On the Edge

Baptists and Other Free Church Evangelicals in Tsarist Russia, 1855–1917

Wardin

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781630871154
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione

How indigenous was the Evangelical Free Church movement in Tsarist Russia? Was it simply a foreign import? To what extent did it threaten the political stability of the nation and encroach upon the existing Russian and German churches? On the Edge examines the efforts of the regimes to suppress the movement and how the movement not only survived but also expanded. To what extent did the movement bring upon itself unnecessary opposition because of aggressiveness and tactics? Albert Wardin describes the contributions the movement made to the religious life of Russia and examines its numerical success.

Part One

1

The Russian Empire At Mid-Century

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Russia was a leading world power. The empire incorporated Russian Poland and the Baltic in the west, Bessarabia and Ukraine in the south, crossed the Caucasus Mountains toward Turkey and Persia, and traversed the Ural Mountains into Siberia and on to the Far East on the Pacific Ocean. At this time it also included Alaska on the North American continent. Although selling Alaska to the USA in 1867, its expansion continued into Central Asia during the latter half of the nineteenth century. By the turn of the century, it incorporated 8,600,000 square miles, while Europe to the west had less than half the area.

Much of its terrritory was a vast plain, lacking the geographical variety of Western Europe. Distances were vast. Its climate was continental, beset with extremes—cold winters and hot summers. Rainfall was adequate in northern regions but decreased farther south, becoming desert in Central Asia. The tundra, a treeless area, prevailed in the north, followed farther south by a forest region and then to steppes with its excellent black earth. In contrast to the rest of Europe with its maritime climate and variety of soil and vegetation, Russia was monolithic, separate in its own distinct Eurasian world. In spite of its vast size, its limited access to the Atlantic Ocean and lack of ice-free ports isolated it from much of the world.1

The People

The population of the Empire in 1850 was about sixty-seven million but its density was only twelve persons per square kilometer, an eighth of Great Britain and a sixth of France. Population was concentrated in the central provinces of European Russia. Over ninety percent of the population was rural. Its largest city was St. Petersburg, the capital, with over half a million.

The population was multi-national. About three-fourths of its people were Slavic—Russian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian. Another Slavic people were the Poles in the west who numbered five million. Baltic peoples (Lithuanians and Latvians) lived in the west; Finno-Ugrians (including Estonians and Finns), lived in the north with Finnish tribal peoples to the east; and Romanians in Bessarabia. The Caucasus included a medley of people including Armenians, Georgians, and Turkish peoples, while Turkish and Mongolian peoples inhabited central Asia. Many tribal peoples lived in Siberia.

A leading nationality, which will be an important bridge in the movement of evangelical free churches, were the Germans, which numbered around one million, growing to around 1,800,000 by the end of the century. As early as the sixteenth century under Ivan the Terrible, Germans settled in Moscow, some as captives in the Livonian Wars, but many came as officers, craftsmen, merchants, and technicians. With Russia’s incorporation of Baltic territories under Peter the Great in the eighteenth century, Baltic Germans were added and in turn found high places of service in the Russian state. Under Catherine the Great in the last half of the eighteenth century and her grandson Alexander I in the early nineteenth, large numbers of Germans settled on agricultural lands in the Volga region and Ukraine. Later in the century, other Germans migrated from Russian Poland and Germany into Volhynia in Ukraine.

The diverse populations produced a variety of cultural differences. While the Slavic peoples were Orthodox, other peoples such as Poles and Baltic peoples looked to the West and were primarily either Roman Catholic or Lutheran. Germans were predominantly Protestant but with a significant Roman Catholic minority. Jews were a large minority in Russian Poland and the western provinces. Moslems were well represented in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Schismatics were found in various parts of the empire but were particularly important in the Caucasus. Pagan tribes and Buddhists lived in Siberia and the Far East.

Racial, linguistic, religious, and social differences produced diverse lifestyles and perceptions. This was particularly noticeable between German and Slav. Germans were commonly regarded as people of self-discipline, order, hard work, frugality, and energy. They in turn regarded the Slavs as more relaxed, punctuated with sudden bursts of energy, even disorderly and squanderers of time. Although the regime drew on the skills of the Germans in government, trade, and agriculture, numbers of Russians began to resent the predominance of Germans in government and their cultural influence and economic strength in society in the last decades of the nineteenth century. They also became increasingly concerned about German power on the world scene.

Although the aristocracy was less than 1.5 percent of the population, they appropriated much of the nation’s wealth. The upper ranks of the nobility, numbers of them living in extreme luxury, were strongly westernized, speaking French or other languages as well as Russian. Some of the population was in manufacture, mining, trade, and the military, but the masses toiled on the land with possibly around forty-five percent of the population serfs. Serfdom was a backward economic system that hindered innovation and mobility. The serf owned the feudal lord either payments in money or kind or labor services. The land holdings of the serf were part of a village commune. Serfs were unskilled, unmotivated, generally illiterate, and poor workers.2

Government and the Economy

At mid-century the Tsar was Nicholas I (1825–1855), who was an absolute monarch. Nicholas admired the patriarchal Prussian regime and sought to govern by militaristic principles. The Third Department of the Chancery employed political police who guarded against subversion. Rigid censorship prevailed, and travel abroad was curtailed. The minister of education, S. S. Uvarov, enunciated the doctrine of “Official Nationality”—Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationality. Autocracy was the principle of governance, the Orthodox Church was arbiter in religious values, and Nationality reflected the role of the Russian people. Legal rights for the masses were few.

Socially and economically a great chasm existed between the nobility and gentry on the top and the serfs at the bottom. Although manufacturing increased in the first half of the nineteenth century, Russia was far behind in economic development and education. Russia was farther behind the West in 1850 than in 1800. Russia possessed some hard-surfaced roads but most roads were poor and distances were great. In 1855 it possessed only 1,000 kilometers of railroad, only a sixth of Germany’s mileage. Russia, however, improved shipping on its waterways. Schooling was limited with unqualified teachers and low standards. Nevertheless Russia produced notable figures in literature, music, and art. Beginning in the sixteenth century, Russia borrowed from the West and welcomed foreign technicians, merchants, and military figures who would enhance its strength. Both Peter the Great and Catherine the Great widely adopted western standards and encouraged western migrants. But Russia with its own eastern traditions was also xenophobic and sought to preserve its own unique heritage. The Slavophiles romanticized Russia’s past, e...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part 1: Prologue
• Part 2: Prospects-German and Baltic Beginnings, 1855–1884
• Part 3: Prospects-Ukrainian and Russian Beginnings, 1860–1884
• Part 4: Prospects-The Aristocratic Impulse, 1874–1884
• Part 5: Peril, 1884–1905
• Part 6: Possibilities and Uncertainties, 1905–1917
• Images
• Maps
• Bibliography
• Periodcals