Baháʼí Faith in Russia

[1] The woman later known as Táhirih, who played a central role in the religion of the Báb, was from an influential clerical family from Azerbaijan, which was then ruled by Russia.

[7] The Association of Religion Data Archives (relying on World Christian Encyclopedia) estimated the number of Baháʼís in Russia at about 18,990 in 2005.

Among the most notable facts is a woman of Azerbaijani background who would play a central role in the religion of the Báb, viewed by Bahá´ís as the direct predecessor of the Baháʼí Faith – she would be later named Tahirih, though her story would be in the context of Persia.

[15] His letters also asked them to renounce their material possessions, work together to settle disputes, and endeavour towards the betterment of the world and its peoples.

Beware that nothing deter thee from setting thy face towards thy Lord, the Compassionate, the Most Merciful.”[16]In his Súriy-i-Haykal, Baháʼu'lláh included the Lawh-i-Malik-i-Rús, praising Czar Alexander II of Russia in these terms: "when this Wronged One was sore-afflicted in prison, the minister of the highly esteemed government (of Russia)—may God, glorified and exalted be He, assist him!—exerted his utmost endeavor to compass My deliverance.

In and during the Third Partition of Poland The first may have been in the 1870s when Polish writer Walerian Jablonowski[23] wrote several articles covering its early history in Persia.

[3] Initially Russian diplomats observed the community as distinct from the Moslem one but being “closely knit community of honest, law-abiding people, somewhat reminiscent of the early Christian churches in the first century after Christ.”[1] During that narrow period of time between 1887 and 1894, a court case was held following the assassination of a Baháʼí that for a time would vindicate the Baháʼís.

In 1910 the Samarkand Baháʼí community elected its first assembly in addition to having a school, and built a center which held four meetings a week.

In Tashkand, a community of Baháʼís had expanded to about 1900 members, supporting a library, Persian and Russian language schools, and large meetings were being advertised with the permission of government authorities.

Among the lesser known but more substantive in gathering original materials and from an earlier dates from the 1860s would be Jean-Albert Bernard Dorn and Nicolai Vladimirovich Khanykov both from St. Petersburg.

[1] He befriended the Baháʼís in Ashgabat during the trial where Gulpaygani wrote a treatise for him on the Risáliy-i Iskandaríyyh as a summary of the life of the founder.

In the fall of 1902 Mirza 'Azizu'llah visited Tolstoy with a personal message from ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and discussed the history and teachings of the religion during a period of house arrest that followed his excommunication from the Orthodox church.

In 1922 early Baháʼí Wellesley Tudor Pole began a long association with a project aimed at relieving the oppression the Bolsheviks imposed on religionists in Russia.

[42] In 1930 he was expelled from the Soviet Union during the Stalinist persecution of religion, and, from that time on, played an ever more significant role in the work and administration of the Iranian Baháʼí community.

Communist anti-Baháʼí pamphlets had been produced and encyclopedic articles were published in 1930 and 1933 partially reacting to the success of the religion reaching those who rejected by Islam and Communism.

Circa 1926 she joined the religion and gave this brooch to Martha Root who in turn sent it as a gift to the first Baháʼí House of Worship of the West where it was sold to raise money for the contraction to a Willard Hatch.

Aqa Habibullah Baqiroff of Tashkent was sentenced to ten years imprisonment "in the neighbourhood of the North Sea and the polar forests.

[1] Baháʼís had managed to re-enter various countries of the Eastern Bloc through the 1950s,[3] following a plan of the head of the religion at the time, Shoghi Effendi.

In 1962 in "Religion in the Soviet Union", Walter Kolarz notes: "Islam…is attacked by the communists because it is 'reactionary', encourages nationalist narrowmindness and obstructs the education and emancipation of women.

It is dangerous to Communism because of its broadmindness, its tolerance, its international outlook, the attention it pays to women's education and its insistence on equality of the sexes.

[2] However, in November 1987 the second Secretary in the Russian Embassy to India escorted the USSR's Ambassador-at-Large to the Baháʼí Lotus Temple and later a group of 120 performing artists from the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia visited it too.

[53] Russian diplomats in India as well as ballet dancers again visited the Indian House of Worship in 1988[54] and 1989 this time including Orthodox Church leaders, film personalities, poets and intellectuals.

In this brief time ʻAlí-Akbar Furútan was able to return in 1990 as the guest of honor at the election of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the Soviet Union.

[43] Continuing the popularity of the Indian Baháʼí House of Worship, individuals from multiple cities of Russia and former Soviet republics, as well as groups of researchers, reporters, and their families went in winter 1989 and spring 1990.

[6] Thus by 1997 the Baháʼís were unregistered by the government along with several other religious communities,[58] and more than just being unable to form administrative institutions, own properties like temples, and publish literature, perform scholarly work and community service projects -their membership in a religion is simply unrecognized, the religion is considered banned,[59] and homes are raided for Baháʼí literature.

[60] As of 2007, under these harsh conditions, the Baháʼí community in Turkmenistan has still been unable to reach the required number of adult believers to be recognized by the government as a religion.

[7] In 1993 the Governing Board of the Ministry of Justice of the Azerbaijan Republic gave official permission for the functioning of the Baháʼí Community of Baku.

[64] Because of the quick pace of the Dissolution of the Soviet Union simultaneously with the religious freedoms initially achieved, local, regional and national assemblies formed and evolved in parallel.

[7] In the late summer of 1992, members of the Marion Jack Teaching Project who were working mostly within Russia at the time, came to Mongolia to participate in a concerted effort to share the religion with a wider range of Mongolians.

[68] Firuz Kazemzadeh is a noted scholar on Russian history, born in Moscow, and an active Baháʼí in the United States.