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

stacles to this equality. For the Pashkovites, however, human nature, not social institutions, 5 After the formation of the Union of Evangelical Christians- Baptists in 1944, the term "Baptist" can designate a believer of either persuasion. A recent assessment of their numbers counts 98,848 members of Baptist churches in Russia; 160,481 in Ukraine; and 327,198 in the former Soviet Union as a whole. See the East- West Church and Ministry Report , Institute for East-West Christian Studies, Wheaton, Illinois, IV, no. 1 (Winter 1996), p. 7. 88 was the root cause of social ills. Individual spiritual and moral reformation was thus the crucial first step towards the righting of these wrongs, and acceptance of salvation by faith was the basis for such inner change. A sense of brotherhood was then one fruit of this regeneration, as converts demonstrated love for others in practical ways. Their sense of brotherhood influenced their conduct within the established economic system for the most part, for each believer was to use his means to help others. Their moral principles helped to make them desirable employees and likely candidates to achieve some degree of prosperity. This "conservative" socio-economic program became an unwilling part of the political opposition. In general, the evangelicals believed in a religious sanction for obedience to government authority; conflict with divine law was the one exception. Seen as a political threat by the government because of their religious views, they longed for the freedom to practice and spread their religious beliefs without hindrance. These early disputes with tsarism developed into a liberal political consensus among evangelical sectarian leaders in the last years of the Imperial regime. They were thus, in effect, only one part of a movement favoring moderate social and political change. As such, their fate is but one more example of the tsarist government's tragic refusal to tolerate, let alone encourage, elements conducive to gradual, positive change. The significant role of Western Protestantism in Russian evangelical sectarianism was the major reason for the 89 government's opposition. Pashkovism was thus part of the ongoing debate concerning Russia's attitude to the West. Both the radicals and the evangelicals welcomed some Western elements. The populist narodniki and the Marxists took various forms of socialist Western thought and applied them in the cause of equality. Pashkov and his fellow believers took inspiration from another source—a particularly Western form of Christianity. In so doing they forged "a synthesis of Western Protestantism with Russian-Ukrainian piety.... The Western evangelical preachers might not have been so succesful had the ground not been prepared for them by the deep spirituality of the Russian Orthodox God-seekers." 6 Like other moderate social movements, the evangelicals' synthesis was likely to avoid the pit