Report of the Council for Religious Cults on the cases of Pentecostals, in particular in Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zhytomyr regions from 1952

January 25, 2014 · 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

The very spirit of the Soviet government’s attitude toward the church of Evangelical Christian believers is palpable in the lines of an official memorandum from the Council for Religious Affairs, sent in early 1952 to the deputy chief of the Ministry of State Security Directorate for the Kiev Region, Martynenko.

The sect of the Evangelical Christian faith, or so-called Pentecostal-shakers, existing in Ukraine belongs to the category of mystical reactionary movements that permit in their religious rites contrived, physically exhausting forms of prayer, such as falling into ecstasy, nervous shaking reaching a fainting state and leading to mental disorders of the organism.

Pentecostal sectarians engage in “prophecy,” under the guise of which they spread all sorts of provocative fabrications about Soviet reality.

They do not recognize the Soviet law on compulsory military service and refuse to defend the motherland with weapons in hand.

On the basis of the foregoing, the Pentecostal sect, as reactionary and socially harmful, is not registered by the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, nor by its commissioners on the ground.308

It is not surprising that the Ministry of State Security and the Council for Religious Affairs worked closely hand in hand. The “Pentecostal underground,” as they called it, was even according to incomplete data quite impressive. According to a document from the Council for Religious Affairs entitled “On Actually Operating Unregistered Religious Groups of Believers,” citing data from “the spiritual center of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, which is carrying out work to ‘reunite’ Pentecostal sect communities with its own communities,” the overall situation in Ukraine was as follows:309

In the same document the commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR for the Ukrainian SSR, P. A. Vilkhovy, characterizes the “religious underground,” as he calls it, as follows.

It is very difficult for us to uncover the underground, especially since our regional Council commissioner has neither the appropriate apparatus nor the time for this. The Pentecostal sectarians who have gone underground are shakers, who engage in “prophecy,” under the guise of which they spread all sorts of provocative fabrications about Soviet reality.

This group of sectarians does not recognize the Soviet law on compulsory military service and refuses to defend the Motherland with weapons in hand.

The most reactionary and socially harmful groups of shakers are found in the following regions: Vinnytsia, Volyn, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Odesa, Rivne, Stalino, and Ternopil.

Recently a certain activity has been felt among the remnants of the fanatical Pentecostal groups, especially in the Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, and Vinnytsia regions. For example, while in 1949 “prophecies” were occasionally performed by men, in 1950 a large number of “prophetesses” (women), moreover “itinerant” ones, appeared here.

In the village of Perechino, Kopaihorod district, Vinnytsia region, the Pentecostal Kapinus Sonya (she allegedly has a secondary education) stepped forward with “prophecies”; she traveled around the villages of the Vinnytsia region and has now “migrated” to the city of Odesa. Her whereabouts are unknown.

In the village of Zhurnitsy, Koziatyn district, Vinnytsia region, Anna Vasilishna began to “prophesy.” She was a member of the religious community of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, but she was expelled for “heresy.”

In the Dnipropetrovsk region a large group of “prophetesses” and several “prophets” “crawled out” from deep underground. Among them is Rosenko Maria (living in Dnipropetrovsk, Krasnopovstancheskaya St., 64), born in 1928. She works among the youth. She is assisted by: Rondar Yevgeny, approximately 25 years old, who arrived from the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR. He is actively working to draw young people into Pentecostalism. He visits villages and settlements near Dnipropetrovsk. He lives in the dormitory of the Petrovsky Plant, building No. 84, where he also carries out his missionary work. His friend – Maximov Nikolay, 25 years old – also came from Western Ukraine (he lives in the town of the Petrovsky Plant, building No. 4) and gathers young people around himself.

Together with Maria Nosenko, preacher Nikolai A. Polyakov, born in 1927, is also working. He lives in the city of Dnepropetrovsk, in the district of the Transport Institute. They have drawn into their group Nina Fedorovna Pishchikova, born in 1929, who lives on 1st Simferopolskaya line, house No. 17/7. They also drew in her sister Nadezhda Pishchikova, born in 1928. All of them baptize the youth “with the Spirit.”

In the same group there is a lively old woman-“prophetess” A. A. Bogacheva (she lives in Dnepropetrovsk, 19 Kalinin Avenue). They gather in complete secrecy, each time in a different house. Their preacher is the engineer Anatoly Ivanovich Pakhomov, who is regarded as a “caster-out of demons” (he lives in the village named after Krupskaya).

This group consists of about 35–40 people and is located in the village named after Krupskaya (a suburb of Dnepropetrovsk). They meet with the “prophetess” Pelageya Khmelevskaya (city of Amur-Nizhnedneprovsk, Delegatskaya Street), the “prophet” (friend of Pakhomov) Amos Ignatenko (residing in the village of Karnaukhovka, Krinichansky district), and the “well-known prophetess” Yashnikova (55 years old, her son, a sectarian, has already been repressed for anti-Soviet agitation); Yashnikova lives in the city of Dneprodzerzhinsk. Also “wandering in” among them is the “apostle” Kalinichenko (living in the settlement of Dolgintsevo), as well as the “prophetess” Perekopskaya (residing in the village of Novopushkarevka, Krinichansky district); the “prophetess” Fekla Suslova from the village of Andreyevka in Verkhne-Dneprovsky district maintains contact with them. After meeting with the “Dnepropetrovsk people,” she holds illegal meetings in her own place.

On the suburban trains of Dnepropetrovsk, one can often meet the “prophet” Anton Kalinichenko. He lives at the Dolgintsevo station. He is about 60 years old. On the trains he relates the “visions” he sees. From time to time he arranges “services” in his home.

Worthy of “special attention” is the sectarian underground courier Mefody Eremchuk. He lives in the town of Sinelyshkovo. He is 52 years old. He is an active preacher and shows particular activity when traveling to the western regions. In 1950 he went there twice. Eremchuk does not work anywhere, but engages in “some kind of trading operations.” The “prophet” Vladimir Lebed from the village of Shchors meets with him frequently. He is also about 50 years old, and underground sectarians gather illegally in his home.

In terms of the number of active “prophetesses,” after Dnepropetrovsk oblast, Zhytomyr oblast can be placed second in the Ukrainian SSR.

It is unknown to us how the party and Soviet organizations of Zhytomyr oblast are conducting mass political and ideological work among certain backward groups of the population, in particular among women, but judging by the “work” of the sectarian underground organizations, the work of the cultural-educational organizations is far from sufficient.

Along with this, it is necessary to note the encouraging fact of the re-education of a girl in the village of Velykyi Gul, Dovbysh district, Zhytomyr oblast. In that village, sectarians recruited Maria Mikhailovna Bondar, born in 1929, into their ranks. In 1950, Maria Bondar, a team leader of the “N-sky Regiment” collective farm, was awarded the title Hero of Socialist Labor for a high flax harvest.

“On the part of the party and Komsomol organs,” reports the Council’s plenipotentiary in his report for the third quarter of 1950, “a number of carefully thought-out measures were taken to free Maria Bondar and her friends from sectarian influence. As a result, despite prohibitions from her mother (an old sectarian) and relatives (sectarians), M. M. Bondar joined the Komsomol in August, and in September began studying at the Kroshensky Agricultural Technical College and became one of the active public activists.”310

One can only imagine the colossal efforts thrown in by state bodies and how much state funds were spent to “free the sectarian Pentecostals from religious dope” – Hero of Socialist Labor Maria Bondar – and turn her into an active public activist.

Fighting the “religious underground of the sectarian Pentecostals” was difficult, as evidenced also by a secret document entitled “Information on the State of Religious Cults in Ukraine” dated March 11, 1950, which stated that “according to incomplete data, the remnants of the former sect of Pentecostals (shakers) are located in the following oblasts of the Ukrainian SSR”:311

In the same document, the Council plenipotentiary for religious cults in the Ukrainian SSR, Vilkhovy, wrote:

It must be noted that the above-mentioned number of illegal groups of the former sect of Christians of the Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals-shakers) is far from complete, since the believers of this sect behave in a reserved manner, observe conspiracy, and conceal information about their groups and especially about their leaders.

True, some of them are double-dealers: they say one thing in words and another in deeds. The more “calm” representatives of the Pentecostal sect may be joining the Evangelical Christians-Baptists, while the sharply expressed group of shakers will go deep underground.312

And it is not at all surprising that, in the spirit of that time, the document ends with an ominous postscript of the following content:

All materials that we manage to obtain on the above-mentioned sectarian groups are immediately sent to the organs of the Ministry of State Security to be processed for bringing the guilty to justice,313

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