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

y Lord Radstock. 4 James Muckle notes that Leskov himself may well have been less "Orthodox" (and therefore less critical of Radstock) than the narrator in whose voice Leskov composed Schism in High Society . See Leskov, p. 110. 5 Ibid., p. 17. Leskov, pp. 67-68. Bellyustin was writing in the Ecclesiastical and Social Messenger . 1876, no. 42. khristiansk-i Tsicl pryamvni i surovvm putem tvazhkoi i bez effektivnoi zhizni l." 7 According to William B. - Edgerton, this particular criticism may well have sprung from Leskov's expectation that aristocrats should have a more developed theology. 8 Leskov himself "clearly needed a more scholarly, more reasoned and less sentimental faith, and one that was imparted by evangelists who were less importunate, less obsessive and more flexible in certain of their attitudes." 9 Leskov did not address the movement's doctrinal aspects alone, however. He acknowledged Radstock's ability to motivate the aristocrats to seek out and to help the poor. "He alone has proved capable somehow of ploughing this swamp which has long since been uncultivable, and into its barely prepared cold top soil he has at least cast the good seed." 10 Yet he also criticized some of the misguided or arrogant attempts at subsequent philanthropy and spiritual instruction of the common people by these new aristocratic zealots. His regard for the simple faith and endurance of the common people and his frequent reference to Russian proverbs suggest a continued favoring of the view that Russsia's traditional faith was indeed supreme and that the peasants' simple. 7 N. Leskov, "Knyazh'i navety," Novosti . vol. I, no. 253 (13 September 1884). 8 William B. Edgerton, "Leskov, Pankov, the Stundists, and a Newly Discovered Letter," Orbis Scriptus; Dmitrii Tschizevskii zum 70. Geburtstaa . Munich, 1966, p. 198. 9 J. Y. Muckle in Leskov, Schism , p. 116. 10 Leskov, Schism, p. 43. 8 untutored..religious beliefs held distinctive merit. 11 Leskov was not the only major literary figure in Russia to comment on the high society religious revival. Echoes of his doctrinal objections and nationalist sympathies can be found in the responses of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to the movement. Much of Dostoevsky's contact with Radstockism came through his stormy friendship with Yuliya Zasetskaya, a staunch Radstockist and the daughter of Denis Davydov, poet- hero of the Napoleonic campaigns. 12 Malcolm Jones speculates that her challenge to Dostoevsky's stubborn faith in the supremacy of the Russian version of Christianity may have spurred him to clarify and defend his views in Brothers Karamazov . While Dostoevsky admired Zasetskaya and other Radstockists for their charitable works, he continued to oppose their adoption of teachings other than those of the Church. 13 Tolstoy, too, was curious about the movement in its early years. Although favorably impressed in 1876 by a discussion 11 Speakin