Are there any known LDS missions to Russia
Executive summary
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has a documented and continuing mission presence connected to Russia: mission calls to Russia date to the 1840s, the first recorded baptisms in the country occurred in 1895, formal missionary work accelerated after the late‑1980s political opening with missions organized in the early 1990s, and modern administrative units including the Russia Moscow Mission and a Moscow stake have been reported by the Church [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Origins and the 19th‑century footprint
The LDS Church traces its earliest intentions toward Russia to a missionary call made by Joseph Smith in 1843, and it records that Swedish missionary August Höglund baptized the first known Russian converts in St. Petersburg in 1895 — Johan and Alma Lindlöf — marking a 19th‑century footprint that precedes Soviet restrictions [1] [2] [4].
2. Interrupted growth under Soviet rule and the emergence after glasnost
While sporadic contacts and translations by émigrés persisted through the early 20th century, historians and Church accounts agree that an organized presence inside Russia did not take root until Gorbachev’s reforms; the Church’s modern congregational life and missionary activity effectively re‑emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Russians formed the first contemporary branches in St. Petersburg and Vyborg and the government formally recognized the Church around 1991 [2] [1] [5].
3. Missions, organizational growth, and local leadership
The Church reports establishing missions based in Moscow and St. Petersburg as its first Russian missions in the early 1990s and later organizing local leadership structures such as the first stake in Moscow in 2011; contemporary administrative listings and Church newsroom material list multiple missions and mission‑level administration tied to Russia [2] [3] [4].
4. Changing legal environment and the “volunteer” model
Russian law changes in the 2010s — notably anti‑proselytizing measures sometimes associated with the Yarovaya package — required the Church to adapt: beginning around 2016, the Church publicly described its full‑time proselytizing personnel in Russia as “volunteers” with restricted duties to comply with Russian regulations, a shift widely reported in LDS sources and independent press coverage [5] [6].
5. Recent disruptions and operational adjustments
Contemporary reporting documents continued administrative presence but also disruptions: by mid‑February 2022 the Church moved remaining foreign volunteers out of Russia amid geopolitical unrest surrounding the invasion of Ukraine, and organizational boundaries for the Europe/Asia area were adjusted with Moscow serving as a regional headquarters for several countries — indicating that while missions tied to Russia exist as administrative entities, their personnel models and deployment have been fluid in recent years [7] [5].
6. How scholars and independent accounts frame the record
Academic and independent investigations nuance the institutional narrative: BYU and Dialogue scholarship note the paucity of verifiable pre‑1989 converts (aside from a pre‑Soviet family) and document both evangelistic curiosity and methodological gaps about “native” Mormon groups in Russia, underscoring that official mission claims and local oral histories sometimes diverge and that evidence for continuous, widespread pre‑Soviet missionary work is thin [8] [9].