Scandinavian influence on the religious life of north-west Russia in the 17th-20th centuries

The article is devoted to the four-century history of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in the north-west of Russia. The first Lutheran parish in these lands was founded in 1590. In the 17th century, under Swedish rule, Ingermanlandia was covered with a network of Lutheran parishes. After its return to Russia in the 18th century and beginning with the resettlement in the vicinity of St. Petersburg of German colonists, the presence of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church developed further. In 1917, the Petrogradsky Church District included 119 parishes, 167 churches, 683 prayer houses, about 120 pastors, and 703 000 parishioners, of whom more than half lived in the northwestern provinces. It was in the “northern capital” that the central organs of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia were located: the General and Petrograd Consistories. After the revolution of 1917, the persecution of Lutherans began. In the late 1930’s, their last houses of worship were closed, and soon the Germans and Finns were deported. In the 1990’s, the revival of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia began, and St. Petersburg, as before, has become its centre