The case of the Leningrad Pentecostals
On November 18, 1950, and in January 1951, the Leningrad MGB authorities simultaneously arrested a whole group of people. For that time, such an event was ordinary: the campaign against “rootless cosmopolitanism” was in full swing across the country, and the famous “Leningrad Affair” was unfolding in the city on the Neva. Prominent Party members, officials, and representatives of the cultural elite became victims of repression…
But on this occasion, the security officers’ attention was drawn to simple, seemingly unremarkable individuals: peasant Ivan Borovkov, worker Anton Morenkov, polyclinic employee Alexandra Alexeeva, housewife Anna Sukhanova, cleaner Maria Gavrilova, carpenter Mikhail Chetokin, cashier Tatiana Ivanova, and locksmith Vasily Ivanov. Their ages ranged from 37 to 54. Their crime was belonging to an underground Pentecostal community.
During the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet state relaxed its religious policy. In Leningrad, on October 17, 1946, the ECB community was registered. A prayer house opened on Okhta, attended not only by Evangelical Christians-Baptists but also by Pentecostals and believers from other Protestant movements.
Anton Morenkov had attended Evangelical Christian gatherings since his youth, from 1928. After all the prayer houses in Leningrad closed, he lost contact with believers for a long time. A brief but important meeting took place only in 1944. The military unit where Morenkov was serving at the time was stationed in the Pechory District of the Pskov Region. One day, Anton got into a conversation in a courtyard with a local woman and asked if there were any evangelical meetings nearby. It turned out that his interlocutor, Vera Kuprina, was the daughter of the local presbyter, Ivan Akimovich Borovkov.
The next day, Sunday, Anton went to see Ivan Akimovich. He had to wait until the host returned from the worship service. They introduced themselves and prayed together. In Estonia, to which the Pechory District once belonged, Borovkov had served as a preacher and colporteur.
Among Pentecostal leaders, he personally knew N.P. Smorodin, although, by his own admission, he did not agree with him on everything (probably Borovkov belonged to the Voronaev movement). When leaving, Morenkov left his address with the presbyter but received no reply (in those times, trusting the mail was dangerous). Three years passed, however—and they not only met but became fellow believers and partners in ministry…
After returning to Leningrad after the war, Morenkov began attending the ECB prayer house. In 1947, he asked Presbyter A.S. Chizhov for baptism but was refused, even though he had completed the probationary period.
In those years, the authorities, through church leaders, strictly limited the baptism of young people, as well as older individuals with gifts for ministry. Naturally, Morenkov was not told these reasons; he was simply informed that he was not yet spiritually ready.
After the offensive and poorly understood refusal, Anton grew despondent and even stopped attending meetings. One day in late summer 1947, he visited Alexandra Alexeeva, whom he knew from the gatherings on Okhta. She told him about a minister from the Pskov Region who had come to Leningrad. Anton immediately went to the apartment where the guest was staying.
It turned out to be an old acquaintance—Ivan Akimovich. Borovkov said that he had come to the city by God’s command: to bless Anton for the ministry of an evangelist. The following Sunday, in the small room of Anna Koryus (the widow of the executed minister Karl Koryus), in the presence of several believing women, the ordination took place. Laying on hands, Borovkov blessed the new minister. True, he had not yet been baptized, but apparently there was no other suitable candidate. Morenkov’s work in this new field lasted three years and three months.
In Leningrad, in the settlement of Tosno, and in the Tosno District of the Leningrad Region, several Pentecostal groups met at various addresses. Borovkov’s community, now with an energetic assistant, became the most active and fastest-growing, turning into a kind of center of the Pentecostal underground.
Alexandra Alexeeva, who had invited Anton to see Borovkov, was considered a prophetess in the community. In March 1948, Morenkov received from her a directive to go to Ivan Akimovich in Taylovo (Pskov Region) to receive water baptism.
The ministers’ meeting took place at the end of April. I.A. Borovkov baptized Morenkov and introduced him to his son-in-law—preacher Fyodor Kuprin. Kuprin had accepted the Pentecostal teaching in Sweden, where he first attended an unusual meeting with prayer “in other tongues” and healing of the sick.
Thus, Anton’s baptism did take place, but not in the ECB church. He became Borovkov’s closest assistant, and in his absence (the presbyter could not often visit Leningrad), the de facto head of the community. Believers gathered secretly, observing strict conspiracy. And yet, in a certain sense, they were freer than the brothers and sisters on Okhta. No one interfered in their church life, no one dictated what they could preach and what they could not.
In the Baptist prayer house, Morenkov would have long remained a passive attendee (nothing else would have been permitted). Now, however, he led the community, preached the gospel, and—without looking over his shoulder at the commissioner—baptized new converts (though, on Borovkov’s advice, he did not chase after numbers). Illegal baptisms were usually performed secretly, at night in open bodies of water—on the Kamenka River in Leningrad, as well as in Novolisino and Sablino in the Leningrad Region.
In small groups—from 4–5 to 15–20 people—believers gathered in each other’s homes: in Kolomyagi, where Morenkov lived; at Anna Koryus’s on Petra Lavrova Street; at the Egorov sisters’ on Krasnoy Konnitsy Street; and at other addresses, as well as in the Leningrad Region—in Tosno, Sablino, and Novolisino at M.F. Chetokin’s. The meeting places constantly changed. Believers read the Bible, listened to the leaders’ sermons, and prayed “in other tongues.”
The meetings were attended not only by elderly and middle-aged people but also by about 20 young men and women. Mostly, only their first names have survived—Mikhail, Miron, 20-year-old Sergei (who had come to Leningrad to study), Boris, and the sisters Vera, Shura, and Tonya Egorova…
At gatherings, prophecies increasingly sounded, promising that only a few months remained until the second coming of Jesus Christ. He would arrive by the end of the thirty-third year of the godless power of the “Antichrist” (that is, in November 1950). The Antichrist was understood not as a real person, but symbolically – as a state that had rejected God (later the Chekists would interpret this as anti-Soviet propaganda).
It is not surprising that the Pentecostals so trustingly accepted the prediction. A hard life lived in constant tension, poverty, and fear of persecution that darkened even the joy of prayer and spiritual fellowship… People wanted to believe that their sufferings would soon end. This hope consoled them, helped them survive, and mobilized all their spiritual strength.
Anton Ivanovich himself wrote to Borovkov that “my path runs largely through insults and humiliations, but I pay no attention to anything; no one can push me off this straight path… my work is successful; the Lord has multiplied the church and given many souls, for which I thank the Lord…”
In his sermons, pointing to his shirt, Morenkov would say that it would not wear out before Christ’s coming. He urged believers to dedicate themselves completely to God, separating themselves from the world, and not only to purify themselves spiritually, but also to “sow the word of God in order to draw the people closer to the Lord and save more people and human souls.”
Another preacher, Mikhail Chetokin, taught that the community must be covered with the armor of righteousness and have a conscience as pure as regiments with banners.
From time to time, believers led by Morenkov would travel to various places in the Leningrad, Pskov, and Novgorod regions, where they met with fellow believers and conducted illegal baptisms. For example, in the summer of 1950, Morenkov and his assistants visited the Lychkovsky District of the Novgorod region twice; in the village of Nakladets lived the parents of one of the parishioners.
The father, Stepan Danilovich Danilov, had once been sentenced to three years for holding illegal meetings and was now afraid to resume them. A conversation with the Leningrad minister encouraged him. Besides the village of Nakladets, Morenkov held gatherings in the villages of Mury and Mirokhny, and in early autumn, on his second visit, he baptized about 15 people.
Thus, new communities arose that later developed independently. Soviet documents from the late 1950s mention certain “groups of sectarians” in the Lychkovsky District of the Novgorod region, including in the village of Mury (now part of the Demyansky District). There is every reason to believe that these were Pentecostals baptized by Morenkov.
In the fall of 1950, Borovkov moved to Leningrad for permanent residence, with plans for even more active ministry. By that time, the congregation numbered over 60 people (not counting close associates), and about 30 of them had been baptized by Morenkov.
But dark clouds were already gathering over the believers. The expected date of the second coming did indeed turn out to be fateful, but in a very different sense than the Pentecostals thought. In November 1950, arrests began. Morenkov left behind his wife Stepanida and children ranging in age from 2 to 17: Gennady, Alexey, Lidia, Nadezhda, and Viktor.
The investigation did not last long, and there was no trial as such at all. By the decision of the Special Board under the USSR Minister of State Security of June 23, 1951, I.A. Borovkov and A.I. Morenkov received 10 years in corrective labor camps; the other six received sentences ranging from 5 to 8 years.
All the convicted were found guilty not only of religious activity, but also of slandering the Soviet system and agitating against Soviet power (standard accusations for that time). Preacher V.D. Ivanov was also accused of aiding the occupiers, although in reality he had voluntarily joined a partisan detachment, served as a liaison for the headquarters, and participated in combat operations.
When the political “thaw” began in the country after Stalin’s death, the case was reviewed. The convicted Pentecostals, except for Borovkov and Morenkov, were released early, and the charge of anti-Soviet activity against them was deemed unfounded.
Later, Vasily Ivanov continued his ministry in Leningrad, heading an unregistered community of Voronaevite Pentecostals.
Elderly believers also remember the minister Ivan Akimovich (surname unknown). This was probably I.A. Borovkov, although there is reliable information that in the 1960s he became the presbyter of a registered ECB (Evangelical Christians-Baptists) community in his home town of Pechory.
The fates of A.I. Morenkov and the others convicted in this case remain unknown. If you, dear reader, know anything about them or their children, please write to me.
The Chekists did not succeed in crushing the Pentecostal movement in our city. According to approximate estimates, in the 1950s the underground KhVE (Christians of Evangelical Faith) groups comprised at least 150–200 people, and in the 1970s, 400–450 people. But that is another story…
Tatiana NIKOLSKAYA
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