Protestantism In Russia

Protestants in Russia constitute 1–2% (i.e. 1.5 million – 3 million adherents) of the overall population of the country. Additionally there are around 15.000-20.000 Dukhobors and 40.000 Molokans in Russia, who have similarities to Protestantism. By 2004, there were 4,435 registered Protestant societies representing 21% of all registered religious organizations, which is second place after Eastern Orthodoxy. By contrast in 1992 the Protestants reportedly had 510 organizations in Russia.

Many missionaries operating in the country are from Protestant denominations.''US State Department Religious Freedom Report on Russia, 2006'' According to a global survey conducted at the end of 2013, 1% of surveyed Russians identify as Protestants.

History

The first Protestant churches (Lutheran, Reformed) in Russia appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries in major towns and cities such as Moscow in connection with expatriate communities from western Europe. The Lutheran churches, in particular, represented a sizeable minority in pre-1917 Russia.

In the 18th century, under Czarina Catherine II (the Great), large numbers of German settlers were invited to Russia, including Mennonites, Lutherans, Reformed and also Roman Catholics.

The first Russian Baptist communities arose in unrelated strains in three widely separated regions of the Russian Empire (Transcaucasia, Ukraine, and St. Petersburg) in the 1860s and 1870s.

From the information of Christian History Institute, the number of Baptists in Russia significantly grew after World War I. Some Russian prisoners were converted by German missionaries and returned home to preach to others. The 1920s saw new opportunities for missionary work as the Bolshevik regime initially seemed to offer an olive branch to those identified as ‘sectarians’. In the 1930s, Stalinist repression decimated church life, with many arrests and church closures, but this was not the end of the story. The Second World War saw a relaxation of church-state relations in the Soviet Union and the Protestant community benefited alongside their Russian Orthodox counterparts. The immediate post-war period saw the growth of Baptist and Pentecostal congregations and there was
religious revival
in these years. Statistics provided by the leaders of the registered church suggest 250,000 baptised members in 1946 rising to 540,000 by 1958. In fact the influence of the Protestantism was much wider than these figures suggest: in addition to the existence of unregistered Baptist and Pentecostal groups, there were also thousands who attended worship without taking baptism. Many Baptist and Pentecostal congregations were in Ukraine. Women significantly outnumbered men in these congregations, though the pastors were male.

Although the Soviet state had established th
All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists in 1944
and encouraged congregations to register, this did not signal the end to the persecution of Christians. Many leaders and ordinary believers of different Protestant communities fell victims to the persecution by Communist regime, includin
imprisonment.
The leader of the Seventh-day Adventist movement in the Soviet Union Vladimir Shelkov (1895–1980) spent almost his entire life after 1931 in prison and died in a camp in Yakutia. Pentecostals were given 20–25 year prison terms ''en masse'' and many perished there, including one of the leaders of the movement, Ivan Voronaev.''L.Alexeeva, chapter 13, Memorial society page, in Russian''

In the period after the Second World War, Protestant believers in the USSR (Baptists, Pentecostals, Adventists etc.) were forced into mental hospitals and endured trials and imprisonment (often for refusal to enter military service). Some were even deprived of thei
parental rights

Forerunners and local reform movements

The history of indigenous, Russian evangelical Protestantism was anticipated by movements such as the Strigolniki in the 14th century and later in the 16th–18th centuries the Molokan,''Molokans around the world, Molokan web-site'' Dukhobor, Khlysts, to some extent, Subbotniks, and in 19th century Tolstoyan rural communes, who prepared the ground for the movement's future spread. The first evidence on some of the above communes' existence appeared in 16th – 17th centuries. Many of the above communities emigrated to Canada, the United States and Latin America in 19th and 20th centuries.


The Strigolniki were followers of a Russian religious sect in the middle of the 14th and first half of the 15th century, they had Iconoclastic tendencies and some proto-Protestant characteristics. According to Karetnikova, the Strigolniki were a response to changes in the Orthodox church, the Strigolniki wanted to return from ritualism to the simplicity of New Testament Christianity, emphasizing the spiritual meaning of the sacraments and basing their views on scripture.'' Каретникова М. С.'' Русское богоискательство. Национальные корни евангельско-баптистского движения The Strigolniki opposed the Orthodox church, refusing to recognize its bishops and priests. Active participants of the sect were tradespeople and low-ranking clergy. They renounced all ecclesiastic