The Stundist movement began in 1858 when German believers began to actively present the gospel of Christ to Russian-speaking neighbors near the city of Odessa. The Germans had come into the area under a Homestead Act, but had been forbidden to proselytize among the Russian Orthodox. Some of these Protestants from Germany had settled on Russian soil for monetary reasons, but among them were those pressed out of Germany for their biblical convictions, such as the colonists coming from Wurttemberg who settled in Bessarabia.
It appears that these German believers languished for years spiritually, but in the mid-1800s experienced a reviving in the province of Cherson under the Bible teaching of men like Bonnenkemper (?-1867). He had initially been sent by an organization called Basle Mission to the Caucasus, but was expelled from that territory, and instead took up the work in a German colony near Odessa. Farm laborers came from distant places to work at harvest time. Bonnenkemper introduced the gospel to these laborers, and they carried the Word of God back to their homes. This overgrew the walls of cultural and religious apartheid. The German believers saw that their Russian neighbors and employees were not so closed or self-satisfied after all.
During the reign of Czar Alexander I, certain evangelical Quakers approached the czar about completing the translation of the Bible into the Russian vernacular. The Czar followed through, and encouraged the sale of Bibles. Hearing about this breakthrough, Bonnenkemper went to St. Petersburg and obtained Russian-language New Testaments and leaflets. You cannot bottle the wind, and in time the testimony of the gospel spread among the Russian Moujiks who began regular gatherings for prayer and Bible study called “Bibel Stunde” meaning the “Bible Hour.” In time the saints themselves were nicknamed stunda or stundists.
E. H. Broadbent says, “The Russian believers…came straightway to the conviction that the New Testament teaching and pattern was the baptism of believers by immersion, and in their thorough consistency immediately put this into practice, so that it became universal among those who believed. They apprehended, too, that Breaking of Bread was the Lord’s command and was for believers only, and on this apprehension they also acted. The clerical system of the Orthodox Church disappeared as they understood from the Scriptures the constitution of the Church and the churches, the priesthood of all believers, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the gifts and the liberty of ministry He gives for rule in the churches, for edifying the saints, and for spreading the gospel among all.”
Even open preaching enjoyed a level of freedom under the Czar Alexander II. It was during this time that two other movements began, called the Baptists and the Pashkofites. We judge that all three movements were spiritual works of God. The Baptists and the Stundists were active in the Caucasus and in south Russia. The Paschkofites began through the preaching of Lord Radstock among the nobility when he came to St. Petersburg in 1866. One of the new believers was Vassily Alexandrovich Pashkoff, Colonel of the Guards of His Royal Highness. A man on speaking terms with the Czar, he owned mines on Russia’s eastern frontier, and lived in one of the most opulent homes in St. Petersburg (it later became the French Embassy). G. H. Lang said, “Lord Radstock and Dr. Baedeker began that testimony which greatly stimulated the vast Stundist movement in Greek Orthodox Russia.” How did they “stimulate” the movement? By providing Bibles and Bible teaching.
As usual, when the work gained strength, so did the opposition. In 1877 and 1878, the Orthodox church began to stoke the fires of animosity. Sadly, the more forebearing Czar Alexander II was assassinated by a Nihilist bomb in the streets of St. Petersburg in 1881. This seemed to explode the careers of any non-joiners like Pashkoff. In the ruling class, paranoia ran high. When Alexander III came to power, he clamped down on certain political dissenters, things foreign, and everything that did not carry the approval of the Russian Orthodox church.
In 1883, Frederick Baedeker’s mentor, George Muller, visited Pashkoff. Muller may have been the unwitting catalyst of heightened persecution by innocently holding Bible teaching meetings in Pashkoff’s mansion. Muller did not realize that the meetings were forbidden, and Pashkoff received a warning. That same year, Pashkoff and another prominent Christian, Count Korff, convened an all-Russian conference at their own expense. Three thousand delegates arrived in St. Petersburg. During a recess of the conference, the police swept in, arrested all the attendees, most of whom were lower class Russian peasants, and sent them back to their homes. The police were so efficient that the conveners of the conference didn’t even know where the attendees had gone until some days later.
The level of malice against the saints can be measured by the titles of two widely distributed leaflets after the year 1883, No Salvation Outside the Orthodox Church, and The Damned Stundist, recommended by an Archbishop of the Greek Church.
“Boom ye church thunders!
Flash forth ye curses of the councils!
Crush with eternal anathemas,
The outcast race of Stundists!
“Dark and gloomy, demon-like,
He shuns the flock, the Orthodox,
He skulks in nooks and corners dark,
God’s foe, the damned Stundist.”
In 1884, Pashkoff was exiled and eventually most of his belongings were confiscated.
Still alarmed by the rapid growth of the Baptist, Stundist, and Pashkoffist heresies, in 1892 the Holy Orthodox Church of Russia resolved to deal with dissenters. That year M. Pobiedonostzeff (Procurator of the Holy Synod from about 1880-1905) called a conference in Moscow, of Orthodox ecclesiastics from Russia’s 41 episcopates, to consider the spread of sectarianism in the Empire. Statistics were presented to the delegates proving that 28 out of the 41 dioceses were badly “infected” and that “the virulence of the infection” was beyond the clergy’s control.
“What are we to do,” he asked, “to win back to our midst those earnest and God-fearing men who have left us, and despise us?”
Pobiedonostzeff’s answer is in the resolutions adopted by the conference: “The rapid increase of these sects is a serious danger to the State. Let all sectarians be forbidden to leave their own villages…Let all offenders against the faith be tried, not by a jury, but by ecclesiastical judges. Let their passports be marked, so that they shall be neither employed nor harbored, and residence in Russia shall become impossible for them. Let them be held to be legally incapable of renting, purchasing, or holding real property. Let their children be removed from their control, and educated in the orthodox faith.”
Pobiedonostzeff’s penal code give a few of his practical measures:
Article 187–Offense: Leaving the Church for another religious community. Punishment: Loss of civil and personal rights. Transportation. In milder cases eighteen months in a reformatory.
Article 189–Offense: Preaching or writing religious works to pervert others. Punishment: First offense, the loss of certain personal rights, and imprisonment from eight to sixteen months. Second offense, imprisonment in a fortress from thirty-two to forty-eight months. Third offense, banishment.
Article 196–Offense: Spreading the views of heretics or dissenters, or aiding such. Punishment: Banish-ment to Siberia, Transcaucasia, or other remote part of the Empire.
Frederick Baedeker wrote, “The number of exiles sent over the Caucasus has lately been greatly increased. They are mostly Stundists, Molokans, and Baptists: men and women who have been taught by the Word of God, and who will not bow in worship to pictures, nor receive absolution from priests…
“Thus Russia treats her best citizens; and these men are real heroes of patient endurance…. Three brethren were brought in, in chains. One of them recognized me, and wept sore. Their homes and wives and children are in the neighborhood of Moscow. It is cruel work! These are the Czar’s choicest subjects.”
In 1905, the Czar issued an edict granting liberty of conscience and freedom of assembly. This reversal of policy testifies that persecution did not break the believers. Instead Pobiedonostzeff retired and the Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox church issued this statement, “True faith is obtained by the grace of God, through instruction, humility and good examples; on this account the use of force is denied to the Church, which does not count it needful to hold erring children fast against their will. Therefore the Orthodox Church has nothing against the rescinding of the law forbidding to separate from the Orthodox Church.”
Material taken from:
C. A.W., The Stundists, The Persecution of Believers in Russia at the Close of the Last Century, Bible Truth Pub., 1979.
E. B. Lanin, The Tsar Persecutor.
J. Brown (editor), The Stundists: The Story of a Great Religious Revolt, James Clarke & Co., Fleet St.
N. I. Saloff-Astakhoff, Christianity in Russia, Loizeaux.