In 1884 Pashkov called the first Russian Congress of Evangelical-Protestant communities. For active spiritual and educational activities Pashkov, along with Korf, on the initiative of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod of Pobedonostsev was expelled from Russia and ended his life in a foreign land.

The” Patriarch ” of Russian baptism, V. G. Pavlov, stood at the origins of the Evangelical movement, carried out a human rights Ministry, gave his whole life to the cause of preaching the gospel, for which he was constantly persecuted, visited forty tsarist prisons, endured two severe exile, where he lost his wife and three children. The route of his missionary travels ran from the Caucasus to the Far East, from Odessa to America.

Religious and public figure I. S. Prokhanov worked as a preacher, organizer of book publishing, system of spiritual and Protestant education, Christian cooperative movement. He spoke at a State Conference organized by the Provisional Government in August 1917, with an extensive program of intellectual, moral and spiritual education of the Russian people.

There were few quiet years in the history of Russian baptism. The most severe persecution fell on the heads of Christian Baptists in the era of Pobedonostsev. Religious gatherings outside the Orthodox Church were considered extremely dangerous freethinking. Marriages of Russian Protestants were not registered, children were not admitted to schools, preachers were sent to hard labor in the regions of Transcaucasia and Siberia.

At a time when Pobedonostsev’s associates branded non-Orthodox Christians as renegades, the most educated and broad-minded part of the Russian intelligentsia sided with the persecuted, defending freedom of conscience, and saw in the persecuted the support of the nation, people original, noble, with Christian qualities of the soul. One of the descendants of the glorious Volkonsky family, a famous figure of Russian culture, Prince Sergei Mikhailovich, repeatedly spoke to the public of Russia and Western countries with criticism of religious and nationalist views. < 169> How can a person be forbidden to classify himself as a member of a particular belief? Volkonsky asked. – I’ll be a Baptist tomorrow, won’t that make me stop being Russian?” How many of us, thanks to the confusion of the terms “Russian” and “Orthodox”, have penetrated into the life of the logically absurd and morally cruel. Violence against others has a corrupting influence on the conscience of the majority for whose sake it is created. Poison directed against others has a return effect. The confusion of concepts is being introduced into the public consciousness more and more: only the Orthodox is truly Russian, the non-Orthodox is no longer a real patriot.”

These words were written about 100 years ago, but it feels as if they fell from the cold pen in our time of complex interweaving of heterogeneous ideas. The desire to turn the teaching of Christ into a narrow ideological creed is not new in world and Russian history. True Christians do not think of creating a single dominant Church, for Christ taught not to rule, but to serve all humbly in love. It is no accident that the General Christian prayer begins with the words “our father”. Is the Almighty God only the God of the Orthodox? Or the Baptist God? The God of the Catholics? The Creator of heaven and earth is the Father of the whole human race, and in every nation who honors His commandments is free from the spirit of separation. For cultural, spiritually educated Christians who live according to the gospel, there are no problems of interethnic and inter-confessional. They easily communicate with each other, because they pay attention first of all to what unites, and not to what divides.

Christians-Baptists and believers of Orthodox churches revere and recognize the same Bible as a doctrinal document, confess Jesus Christ as the God-man and Savior of the soul, share the Biblical doctrine of the Triune God, believe in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and all Russia, like his predecessors, holds regular meetings with the leading Ministers of the Union of Christian Baptist churches. The Patriarch repeatedly makes public statements about the fact that the Moscow Patriarchate has no claims to Christian denominations with historical roots in Russia and does not bless the release of unfriendly pamphlets. As for all sorts of exotic cults and Western religious organizations with modernist theology that belittles the divine dignity of Jesus Christ, they cause natural concern on the part of Christians of all traditional faiths. While not agreeing with the distortions of the gospel, Baptists at the same time recognize the right of every person to freedom of choice and deny all methods of coercion and violence against the individual in the spiritual and educational process.