“Conflict amid Conversion: Mormon Proselytizing in Russian Finland, 1860-1914.”

MHA May 2007 Conference Paper

Zachary R. Jones¹

On a cold Swedish winter’s day in 1884, a letter arrived on the desk of the Anthon H. Lund, a mission leader of the LDS Church’s Stockholm Sweden Missionary Conference. This letter, from Mormon missionary August L. Hedberg who was then serving in Finland, reported that in the last few weeks he had baptized a number of individuals, but everywhere “police officers were after me. [and] The newspapers throughout the province were filled with stories concerning me.”² This letter, like the many documents unstudied before my research, captures the essence of LDS missionary labors in Imperial Russia’s province, the Grand Duchy of Finland [modern day Finland], as LDS missionaries labored there intently from 1875 to 1892.

This paper aims to briefly address the Mormon image in Russia between 1860 and 1917 and LDS missionary efforts in Finland between 1875 and 1892. My study of Mormon image in Russia argues that Russians, and in some ways Europeans, viewed Mormonism quite differently than Americans. The different perceptions of Mormonism (discussed shortly) that I have discovered offer new perspectives on Mormon, Finnish, and Russian history. LDS missionary efforts in Russian Finland, a province ruled by Russia from 1809 to 1917, tell us a great deal about how Russian rule affected religious life in Finland and how LDS missionaries reacted under political and ecclesiastical pressure. All in all, Mormon efforts in the Grand Duchy of Finland failed because Mormonism was, as Russians and Finns saw it, ‘fanatical.’ The Russian government wanted nothing to do with a ‘violent, socialist, and sexually perverse religious sect.’ However, although Mormonism was considered detrimental to Russia society, numerous Finns still embraced the LDS faith and it transformed their lives. While it landed LDS missionaries and Finnish converts in jail, Mormonism nonetheless empowered converts with a newfound ability to leave an oppressive society, pursue newfound economic opportunities in the American West, and become involved in a controversial yet captivating religious movement. Mormonism was truly bittersweet for Finnish converts, and it may have been the gamble of their lives. Perhaps that is the Mormon enigma, namely that 19^th century Mormonism was just as attractive as it was fanatical to those who encountered it, and that is why missionaries like Elder Hedberg were able to baptize converts while simultaneously have Finland’s newspapers filled with debasing stories about Mormonism.

Mormon Image: In my quest to document the image of Mormonism in Russia and Finland I have stumbled across, in some ways, how Mormonism was viewed across the whole of Europe. I say this because nearly every published source in Russian, Finnish, or Swedish produced during this period on Mormonism was translated from a European language or composed by accessing European sources. Importantly, Russians and Finns learned about Mormonism from Europeans before Mormonism even entered their nations. This partly occurred because educated Russians and some Finns were bi- tri- and even quad-lingual and European books, and Western knowledge in general, was regularly imported from Europe. Thus in many ways, the image of Mormonism in Russia provides a general macro-view of how Mormonism was viewed across Europe during the late 19^th century.

Although I am unsure if I am the first to say this, I want to make the statement that Europeans perceived Mormonism very differently than did Americans. Studies by historian David B. Davis have shown how American anti-Mormon portrayals (as well as anti-Masonic and anti-Catholic) were formulated by mainstream Protestant America in effort to show how the LDS faith did not conform to the cultural norms of the dominate American culture, such as Protestantism, the authority of the Bible, and the proper role of women outlined by the Cult of Domesticity.³ European religious culture was, however, not so homogenous. It was filled with numerous religions, ethnicities, cultures, languages, political ideologies, and economic systems—sometimes warring—and an entire mass of social forces not present in the US. These forces saturated portrayals of Mormonism penned by European and later Russian authors. In essence, Europeans and Russians made sense of Mormonism in relation to their respective society’s cultural norms; and that is why the Russian perception of Mormonism is entirely unique.

The ways in which Europeans wrote about Mormonism differed from American publications in a number of ways. European Anti-Mormon literature contained similar themes also found in anti-Semitic literature, such as containing descriptions of ritual murders conducted during Mormon temple worship, also a common charge leveled at the European Jewry.⁴ While polygamy was criticized as well, criticism—especially in French political cartoons—used comedy to make light of and mock polygamy, while American attacked it in dark religious terms as being ‘wicked.’⁵ Generally, Europeans placed different and less emphasis on Mormon theology however, primarily because they were not trying to condemn Mormons as un-American.⁶ The stark differences occurred as European authors placed greater focus on the Mormon economy (both from a capitalist and socialist/Marxist perspective) and viewed Mormonism as a social experiment. It was no surprise to any Russian when Russian aristocrat Eduard Tsimmerman remarked in his published travel account, after staying in Salt Lake City for a short period, that “Mormon life could be summed up by their work alone.”⁷ Thus, during the late 19^th century the Russian political right, left, and far left discussed Mormonism from these vantages in numerous scholarly and revolutionary journals.⁸

More directly related to my studies, Mormon image in Russia was continually fed by newspaper accounts carried over from British, French, Swedish, and German newspapers.⁹ While some of these papers themselves lifted headlines from American periodicals, many discussed Mormon endeavors in Europe, such as migration and missionary endeavors. European books were often read and cited by Russian authors who wrote about Mormonism. Two of most common German texts used by Russian authors were Moritz Busch’s 1855 Die Mormonen and Robert von Schlagintweit’s 1878 Die Mormonen. European books and travel accounts about Utah were regularly translated into Russian and read widely on account of Russia’s fascination with the American West The account of French adventurer Émile Jonveaux in his L'Amérique actuelle, which contained a chapter concerning his 1869 visit to Salt Lake City, was so popular that it was translated into Russian in 1872. Yet, according to Russian literary critic Serfim Serfimovich Shashkov, Russians in Saint Petersburg relied on British author William H. Dixon’s two volume book New America for information about Mormonism, which was translated into Russian in 1870.¹⁰ While the book contained a vast discussion of Mormonism in comparison to Islam, he too saw Salt Lake City as a place where “work is considered holy.”¹¹ While Finns also read these Russian works (because they were forced to learn Russian), there were also accounts in Finnish available. Perhaps the most popular and publicly debated Finnish work consisted of the bold and daring feminist writer Alexandra Gripenberg, and her published 1888 travel account, A Half Year in the New World. In this work she reported about life in Salt Lake City, where she resided for a few months, and provided a detailed and damning description of polygamist life in reflection of Finnish values.¹²

While gauging the actual reception of a populous from literary works in near impossible, I have found some specific examples that demonstrate how Russians perceived Mormonism, namely how the Russian state and clergy viewed the LDS faith.

When missionaries entered Finland, they entered an imperial territory governed by tsarist Russia, which amounted to foreign culture governing an equally differing culture. For the tsarist state, religion played a key role in ruling non-ethnic Russians, and the Orthodox clergy worked hard to convert Finns to Orthodoxy and the Russian way of life. And while Finns could legally practice Lutheranism or Russian Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy enjoyed advantages. In citizenship terms, being Orthodox was a determining factor for advancement in economic and political life and the state evaluated regime loyalty in reflection of Orthodox membership.

This is important because when missionaries entered Finland in 1875 they butted heads with the Orthodox clergy, the unofficial but still frontline government representatives. Prior to LDS missionary arrival in Finland, the Orthodox clergy had discussed Mormonism for years. It was considered evil and classified as a “fanatical” sect, and the clergy regularly voiced their fear of loosing followers to the sure “eternal damnation” Mormonism would bring them. In fact, prior to 1875 Mormonism was so well known and had such a negative reputation that the Orthodox clergy adopted the process of nicknaming native Russian religious shakers in the Samarsk Province who experimented with sex and polygamy as Mormoni [Mormons]. The nickname stuck and the sexual immorality of these Mormoni was a topic of debate across the whole of Orthodoxy, regularly reported on in church bulletins, books, and comprised a discussion panel at the national 1898 Third All Russian Missionary Conference in Kiev.¹³

Even the Russian government, and Tsar Alexander II himself, had had past dealings with Mormonism. Mormonism surfaced in the Russian political sphere during 1857-58 as the Utah War was playing out, primarily because a rumor (unfounded of course) surfaced that Brigham Young was going to lead the saints to Russian Alaska to avoid Johnston’s approaching army. These rumors reputedly led the tsar to remark that Russia should defiantly consider selling Alaska.¹⁴ In subsequent years a number of Russian diplomats also publicly condemned Mormonism. Perhaps the most telling example occurred when Russian ambassador to the United States M. Kokosoff was criticized by American religious-liberals in an interview about the lack of religious freedom in Imperial Russia. In his rejoinder he specifically mentioned Mormonism and Mormon polygamy as a danger to Russian culture and religious life.¹⁵ Albert Heard, tsarist Russia’s one-time Ambassador to China, also stated in his religious treatise and memoir that Mormonism should also be eschewed because of its socialist practices which posed a great threat to Russian economic and political stability.¹⁶

Thus when LDS missionaries began preaching in Finland in 1875, the St. Petersburg based Orthodox Church organ Tserkovnyi viestnik [The Church Messenger], which oversaw the Finland Diocese, zealously condemned Mormonism and warned Orthodox believers everywhere to eschew LDS missionaries.¹⁷ Finnish newspapers were also bursting with similar condemnations penned by Lutheran priests.¹⁸ The Orthodox and Lutheran clergy, mutual enemies during religious peacetime, teamed-up against Mormon missionaries to ensure that the police arrested them wherever they preached. Through their combined efforts and incitement of the masses against Mormonism, a government appeal was submitted to the tsar asking for an official ban on Mormonism, which the tsar officially granted in April 1878.

Proselytizing: As for discussing the actual missionary work and convert life in Finland, I do not really have the time to discuss everything I would like to, but I would like to touch upon certain aspects of their work. Essentially, the LDS Church began proselyting in Finland in 1875, a ministry which lasted 17 years. During this period every year a missionary or group of missionaries were sent to Finland to preach, and as mission leader Nils Flygare specified to leaders in SLC, he wanted every year “1 Finn or Swede to go to Finland; but he should be a man with some expereance in mission life.”¹⁹ The Church sent Swedish Mormons to Finland primarily because Swedish was the official language of Finland and because Finland was Russia’s most progressive province from where the Church hoped to springboard into Russia proper. These missionaries were all siphoned from the Scandinavian Mission’s Stockholm Conference, the Conference which oversaw all of the missionary work in Finland and most in Russia proper after 1895.

Missionary work in Finland began with a bold move during the fall of 1875 when leaders of the Stockholm Conference commissioned two missionaries, brothers Carl A. and John E. Sundström, to cross the border into Russian Finland and begin preaching. Arriving in the Grand Duchy later that month, the Sundströms canvassed town after town, proselytizing and selling religious tracts and copies of the Book of Mormon. A few months into their ministry the Sundströms had confrontational run-ins with local clergy and police who were attempting to quell a religious ‘Great Awakening’ that was occurring in Finland during this period. When the Sundströms were first approached by local police while preaching in a public town square, they were told the law forbade proselytizing non-Orthodox messages. In response the Sundströms investigated the law further and found that Grand Duchy jurisprudence technically forbade only those who ‘stood’ to preach. For the next few months they circumvented the law by giving sermons while ‘sitting’ on chairs in the public square.²⁰ As one can expect, the tactic of sitting on chairs to preach was short-lived, but by the end of the year they had baptized enough people to establish a branch at Nikolaistad, a town named for Tsar Nicholas I. The following spring Swedish Elder Axel Tullgren was assigned to Nikolaistad (modern day Vaasa) to serve as the congregation’s Branch President and to preach in the surrounding area. Within a few months more branches were established amounting to around 100 converts. Tullgren, who spent sixteen months there, the longest of any missionary in Finland, reported that he personally held 250 meetings, baptized 24 people, and oversaw the organization of three branches before he was arrested “in a very rough and impolite manner” and deported by the tsarist police in 1877.²¹

From their early ministry, and from the roughly 30 missionaries who later preached in Finland, surviving records indicate that around 300 Finns were baptized and we know that five branches were organized between 1875 and 1892.²² The Okhrana (a special tsarist police force) however, worked in tandem with the Orthodox clergy and the Finnish Lutheran clergy to quell LDS preaching throughout this period. Although it was illegal to practice any religion other than Lutheranism or Russian Orthodoxy in Finland, Mormonism was still officially banned in 1878 by the Russian government and actions were taken to specifically stop Mormon missionaries from entering Finland. However, missionaries continued to sneak into Finland, often by way of a small mission-owned boat. Although missionaries continued to baptize Finns, it began to become increasingly difficult to hold a meeting or Sunday service. When the police discovered when and where a LDS meeting was being held, according to D. M. Olson’s 1880 report,

one or more of those officials [the police] enter the house in which an elder holds a meeting. The first thing he does is to break up the meeting, next to forbid him to speak to the people about religion, then to give him, at the longest, twenty-four hours to leave [the country] in.²³

Missionaries were also often threatened with arrest and exile to Siberia, but it appears no LDS missionaries were ever exiled there. And while missionary work and being a LDS convert in Finland was already difficult, Russian governmental policy transformed 1881 when Tsar Alexander II was assassinated on the streets Saint Petersburg by a terrorist’s hand-thrown bomb. Alexander’s assassination transformed LDS ministry in Finland by heightening Russian xenophobia and marshalling a fear of perceived terrorists. In response the government allotted increased manpower to police Finland, and after 1881 the Okhrana had the power to secretly shadow LDS missionaries, engage in sting arrests, deport captured missionaries, stop LDS literature from being mailed into Finland, and keep tabs on local converts. After 1881 missionaries were forced to hold church meetings at secret locations after sunset, baptisms were performed after dark and in remote areas to avoid detection, and missionaries did not reside in one town for extensive periods to avoid capture. As Stockholm Conference leader Niels Wilhelmsen put it, during this period the missionaries in Finland were continually “followed by the Russian authorities.”²⁴ On the whole, the motif that emerged consisted of Swedish missionaries serving in Finland for around six months before they fled or were captured and deported back to Sweden. By the mid-1880s missionary work and local branches were collapsing in response to Okhrana actions and convert migration to Zion. Writing from Finland in 1886 Elder F. R. Sandberg attacked Russian rule as outright “despotism” and expressed sorrow over how disconnected Finland’s branches had become, “there are some brethren and sisters which haven’t been visited in over two years.”²⁵ Finnish converts would later go decades without official church contact by mail or personal visit.

The story of Johannes Blom, a convert who lived in Finland during this period, and his religious experience in the Grand Duchy provides an example of what many proselytes underwent in response to conditions under Russian rule. Blom was a relatively new convert and zealous member-missionary who regularly worked with the full-time missionaries. In the summer of 1884 Blom traveled to a secluded area, to avoid police detection, to baptize two people he’d been teaching. Unbeknownst to Blom the Okhrana trailed him to the baptismal site, and after the baptism was performed, the police rushed from their hiding places and arrested him. He was later sentenced to 30 days in prison and allowed only bread and water for sustenance during his jail term. Fined 600 marks, and combined with court costs Blom’s debt amounted to 1,510 marks—a huge sum for the period. Not an affluent man, Blom, married with young children, had to sell his furniture and belongings to pay court fines before serving his 30-day sentence at the Helsinki prison during the Christmas season. Shortly after his release from jail, Blom and his family fled Finland and relocated at the Utah Territory were they lived for the remainder of their lives. The Bloms were one family—of many—above whose names in the Nickolistad Branch Record the words appeared “Immigrated to Zion.”²⁶

After experiencing perennial trouble and continual missionary deportations, in 1892 the Stockholm Conference stopped sending missionaries to Finland, abandoning Finland and its recent converts. For the next twenty years missionary visits to Finland were sporadic, and primarily occurred because a Finnish family in Saint Petersburg requested baptism in 1895. In subsequent years Finnish members continued to practice underground and without much or any contact from the Church. In fact, during the 1910s, convert Anders Johanson traveled to Stockholm on behalf of the small Larsmo branch to determine if the Stockholm Conference still knew that there were Finnish Latter-day Saints still practicing. After a eventful journey, he found the mission office in Stockholm, was warmly received, and returned to his branch in Finland with a new zeal that continued underground for a generation.²⁷ Missionary work however was not reopened in Finland until 1946.

In conclusion, in some regards missionary work in Finland was a failure, and it could easily be classified as one of the Church’s failed 19^th century missions. However, the efforts of these missionaries brought converted Finns to Utah and paved the path toward the creation of the Finnish Mission in the 1940s, since some converts continued to practice underground until the Church returned. Today Finland has a temple and the descendants of these early converts populate the pews in Finland. While Russian imperialism has left Finland today, 19^th century LDS missionary endeavors highlight the role of clergy and the police in tsarist rule. And the unique way Russians discussed Mormonism helps us greater understand this enigmatic religion’s role in Russia and across Europe.

Thank you.

1 Zach Jones was born in Logan, Utah. He received a BA in History from Utah State University, a MA in Comparative History from the College of William & Mary, VA, and is currently pursuing a MLIS degree and a career in the archival field. This paper presented at the 2007 MHA Conference was a version of Jones’ MA thesis at the College of William & Mary.

2 August L. Hedberg to Anthon H. Lund, letter, 22 Nov 1884, Nordstjernan 46 (1884): 376-377. See English version of this letter published in Andrew Jenson, History of the Scandinavian Mission (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1927), 281-282.

3 David Brion. Davis, “Some Ideological Functions of Prejudice in Ante-Bellum America,” American Quarterly 15, no. 2 (Summer 1963): 115-125.

4 For illustrations of and a discussion of ritual sacrifices in Mormon temples, see Richard Burton, “Voyage a la cité des saints: capitale du pays des Mormons,” Le Tour du monde; nouveau journal des voyages (1862): 153-155, 355-400. For a discussion of ritual sacrifices among the European Jewry, see Robert Nemes, “Hungary’s Anti-Semetic Provinces: Violence and Ritural Murder,” Slavic Review 66, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 20-44.

5 See Wilfried Decoo, “The Image of Mormonism in French Literature: Part I,” Brigham Young University Studies 14 (Spring 1974): 157-175.

6 See D. L. Ashliman, “The Image of Utah and the Mormons in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Utah Historical Quarterly 35, no. 3 (1967): 209-227; William Mulder, “Image of Zion: Mormonism as an American Influence in Scandinavia,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43, no. 1 (1956): 18-38; and Edwina Jo Snow, “British Travelers View the Saints,” Brigham Young University Studies 31, no. 2 (1991): 63-81.

7 Eduard Romanovich Tsimmerman, Puteschestvie po Amerikie v 1869-1870 (Moscow: K. T. Soldatnekova, 1872): 304.

8 There are numbers articles available, however, I recommend from the left perspective; Pyotr Lavrov, “Severo-Amerikanskoe sektatorstvo,” Otechestvennye zapiski. Tom CLXXVII, no. 4 (April 1868), Otdel I, 403-470; Tom CLXXVIII, no. 6 (June 1868), Otdel I, 273-336; Tom CLXXIX, no. 7 (July 1868), Otdel I, 269-318; and Tom CLXXIX, no. 8 (August 1868), Otdel I, 324-354; and for the rightwing perspective; Artur Benni, “Mormonism i Sodinennye Shtaty,” Vremia 10 (1861): 321-355.

9 See Kim Östman, “Early Mormonism in Finnish Newspapers, 1840-1849,” BCC Papers 1, no. 1 (2006); and Gene A. Sessions and Stephen W. Stathis, “The Mormon Invasion of Russian America: Dynamics of a Potent Myth,” Utah Historical Quarterly. 45 (1977): 22-43.

10 Serfim Serfimovich Shashkov, Review of Mormonism, its Rise, Progress and Present Condition by N. W. Green, appearing under the title “Tsarstvo Mormonov,” Delo 12 (Dec 1871): 97-118.

11 William Hepworth Dixon, New America: Volume I (reprint, Leipzig: Adamant Media Corporation, 2006): 207.

12 See English translation as; Alexandra Gripenberg, A Half Year in the New World (Trans. Ernest J. Moyne. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1954).

13 There are numberous works available, but the following are perhaps the best staring points. See S. M. M., Besiedy o tak nazyvaemoi Mormonskoi verii (Samara, Russia: A. I. Matrosova, 1904); Aleksei Mastushenskii, “Sekta Mormonov v Samarskoi Eparkhi,” in Deianiia 3-go vserossiskogo missionerskago sezda v Kazani po voprosam vnutrenni missi i raskolosektahtstva (ed. V. M. Skvortsov, 2^nd ed, Kiev: I. I. Choklova, 1898), 109-113; and Timofei Ivanovich Butkevich, “Mormoni,” in Obzor Russkikh sekt i ikh tolkov (Kharkov, Gubernskaia pravleniia, 1910): 597-600.

14 Gene A. Sessions and Stephen W. Stathis, “The Mormon Invasion of Russian America: Dynamics of a Potent Myth,” Utah Historical Quarterly 45 (1977): 22-43.

15 Published interview, M. Kokofsoff, “The Russian View,” New York Times (25 Jan 1912): 10.

16 See Albert F. Heard, The Russian Church and Russian Decent (1887, reprint, New York: AMS Press Inc., 1971).

17 “Mormoni,” Tserkovnii viestnik 1, no. 46 (20 Nov. 1876): 11-13; “Smert glavi Mormonov,” Tserkovnii viestnik 2, no. 35 (3 Sept. 1877): 13; and “Religiozniya sekti v Amerike,” Tserkovnii viestnik 3, no. 51-52 (22-29 Dec. 1879): 7-8.

18 The Library of Finland has digitized many of its historic newspapers that can be keyword searched. There are numerous articles on Mormonism in Finnish papers during this period.

19 Nils C. Flygare to W. Budge, letter, 3 March 1879, Nils C. Flygare Letter book, 1878-1879, MS 8428, LDS Church Archives.

20 John Andersson to editor Deseret News, letter, 29 March 1876, Millennial Star 38 (1876): 331.

21 Axel Tullgren to Ola N. Liljenquist, letter, 19 Dec 1876, in History of the Scandinavian Mission, 227-228.

22 For surviving membership records see Nikolaistad Branch, Finland, Meeting Minutes, 1876-1897, MS LR 14149 21, LDS Church Archives.

23 D. M. Olson to William Budge, letter, 3 April 1880, Millennial Star 42 (1880): 238-239.

24 Niels Wilhelmsen, report of Scandinavian Mission, 24 Dec 1880, in History of the Scandinavian Mission, 249.

25 F. R. Sandberg to N. C. Flygare, letter, 5 Aug 1886, Nordstjernan 10 (1886): 252.

26 See Johan Blom, letter, 18 July 1884, in History of the Scandinavian Mission, 281, 296; N. C. Flygare, report on missionary work, Ogden Standard Examiner, 8 April 1886; and A. H. Lund to Millennial Star, letter, 12 Dec 1884, Millennial Star 46 (1884): 814-815.

27 See Stig A. Stromberg, Power in a Positive Attitude: the Saga of a Finnish Latter-day Saint (Orem: Sharpspear Press, 2004).

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