Ukrainian Evangelical Peasants as “Cultural Pioneers” of Late Imperial Russia

Abstract

After 1861 a cultural dialogue between Russian indigenous religious dissenters and German andMennonite colonists precipitated the spread of evangelical culture and various radical religious sectsamong the peasants of the southern frontier in the Russian Empire. These new sects among Russianand Ukrainian peasants were reminiscent of those in the West three and a half centuries earlier. Theoverwhelming majority of these groups, which were called the Ukrainian Stundists by their contemporaries, shared the theology and practices of their Western counterparts. They becamepredecessors of different evangelical Christian churches in southern Russia, including Baptists (Stundo-Baptists), Adventists and Pentecostals.