Colonel V. A. Pashkov: Leader of Russia’s Lost Reformation

The reviewer considers Filipp Nikitin’s new book on Colonal Vasilii A. Pashkov, a Russian Evangelical leader in the 1870s and 1880s. A rich Russian aristocrat and landowner, Pashkov was an unlikely missionary, but his conversion at the hands of the British Lord Radstock in 1874 led to a lifetime of preaching and charity among both social elites and the lowest members of society. Although initially not in conflict with the Russian Orthodox Church, Pashkov’s increasing prominence and his efforts to unite Russia’s various Evangelical movements led to his exile in 1884, where he remained for the rest of his life. The reviewer compliments Nikitin’s comprehensive use of archival sources, drawn from a huge number of collections in Russia and abroad. This makes his book a significant contribution to the historiography, much of which is fragmented or out of date. The author’s decision to release previously unpublished documents in the book’s appendix is an excellent contribution. However, the reviewer points out that Nikitin quotes too much from and relies too heavily on source material, which drowns out his authorial voice: it is argued that the author should spend more time analysing the sources rather than just quoting them. The reviewer also suggests bringing in more contextualisation and consulting some of the recent conceptual approaches to religious biography.

Introduction

The introduction places the missionary-Waorani story within the context of the history of American evangelicalism. The iconic narrative of the five men slain in Ecuador stands in a tradition of two centuries of missionary zeal and sacrifice memorialized in print that began with David Brainerd (1718–47). His diaries, edited by Jonathan Edwards as An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd, inspired generations of believers. Other memoirs followed, establishing the missionary narrative as an influential genre of religious biography. Such books presented missionaries, especially those who died in pursuit of their calling, as saints, heroes, or martyrs. They also were products of their times. The Triumph of John and Betty Stam, about a missionary couple murdered in China in 1934, included a note of victory that reflected the influence of Keswick holiness. Widespread interest in the “Ecuador martyrs” twenty-two years later, demonstrated the staying power of the missionary narrative and the increased cultural visibility of theologically conservative Protestants as they left separatist fundamentalism for a “new” evangelicalism. The missionary-Waorani encounter also had an unexpected, almost miraculous sequel that became part of the accepted history even if elements of it were romanticized and misleading.