The Archives Speak: The Primorye Commissioner to the Senior Investigator of Primorye on the Ultimatum of Boris Perchatkin and the Church to the Authorities During a Press Conference in Moscow, Voice of America Reports During the Belgrade Summit, and the Adoption of the Brezhnev Constitution
God allowed some documents from the Commissioner for Religious Affairs in Primorsky Krai to fall into my hands. Today I am sharing them with you.
During the Belgrade Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which examined the implementation by signatory countries of the Helsinki Accords, the bringing of domestic legislation into conformity with them, including on human rights; during the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which was to adopt a “new” constitution of the USSR — believers in Nakhodka and other brotherhood churches in the USSR, who had been refused through delays in the mass exodus from the USSR to the USA, declared a hunger strike of protest. Its ideologist was Boris Perchatkin. His message about the hunger strike was broadcast on the radio station “Voice of America.” The Pentecostal human rights group, led by the converted former Soviet Army intelligence major Patrushev and by Vasily and Fiodor Sidenko, emerged in Nakhodka after they had served time in the 1960s in Mordovian camps with Moscow dissidents. It was then that the Moscow, Ukrainian, and Armenian Helsinki Groups were created. Boris Perchatkin, together with brothers and Alexander Ginzburg, planned to create a Far Eastern Helsinki Group, but on Sakharov’s advice postponed its creation.
The Commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs for Primorsky Krai, V.I. Chupin, in response to an inquiry from Senior Investigator of the Prosecutor’s Office of Primorsky Krai, G.L. Kazimirov, dated November 13, 1980, regarding Boris Perchatkin’s ultimatum and that of the church to the authorities during a press conference in Moscow, the “Voice of America” reports during the Belgrade summit and the adoption of the Brezhnev constitution:
To Senior Investigator of the Prosecutor’s Office of Primorsky Krai, Comrade Kazimirov G.D.
November 13, 1980 31.4
In response to your question about the unlawful and anti-social activities known to the Commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs under the USSR Council of Ministers for Primorsky Krai, of one of the sectarian leaders of the Nakhodka community of Christians of Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals), Boris Georgievich Perchatkin, I report the following.
From the time of his arrival in the city of Nakhodka in the late 1960s, based on a prophecy about the expected, on the eve of the “second coming of Jesus Christ,” arrival at the port of Nakhodka of “white ark-ships” to transport Pentecostals to the “promised land” (USA), the sectarian leader Goretoy N.P., and after he was brought to criminal liability in 1961, his followers constantly and in every way fanned the sectarians’ faith in the fulfillment of this prophecy, used available opportunities to carry out anti-social activities under the guise of religion, and pushed believers to violate the legislation on religious cults.
Throughout this period, the Nakhodka City Executive Committee, together with the commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs, conducted explanatory work with the believers aimed at leading them to understand the need to bring the activities of the sectarian community within the framework of the law by registering it in the prescribed manner. However, the sectarian leaders actively opposed these efforts by the local authorities.
In connection with the preparations for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, certain imperialist circles, through their special services, organized a hostile action, instigating emigration sentiments among Pentecostals living 
in our country. They placed a special stake on the Nakhodka community, a member of which, E.A. Bresenden, having received in 1975 a visa to leave for permanent residence in Israel, ended up in Los Angeles (USA), where he was taken on support by evangelical organizations. He launched active efforts there to provoke his fellow believers to emigrate to the USA for permanent residence on religious grounds.
In turn, his close associates from among the most fanatically and extremist-minded leaders of the Nakhodka community, in coordination with the former presbyter of the community N.P. Goretoy, who had settled after returning from the places of deprivation of freedom in Krasnodar Krai, began to stir up among their fellow believers the emigration sentiments that had already been dying down. In doing so, they chose a tactic of actively opposing any attempts by representatives of local authorities and public organizations to convince them of the necessity of observing the requirements of the legislation on cults and the rules of socialist community life, qualifying these lawful actions as persecution of religion, the church, and believers, and citing this as the reason that further residence of believers in our country was impossible. Some sectarian leaders began inciting believers to commit collective anti-social and unlawful actions.
The most active in this regard was Boris Georgievich Perchatkin. In 1977, I personally had the opportunity to meet with him twice during my visits to the city of Nakhodka.
Thus, on July 13, 1977, my meeting with the believers of the Nakhodka Pentecostal community took place, with the aim of explaining to them the main provisions of the legislation on religious cults and answering their questions arising in connection with their emigration intentions. At the end of the more than 3-hour conversation, in the presence of about 200 believers, B.G. Perchatkin, as if summing up the discussion, said on behalf of all the believers: “I want to express the opinion of all. We have all together submitted applications for emigration and are confident that we will leave either all together or not at all, because if you release us one by one, we will not go. Tell your bosses about that. Otherwise, we will seek to appeal to international public opinion. And if we are refused, I will declare a hunger strike in protest.”
A material attempt to carry out this threat, but now giving it a collective form, was undertaken by the sectarian leaders before the start of the Belgrade Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
I first learned that the Nakhodka Pentecostals intended to begin a collective hunger strike on the opening day of the Belgrade Conference, October 4, 1977, while listening to a Voice of America broadcast on September 22, 1977. It reported that, according to information received by Western correspondents in Moscow from Boris Perchatkin, a representative of the Pentecostal community in the Far Eastern city of Nakhodka, his fellow believers would begin a hunger strike demanding permission to leave the Soviet Union. It further stated that Boris Perchatkin had told them that members of his community would lead the hunger strike, in which 60 people would participate at a time, rotating every 10 days throughout the conference. That this hunger strike would aim to draw the attention of conference participants to the futile attempts of Pentecostals to obtain permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union. The broadcast also said that Perchatkin had told Western correspondents about constant persecution of his fellow believers, who for this reason considered emigration their only salvation.
And on September 23, 1977, Voice of America, citing its Moscow correspondent Zorya Sofir, reported that, as Boris Perchatkin had told Western journalists in Moscow, his brethren in the Soviet Union were subjected to constant persecution and saw their only salvation in emigration. That on the day the Belgrade meeting began, the Pentecostals in Nakhodka would declare a collective hunger strike in protest against the denial of permission to leave the USSR. That many of his fellow believers, while waiting for permission to leave, had sold their homes and other property to raise money for visas. And now these people were left without shelter, without work, and without residence registration.
Thus it became clear to me that Perchatkin’s statement about his intention to declare a protest hunger strike, made by him on July 13, 1977, at my meeting with the believers, then confirmed by him to foreign correspondents in Moscow, where he had traveled specifically for this purpose, and the subsequent broadcasting by Voice of America of this provocative statement worldwide, are links in one 
chain and are of an openly antisocial and even hostile nature.
In order to prevent possible undesirable consequences of these provocative actions by Perchatkin and to exert a positive influence on other leaders of the religious community, I traveled to the city of Nakhodka, where on September 27, 1977, at the city executive committee, together with Deputy Chairman of the Executive Committee Comrade A.A. Tkachev, I held a conversation with community leaders S.Ya. Belko, A.G. Zherebilov, and R.N. Navarich on issues of bringing the community’s activities within the framework of the law, preventing unlawful actions by emigration-minded believers, and on the possible offer to their religious society of a building to be converted into a prayer house. We agreed that this proposal of the city executive committee would be communicated by them to all believers.
However, the next day, September 28, 1977, the Nakhodka City Executive Committee received a collective statement from Pentecostals signed by 84 people, which expressed the threat that “if by October 4 all those who signed the attached list are not given official permission to leave the USSR, then we, as a sign of protest, will begin a hunger strike that will last until October 14 of this year and will be continued by fellow believers from Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Krasnodar Krai throughout the entire Belgrade Conference.”
From the text of this collective statement it was also clear that B.G. Perchatkin not only gave his provocative interview to foreign correspondents in Moscow, but was also one of the inspirers and organizers of the collective hunger strike in Nakhodka and other regions of the country.
In this connection, the Nakhodka City Executive Committee deemed it necessary to warn B.G. Perchatkin and other sectarian leaders who instigated believers to sign the text they composed for a collective statement, of their personal responsibility in the event the threats were carried out and a collective hunger strike took place. On September 30, 1977, a special meeting of the Nakhodka City Executive Committee was held, to which B.G. Perchatkin, R.N. Stepanov, V.A. Burlachenko and V.F. Patrushev, known as the primary inspirers of emigration sentiments among believers, were invited. In addition to them, 12 other believers appeared at the executive committee meeting. The following text of the city executive committee’s written warning was read to them 
:
“During the preparations to celebrate the momentous jubilee of the Soviet state—the 60th anniversary of Great October—the working people of our city, like all Soviet people, are working with great political and labour enthusiasm to successfully fulfill and overfulfill the targets of the second year of the Tenth Five-Year Plan and are showing good results.
The working people of our city have also taken a most active part in the nationwide discussion of the draft of the new USSR Constitution. They fully approve the draft Basic Law of our country and, as a joyful holiday, await the opening of the extraordinary seventh session of the USSR Supreme Soviet, which will consider and adopt the new Constitution.
Against this background, on September 28 a collective statement from believing Pentecostal citizens of the city, signed by 84 people, was received in the name of the chairman of the city soviet executive committee, in which the authors indulge in fabrications about alleged persecution for religious convictions. The individual instances of hooligan-like attacks by certain persons cited in their statement are groundlessly presented as actions directed against them as believing citizens.
Worse still, while motivating their intention to leave the USSR for permanent residence in the USA on religious grounds, they attempt to accuse local authorities of unlawful treatment of them, even though for a long time they themselves have systematically violated the laws on cults and carry out their illegal activities clandestinely, despite the fact that the city executive committee has for a number of years been conducting appropriate explanatory work with them regarding the necessity of bringing their activities within the framework of the law.
Lately, V.N. Stepanov, B.G. Perchatkin, V.A. Burlachenko and V.F. Patrushev, who are present here and are the organizers and instigators of believers’ collective departure abroad, have been presenting the delay in processing documents by the police—a delay largely caused by the departing persons themselves due to incorrectly completed personal data forms and, in a number of cases, deliberate concealment of facts relevant to the case—as an allegedly deliberate attempt by the authorities to infringe on their legal rights.
Having embarked on this instigative path and speculating on the religious feelings of believers, they mislead them and compel them to take part in the anti-social actions they are orchestrating. This is evidenced by the collection of believers’ signatures, organized by them, for the statement submitted to the city executive committee, in which an intention is expressed to stage, during the days of the seventh session of the USSR Supreme Soviet and the Belgrade Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a mass hunger strike if believers are not granted permission to leave abroad by October 4. The statement also collected the signatures of 38 people who have not even petitioned for departure.
All these actions of the organizers of the believers’ departure abroad here present are assessed by the city soviet executive committee as illegal and provocative, aimed at disrupting public order and darkening the pre-holiday mood of the city’s working people.
In this connection, the city soviet executive committee warns citizens V.N. Stepanov, B.G. Perchatkin, V.A. Burlachenko and V.F. Patrushev of their personal responsibility under the law for the possible consequences of their anti-social activities.
In addition, the city soviet executive committee requests the said citizens to bring to the attention of the believers who signed the statement the inadmissibility of any anti-social manifestations on their part.”
This warning had its effect. B.G. Perchatkin and the other named persons did not dare to carry out their threats, although they had already caused irreparable harm to the interests of the Soviet state by notifying the international community of their anti-social intentions through the mouthpiece of anti-communism, which the radio station “Voice of America” essentially is.
Plenipotentiary of the Council for Religious Affairs under the USSR Council of Ministers for Primorsky Krai V.I. Chupin
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©2011 Boris Perchatkin. This archival material is exclusive and has never been published anywhere before; therefore, the publication or use specifically of the documents in this article (this does not apply to the entire site) is only possible with my written permission.
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