Protestants in Russia constitute 1–2% (i.e. 1.5 million – 3 million adherents) of the overall population of the country. Additionally there are the Spiritual Christians, including around 15.000–20.000 Doukhobors 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.Protestantism in Russia, past, present, and future, Stetson University.
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.2013 End of the Year Survey — Russia WIN/GIA
History
The first Protestant churches (Lutheran, Reformed, and to a lesser extent, Anglican) in the Tsardom of Russia appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries in major cities and international ports such as German Quarter at Moscow or Arkhangelsk in connection with expatriate communities from western Europe. The first permanent German-Lutheran congregation with own church building appeared in Moscow in 1576 and Reformed parish was opened in Tula in 1652. According to other sources, as early as 1560–1565, Tsar Ivan the Terrible authorized the construction of the first Moscow Lutheran church. A British trading post and an Anglican church were established in Arkhangelsk as early as the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Protestant foreigners were permitted to settle in Russia, practice their faith, and build churches—though without the right to preach to the local Orthodox population; in other words, they were treated better than Catholics and Russian sectarians. The Russian state preferred to recruit Protestants specifically from among foreigners. The Lutheran churches, in particular, represented a sizeable minority in pre-1917 Russia. Lutheranism was the largest officially recognized and state-supported Protestant denomination. Its adherents included career military officers, merchants, the technical intelligentsia, prosperous farmers, and even members of the high aristocracy related to the Imperial family.
The publication in 1702 of Peter the Great’s manifesto "On Inviting Foreigners to Russia"—which guaranteed freedom of religion for them, as well as Russia’s conquest of territories in the Baltic region and Finland—lands inhabited predominantly by Lutherans—necessitated specific state regulation of this denomination: on the one hand, granting it the firm legal status of a faith "under the Emperor's patronage" and even state support; on the other, imposing strict state control. Initially, in 1702, the Secret Collegium of the Military Council was established to serve as a judicial authority for foreign Christian denominations. In 1711, a non-state position of Superintendent was introduced (the first and only person to hold it was the pastor Bartold Vaget, 1656–1724). From 1727, the affairs of Lutherans—and from 1734, those of all Protestants—were administered by the particular Collegium of Justice for Livonian, Estonian, and Finnish Affairs until 1832, which took over the functions of the Secret Collegium after the latter could no longer cope with the growing Protestant population. While handling criminal-administrative, property, and family matters, as well as issuing certificates to pastors and resolving inter-congregational disputes, neither the Collegium of Justice nor its regional consistories interfered in the internal life of parishes, except in cases requiring arbitration. Later, in 1775, this body adopted a statute regulating pastors' obligations to the state.
In the 18th century, Russian empresses of both Russian and German descent extended their patronage to the Lutheran community. For instance, Empress Anna provided the funds for the construction of St. Anne's Lutheran Church in St. Petersburg in 1735. Under Czarina Catherine II (the Great), large numbers of German settlers were invited to Russia by publishing two manifestos in 1762 and 1763, including Lutherans, Mennonites (also of Dutch origin), Lutherans, Reformed, the Herrnhuters (Moravian Brethren), as well as Roman Catholics. Those who went to Russia had special rights, such as being exempt from military service and others.
In 1809, following the incorporation of Swedish Finland into Russia, the authorities established the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, independent of the Church of Sweden. In 1818, modeled on the Prussian Union, a decree created a unified—yet unviable—"Evangelical Church" for all Protestants, headed by a bishop. Finally, in 1832, the General Evangelical Lutheran Consistory was established in Saint Petersburg, a partly state church in accordance to Sweden model, with Reformed parishes also placed under its jurisdiction. From 1817, the state body responsible for the administration of Protestant church affairs was the Third Division of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education; from 1832, this role was assumed by the Department of Spiritual Affairs of Foreign Confessions (i.e. non-Orthodox) within the Ministry of Internal Affairs. A privileged exception was made for Anglican, American, and Dutch churches in Russia, which operated under the patronage of their respective foreign embassies, regardless of their location. In 1896, the Statute on Spiritual Affairs of Foreign Confessions was enacted, regulating—among others—the activities of Lutherans, Reformed Christians, and Anglicans.
In the second half of the 19th century, the authorities adopted a starkly different, repressive policy toward evangelical free churches, such as Adventists, Baptists, Mennonite Brethern, Pashkovite Evangelical Christians, Plymouth Brethren, and Shtundists, that sought to foster Christian revival and preach among Russia's native population. The earliest from them, Shtundists had roots in the work of the Swiss Pietist pastor Johannes Bonekemper within Jerman Lutherans of Novorossiya about Black Sea from 1832. From the 1880s to 1905 the Oberprocurator of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Konstantin Pobedonostsev oversaw systematic repression of them, including arrest, impresment, banishment (article 187 of the Criminal Code was applied, stipulating the deprivation of all civil and personal rights for leaving the church and joining another religious community), internal exile (article 196 prescribing exile to Siberia, Transcaucasia, or other remote locations for disseminating heretical or sectarian teachings or aiding in such activities), confiscation of property and the forcible separation of children from parents. Furthermore, the 1874 Military Service Statute extended the obligation of military service to foreign colonists—who had previously been exempt—prompting up to half of the Russian Mennonites and the entire community of Moravian Brethren to emigrate from Russia to the Americas due to their pacifist beliefs.
The first Russian Baptist communities arose, during the 1860s (or, according to some disputed accounts, as early as the 1850s), among unrelated groups, namely German Mennonite and Lutheran Pietist colonists in Novorossiya and other regions, exiled Russian Molokans in Transcaucasia, and Orthodox Ukrainian Shtundists. In 1867, Nikita Voronin (1840–1905) became first Russian adherent. In 1869, Johann Gerhard Oncken, an European Baptist leader made tour to Russia. The formally organized Baptist church was established in St. Petersburg in 1880. And in the 1880s one of first converts, Vasilii Pavlov (1854–1924) went to Hamburg, Germany, to study at Oncken's seminary. Despite persecution, the movement grew into a mass phenomenon, and in 1884, the Union of Russian Baptists of Southern Russia and Caucasus was formed. The Baptist movement flourished particularly among the Baltic Germans.
In the 1870s, the Plymouth Brethren began missionary work here. A key figure was the Lord Radstock, who arrived in St. Petersburg from England in 1874 and launched an active evangelistic campaign among the city's aristocracy. The resulting community became known as the "Pashkovites," named after their local leader, the guardian colonel Vasily Pashkov (1831–1902). Radstock was succeeded by the Swiss pastor Otto Stockmayer. In 1882–83, at the invitation of the Pashkovites, Radstock’s mentor—the Anglo-German missionary George Müller, a leader of the Open Brethren—preached in St. Petersburg; he baptized Vasily Pashkov, Natalia Liven and several others in 1882. The activities of this essentially non-denominational movement came to be known as the "Peterburgian Revival" or Great Russian Awakening. In the early 20th century, under the leadership of Ivan Prokhanov, the movement evolved into a particular denomination known as the "Evangelical Christians," a group closely aligned with the General Baptists and not Plymouth Brethren.
Even less information is available regarding the activities of the Exclusive Brethren during the pre-1917 period (they were often grouped with the Shtundists). It is known that they originated in Germany. A collection of the Brethren's hymns has survived. The movement ceased to exist in Russia after 1917; only in Transcarpathia—a region later incorporated into the USSR—were there about 30 Brethren congregations.
Old Apostolics ( Irvingites) established organized church congregations in St. Petersburg, Riga, and Reval. Representatives appeared in St. Petersburg in the late 1860s; General von Eberg served as a missionary there. The movement had between 100 and 200 adherents. The church gained legal recognition in 1905. Chapel services were conducted in German. The congregation was dissolved in the spring of 1933.
The history of Methodism in the Russian Empire began from the 1874 work of Swedish preachers in Finland. The first congregation was founded in the city of Nikolaistad (Vaasa) in 1880, followed by one in Gelsingfors (Helsinki) in 1884, and another in St. Petersburg in 1889 (primarily among Finns). In 1907, the Finland and St. Petersburg Mission was established under the leadership of George Simons of the Methodist Episcopal Church. A parish was officially registered in the Lithuanian region in 1906, and in 1909, the St. Petersburg Methodist community was formally constituted as the First Methodist Episcopal Church which opened its own house of prayer five years later, while officially a parish was established in Arensburg (Kuressaare) in Estonian region, in 1910. Both during and after World War I, Methodists—with American support—actively assisted the wounded and victims of the war. A broader initiative, independent of the aforementioned mission, was the work of the American Methodist Episcopal Mission to spread Methodism among Russian Koreans in the Far East; there, the Siberian Synod of the Methodist Church was established in 1921, uniting 107 congregations.
The first Seventh-day Adventists appeared in 1882 among the German Mennonites of Crimea and Novorossiya; the first foreign preacher was Karl L. R. Conradi. Several congregations were organized in 1886. The first general meeting of Adventists took place in the Caucasus in 1890, and the Eastern European Mission Field of the Seventh-day Adventist Church was established in 1891. Congregations emerged in new regions, including among ethnic Russians.