"On the Activities of Pentecostal Religious Groups" Circular Letter of the Council for Religious Cults Affairs under the USSR Council of Ministers No. 4-112s

September 19, 2010 · Adam Bondaruk, Baptists, Victor Belykh, AUCECB, Persecution, Interview, KGB, Books, Unregistered Pentecostals, Nikolay Kotyakov, On Emigration, United Church of Evangelical Christians, Vestibule, Petr Saenko, Pentecostals, Religious Mafia, Slavik Radchuk, Contemporary Persecution, Security Services

May 31, 1957

The Council for Religious Cults reviewed materials from the Commissioners characterizing the revival of religious activity among unregistered groups of Pentecostals that had taken place in many districts of regions and republics, which was especially actively manifested by them in the second half of 1956 and at the beginning of the current year. Believing Christians of the Evangelical faith, or so-called Pentecostals, as is known, voluntarily united with Evangelical Christians-Baptists in August 1945 and joined their All-Union Council — VSEKhB. On the basis of this agreement, Pentecostals began to unite with ECB societies, but the process of this unification dragged on almost everywhere. This is explained by the fact that the unification in many places met with opposition on the ground from certain Pentecostal leaders. The Pentecostals who did not join the ECB societies split into numerous small groups. Their activity during this period was conspiratorial and outwardly little noticeable.

However, beginning in the second half of 1955, a certain intensification of religious revival among Pentecostals began to be observed, and in 1956 the activity of Pentecostal groups intensified markedly. Many of them emerged from concealment and began to act openly — on an initiative basis. This revival manifested itself especially in a number of oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR (Stalino, Zhytomyr, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, Vinnytsia, Volyn, Rivne), in Byelorussia (Brest, Mogilev, Molodechno, Grodno), as well as in a number of oblasts of the RSFSR (Moscow, Saratov, Omsk Oblasts, Krasnodar Krai, etc.), in Kirghizia, Uzbekistan, Moldavia, the Caucasus, and so on, where open manifestation of the active work of Pentecostal groups occurred everywhere. The number of Pentecostal groups operating on an initiative basis sharply increased in 1956. Simultaneously with the manifestation of their activity, Pentecostals began very persistently to seek registration of their groups and the organization of a religious center, and despite a direct refusal to grant this unjustified request, many of them continued to act actively, seeking to intensify their propaganda and to resume forms of religious activity that are prohibited by Soviet legislation on cults.

During this period, they again began to openly hold their prayer meetings in believers’ homes in many places, displaying the well-known dogmatic peculiarities inherent to Pentecostals. In addition, during the same period, Pentecostals began to actively conduct religious propaganda specifically among young people, seeking to tear them away from participation in social, cultural, and political life. In order to recruit new members into their sect, Pentecostals also launched subversive work among the believers of ECB and ASD societies registered in the established manner, as well as among some part of the surrounding population. One of the main reasons that caused the activation of the Pentecostals must be considered the fact that their former leaders (Bidash, Levchuk, and others), who returned from places of detention, launched intensified agitational and organizational work to bring former Pentecostals out of ECB societies with the aim of organizing their own, separate from VSEKhB, Pentecostal religious center; at the same time, they spread false information among ordinary believers that they would allegedly obtain permission to organize their own religious center, etc. The active work carried out by Bidash and his supporters was far from everywhere noticed in time by the Council’s Commissioners, and only after the revival of the Pentecostals had assumed certain proportions did the Commissioners give due attention to this and began to inform the Council and local leading bodies in more detail about the significant religious activity of the Pentecostals.

Only after appropriate measures were taken in this regard did the activity of the Pentecostals in many places diminish to some extent. According to the information available to the Council, part of the believers who at one time had, under the influence of agitation by Bidash and his supporters, moved from ECB societies to de facto operating Pentecostal groups have again returned to ECB societies, while another part of the believers, the most fanatically inclined, is striving to conduct its activities covertly.

In informing its Commissioners on the state and activity of de facto functioning religious groups of Pentecostals, the Council for Religious Cults obligates the Commissioners:

Without relaxing their attention to the activity of other cults, to continue and in the future to intensively observe the activity of Pentecostals and not to let it out of their field of vision. It is necessary more persistently to identify Pentecostal groups, their leaders and activists, and to submit timely information about this to local leading bodies and to the Council. Information on these matters must be sufficiently concrete and based on a thorough study of the activity of Pentecostals, so that local bodies with the help of such information may carry out more effective measures among believers in the area of scientific-atheistic propaganda and cultural-educational work.
In their work connected with Pentecostals, the Commissioners must devote special attention to studying the activity of their organizers and leaders. Such study will contribute to the more rapid identification of their political mood and loyalty to the state.
When studying the activity of Pentecostal groups, one should take into account the possibility of their employing new forms and methods of activity for the purpose of greater conspiratorial concealment. About such identified forms, the Commissioners must immediately report to the Council and to the leading oblast and republican bodies.
In their work of gathering information on the activities of Pentecostals,
the Commissioners must use all available means and
opportunities, including the receptions of religious ministers and believers conducted by the Commissioners.
With regard to those individuals from the Pentecostal religious active who
engage in active religious propaganda among the population and
often use the religious beliefs of believers to
create among them unhealthy attitudes toward the authorities,
be guided by the Council’s letter of August 25–30, 1956,
No. 5-109s 10.

Acting Chairman of the Council
for Religious Cults
under the Council of Ministers of the USSR V.I. Gostev

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