[1] Ivan the Terrible invited German artisans and professionals to help modernize institutions in what is now Russia, bringing Lutherans into then Muscovy.

[5][6] As a result of the Great Northern War, the former Swedish provinces of Livonia and Estonia, with their large Lutheran populations, were ceded to Russia.

To gain the support of the Baltic nobility, the Lutheran churches were granted freedom of dogma, liturgy and administration by Peter the Great.

[5] Catherine the Great's policy of populating frontier areas of the Russian Empire with immigrants further increased the number of German Lutherans in Russia.

[5] In 1905, full religious freedom was granted with an Edict of toleration and Lutheran churches were finally allowed to conduct services and their liturgy in the Russian language.

Despite approval of a new constitution for the Lutheran Church in 1924 by the new Bolshevik government, the collectivization policies of Joseph Stalin in 1928 scattered the population, and official anti-religion campaigns intensified in the 1930s under the authority of the 1929 Law on Religion resulting in the incarceration of pastors in deportation camps and, in some cases, their executions.

[9] The remaining Lutherans survived the collapse of the ELCR by joining existing Brethren communities (German: Bruedergemeinden), in which leadership and pastoral care was given by laypeople.

Such Brethren communities, heavily influenced by Pietism, had been in existence since the 19th century but had managed to survive the persecutions of the Soviet state due to their fluid structure.

[7] Despite the German origin of the Lutheran Church in Russia, the demographics had shifted to include an increasing number of other nationalities, with reports of up to 30% of the members in Central Asia being Russians in 2003.

The church is further divided into regional Lutheran denominations in Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Uzbekistan, as well as individual congregations in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

[11] The Archbishop is the Primate of ELCROS, the chairman of the General Synod, the president of the Episcopal Council, and head of the St Petersburg-based consistory.