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

ner of absolute power and autocracy; we still stand beneath this banner, here we form a single body with a single will, and here too we see the future guarantee of truth, order and the country's well¬ being" (from Pobedonostsev's 1888 speech on the ninth centenary of Christianity in Russia, quoted in Brandenburg, pp. 120 and 122-23). 82 which repudiated the Westernization threatening Russia in the form of nihilism. 15 Pashkov shared Pobedonostsev's loyalty to the tsarist government. He too objected to the nihilist terrorism whose roots lay in European schools of philosophical thought, but he was able to embrace another Western import, evangelical Christianity. The consequences of this acceptance placed him at odds with the government he wished to support. A reluctant opposition Pashkov was firmly opposed to the "subversive Western elements" under whose pressure "a crisis ... now crosses our country," he wrote, possibly in 1879, the year in which the terrorist campaign of the radical populists made repeated attempts on the life of the tsar and on the lives of other government officials. 16 Yet his response to the arbitrary persecutions of religious dissenters was a clear recognition on his part that the tsarist government did not conduct itself at all times in accordance with the standards of justice. He protested the threat of banishment brought against one of the Hilton brothers, who had in turn worked for Pashkov on his estates, for alleged sectarian activities. To the Minister of 15 Other theorists of this nationalist conservatism, a "theory of antinihilism", include Ivan Aksakov, Dostoevsky, Katkov, Leontiev, and Samarin. See Richard Pipes, "Russian Conservatism in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century," Slavic Review . XXX, no. 1 (March 1971), p. 124. 16 From an unsigned, undated portion in a book of original notes and letters written by Pashkov, PP 2/l/f/10. Before Pashkov's exile, he made particular efforts to evangelize students to "counter-act[ ] their nihilistic and revolutionary activities." See Heier, pp. 116-17. 83 the Interior, Count D. A* Tolstoy, he wrote: "Involuntarily one asks oneself how long such acts of arbitrary .... administration will be tolerated here. Is it credible that you will oblige him to leave Russia and publish abroad how impossible it is to get justice or a fair trial?" 17 Having become the victim of such arbitrary proceedings himself, he nevertheless did not become a strident government critic. As V. G. Chertkov noted of Pashkov in his obituary of him, Pashkov "was, by his own convictions, to such a degree truly devoted to government authority, and by nature so kind and good ( nezlobiv l, that he never published an unmasking of his persecutors." 18 Yet Pashkov did not entirely oppose the publishing of verified facts concerning the persecutions taking place in Russia. 19 To Pobedonostsev in 1885 he expressed his bewilderment that the govern