and 158-59 (regarding the political demands of the short-lived, later populist group, Narodnoe Pravo [the People's Right], established in 1893. Mikhailovsky at first opposed the terrorist extremism of Narodnaya Volya . His subsequent growing distrust of Count M. T. Loris-Melikov, the head of a commission considering reform, led him to support the revolutionaries. See Billington, pp. 114-19. 77 78 Actual political protest on the part of the Pashkovites and other evangelical sectarians before 1905 was virtually nonexistent. Yet aspects of their religious belief and their response to persecution do suggest an inevitable turn against autocracy as a form of government. Persecution Pashkov's 1884 sectarian conference was ter