Protestantism in Russia

[5] The first Protestant churches (Lutheran, Reformed) in Russia appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries in major towns and cities such as Moscow in connection with expatriate communities from western Europe.

In the 18th century, under Czarina Catherine II (the Great), large numbers of German settlers were invited to Russia, including Mennonites, Lutherans, Reformed and also Roman Catholics.

The Second World War saw a relaxation of church-state relations in the Soviet Union and the Protestant community benefited alongside their Russian Orthodox counterparts.

[6] In fact the influence of the Protestantism was much wider than these figures suggest: in addition to the existence of unregistered Baptist and Pentecostal groups, there were also thousands who attended worship without taking baptism.

[7] Although the Soviet state had established the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists in 1944, and encouraged congregations to register, this did not signal the end to the persecution of Christians.

Many leaders and ordinary believers of different Protestant communities fell victims to the persecution by Communist regime, including imprisonment.

The leader of the Seventh-day Adventist movement in the Soviet Union Vladimir Shelkov (1895–1980) spent almost his entire life after 1931 in prison and died in a camp in Yakutia.

[18] The Molokans had multiple Protestant-like aspects, they rejected the Orthodox priesthood, icons, had their own presbyters, they held the bible as their main guide and interpreted the sacraments "spiritually", being in many ways similar to the Quakers.

In April 2007, the European Court of Human Rights obliged Russian state to pay EUR 10,000 (ten thousand euros) as a non-pecuniary damage for the refusal in registration of the Moscow branch of Salvation Army.

[31] The first attempts to translate the books of the Bible into the contemporary Russian language as an alternative to the older Church Slavonic, by that time used primarily in liturgical settings among Eastern Slavs, took place in the 16th and 17th centuries.

But the mentioned works (by the deacon of Posolsky Prikaz Avraamiy Firsov, pastor E.Gluk, archbishop Methodiy (Smirnov)) were lost during political turbulence and wars.

The publications by the Russian Bible Society are based on the shared doctrine of the early Christian church and include non-confessional commentary.