20
THE STUNDISTS.
we pass through Chernigov, the capital of the province of the
saute name. Thence in a north-easterly direction we pass through the important town of Orel. From Orel, a line drawn south-east will pass through Voronej to Tsaritsyn and Astrakhan on the lower Volga. South of this boundary line live the Stundists; those north of the line being only isolated individuals. Stundism, therefore, is strictly a South Russian movement, confined in great measure to the Little Russians.
We have seen that in 1870 the adherents of Stundism were numbered at 70,000. The Russian press now began to occupy itself a good deal with the wonderful progress of the Stundists in Kief, Poltava and Kherson during the next five years. One writer went so far as to put their number in 1877 at 300,000. We think, however, that a juster estimate would be 200,000. If we allow, on one hand, for a slower rate of growth since 1877, and on the other for defection, and the results of persecution, we think we are well within the truth when we place the number of Stundists at the present time at 250,000. It is a difficult matter to state with any degree of exactness the number living in each province, but for the purposes of this short sketch we have had special inquiries made, and the following table sets forth the result of these investigations, and may be accepted as fairly accurate:
Province | Number of Stundists |
Astrakhan | 2,000 |
Bessarabia | 20,000 |
Caucasia (Trans and Cis) | 9,000 |
Chernigov | 2,000 |
Don Cossack Country | 10,000 |
Ekaterinoslav | 15,000 |
Kharkov | 8,000 |
Kherson | 50,000 |
Kief | 80,000 |
Kursk | 5,000 |
Orel | 2,000 |
Podolia | 8,000 |