Church on Engelsa St

In 1703 Peter the Great gave permission to open a Swedish-Finnish Lutheran parish in the newly founded capital of St. Petersburg. Its successor, St. Mary's, is the Cathedral Church of Ingria to this day. In tsarist Russia the Lutheran Church remained a minority denomination restricted to non-Russian nationalities, with no proselytism allowed. Until the 1905 Edict of Toleration Lutherans were not permitted to perform the liturgy in the Russian language. Nevertheless, Russia's annexation of largely Lutheran populations in the Baltic region under Ivan the Terrible and during the Great Northern War (1700-1721) led to an assimilation of German nobility into all areas of Russian administration. This, plus Romanov royal marriages to German princesses, increased the influence of Lutheranism in Russia far beyond the Baltic. By 1914 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Russia (except for Finland and Poland) included 1,828 churches and prayer houses with a membership of

1,293,000 Latvians

1,100,000 Estonians

1,098,000 Germans

148,000 Finns

12,000 Lithuanians

4,000 Poles

1,000 Armenians

4,000 Other nationalities (including Russians)

3,660,000 Total