Record of the reception by the Council for Religious Cults under the USSR Council of Ministers of the bishop of the Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith A.I. Bidash and his accompanying persons
October 13, 1956
Bidash, who had arrived from Pyatikhatki, introduced himself as bishop of the KhVE Union, and Levchuk and Romanenko introduced themselves as presbyters from Kiev and Nikolaev.
After mutual greetings, Comrade Zadorozhny asked Bidash what questions he had for the Council that he wished to clarify and resolve.
Bidash: What has brought us to the Council is set out in our message addressed to I.V. Polyansky, which we submitted yesterday – October 12. I will repeat it orally: believing members of our church (KhVE) are turning to us and demanding that we, as ministers, intercede, seek and obtain permission to conduct independent worship services of our church, at least in the prayer houses of the EKhB, as the Subbotniki do in some places. We cannot hold united, joint prayer meetings with the EKhB because of the sharp divergence between the teachings of the KhVE and the EKhB.
We believe that we have the right to this, since both the Constitution of the USSR, the decree signed in 1918 by V.I. Lenin, and the statements of N.S. Khrushchev grant the right to the free exercise of religious cults.
On this basis we ask you to allow us to conduct worship services according to our faith, and not as the Evangelical Christians-Baptists dictate.
The agreement signed in 1945 between the two unions – VSEKhB and KhVE – did not cover all the issues related to the doctrine of the members of our church. For this reason many KhVE believers did not join this union, and many of the Pentecostals who did join the EKhB societies soon left those societies after uniting with them. Currently the total number of our believers throughout the Soviet Union is about one hundred thousand.
My own application and the applications of other ministers of our church and believers for the opening of prayer houses for believers of our union were refused on the grounds that some of our believers exhibit abnormalities during worship services. We, the clergy of the KhVE, take full responsibility for these abnormal phenomena and undertake to carry out educational work among these people, and to bring about the complete cessation of all these manifestations that are permitted by individual believers.
We ask the Council to convene a meeting of KhVE clergy and hear their requests. At least one clergyman from each republic should be invited, and from the larger republics – two people.
We request that the KhVE union be allowed to be restored, and we believe that justice and Soviet legality must prevail, since VSEKhB has grossly violated the Moscow agreement on the unification of two religious movements in the USSR, namely: the Union of KhVE with the Union of VSEKhB (meaning the dogmatic foundations of the Pentecostals, which are prohibited in EKhB societies).
Romanenko: I was dismissed from work on the denunciation of the senior presbyter of the EKhB, who reported to the MGB that during an audit of a factory, as an accountant-auditor, I visited the apartment of one of our believers and had a conversation with her on religious topics.
‘ MGB – Ministry of State Security.
We have serious dogmatic differences with VSEKhB and we cannot be together. We ask to be allowed to pray according to our faith.
Zadorozhny: You mentioned a figure of 100,000 here when determining the number of your believers. How did you arrive at this figure when counting the number of KhVE believers?
Bidash: I think there are even more than one hundred thousand followers of our faith. I estimate this figure as follows: now, of those who united with the EKhB, at least three-quarters have left the EKhB societies and are praying separately. For example, in Odessa, 500 KhVE members have now left the society, which is about 3/4 of the believers; in the Nikolaev region the situation is similar.
Levchuk: In the Kiev region, too, at least % of the believers have left the EKhB societies and are praying separately according to our faith.
Romanenko: A few days ago we were at VSEKhB and told them that we are not against the union, but we want to pray separately from them, as the Subbotniki do, for example.
Levchuk: We are being expelled from the EKhB prayer houses. I was not allowed to speak in the Kiev society; they told me to stand by the door because I said, “I have come to you now just as I was in 1946-1948. I have not changed my faith.”
Zadorozhny (to Bidash): Under your message there are such signatures as, for example, “presbyter of Moldavia Formuzala.” What kind of rank is that? Is Formuzala a presbyter over all Moldavia or only for one society, and if you consider him a presbyter for all Moldavia, then who, when, and where gave him the authority for such a rank?
Bidash: No one elected him presbyter of Moldavia; we call him that ourselves because he lives in Moldavia.
Zadorozhny (to Bidash): Your message bears the signatures of 26 persons. Have you seen all of them and do you know all of them personally?
Bidash: No, I have not seen all of them, because of the 26 who signed in Kharkov, only the first 15 were present at the meeting, and the remaining 11 at different times after the meeting came to me in Pyatikhatki and signed, but I did not see all of them, because sometimes one of them came but did not find me at home and so signed the message without me. We once again ask the Council to convene our ministers and to hear through them our people, i.e., the followers of the KhVE.
I, Bidash stated, am not against unification with VSEKhB. But I am for such unity that would not infringe on our rights. I have stood, I stand and will stand only for such unification with the Union of EKhB.
Romanenko: We are not against unification. But we have serious differences on dogmatic issues with the Baptists.
Levchuk: We ask the Council to convene our ministers, at least one from each republic, and from the larger republics two people. The Moscow agreement was first violated by VSEKhB; then they began to oppress our brothers and sisters, began to oppress and persecute us.
Zadorozhny, summarizing the course of the conversation, explained to Bidash and those accompanying him the existing legislation on religious cults, as well as the legally established procedure for opening prayer houses. Comrade Zadorozhny drew the attention of Bidash and his companions, Levchuk and Romanenko, to the fact that, being followers of the doctrine of the KhVE sect and wishing to organize an independent union of this sect, they cannot appear before the Council or any other state body with authority on behalf of all Pentecostal believers, since no one has given them such authority, and they themselves arbitrarily act as organizers among believers, traveling for this purpose to individual cities and settlements of the Ukrainian SSR where there are Pentecostal believers, among whom Bidash’s message is being circulated, calling on believers to petition for the opening of independent religious societies of Pentecostals and for the withdrawal from EKhB societies of those believers of evangelical Christian faith who had united with them under the 1945 Moscow agreement on the unification of the two unions. Bidash, Levchuk and Romanenko were also
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