The Enemy Within: Protestant Churches in the Siberian Press, 1928–1930

A. I. Savin

Article published in German: Das Bild des absoluten Feindes. Angehorige der Freikirchen in der regionalen sibirischen Presse 1928–1930. In: Die Ruslanddeutschen in Rusland und Deutschland. Selbstbilder, Fremdbilder, Aspekte der Wirklichkeit (Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur der Ruslanddeutschen — 1999, № 9, Sonderheft). Essen 1999, S. 50–72.

sectarian

In revolution, the image of the enemy is always functional. During the 1920s–1930s, a whole bestiary of enemy images was created in the USSR: White Guards, interventionists, landlords, capitalists, kulaks, members of anti-Soviet political parties, “churchmen,” NEPmen, wrecking specialists, double-dealing oppositionists of all stripes. Depending on the interests of the party, the participants in this lineup varied, losing or gaining intensity of “infernalism,” as happened with the first “enemies of the people” — the Cadets or “Polish lords,” Kolchakites, or Orthodox priests.

The younger the revolution, the more intense the process of “molding” the image of enemies. This pattern also operates at moments of “rejuvenation” of the revolution, when a new release of violence occurs, heating up a society that has already had time to drop below the “boiling point.” A classic example is collectivization, where the kulak becomes the main enemy. His image, smelling of smoke from burnt collective farm grain and drenched in the blood of collective farm activists, with a sawn-off shotgun and cudgel in his hands, with a face drunk and treacherous, truly grows to the skies and for a long time occupies the dominant place in the cohort of enemies. In Western Siberia, the authorities created yet another enemy image — the worthy assistant of the kulak. This is the image of the sectarian.

Representatives of free churches [*] — Baptists, Evangelical Christians, Mennonites, Adventists, and others — were one of the components of the colonization flow into Siberia at the beginning of the 20th century. The total number of registered members of “sectarian” communities at the beginning of 1925 was, in Omsk province alone, which was the “cradle of sectarianism,” 15,549 persons [1]. In Omsk okrug, according to the okrug council of the League of Militant Atheists (SVB), in 1929 there were about 10.5 thousand members of various sects [2]. According to A. Dolotov, who wrote a book in 1930 with the help of Chekists about sects in Siberia, the number of only registered “sectarians” was 29.5 thousand [3].

The Siberian leadership traditionally viewed “sectarianism” as one of the main opponents in the countryside [4]. The peak of the “anti-sectarian” struggle here came in 1928–1930, when, in the process of Stalin’s “revolution from above,” a powerful blow was dealt to religious confessions. As ideological support for the repressions, a broad campaign was organized in the press aimed at creating the image of the enemy — the sectarian. This work is devoted to studying the mechanism of its formation. In the course of the research, it is intended to identify and describe the main directions along which the discrediting of believers proceeded, to reveal the causes of the campaign, and to assess its effectiveness.

The source base of the study consists of newspapers of the okrugs that were places of large compact settlements of “sectarians” — the newspaper of the Slavgorod Okrug Committee of the VKP(b) and the okrug executive committee “Stepnaya Pravda”[**], the organ of the Omsk Okrug Committee of the VKP(b) and the okrug executive committee “Rabochiy Put”, as well as the publication of the German section at the Siberian Kraikom of the VKP(b) “Der Landmann” and the “main” newspaper of the Siberian Krai “Sovetskaya Sibir”. In total, we used about 300 publications about members of free churches.

Newspapers were the main propaganda tool in the 1920s–1930s, far outpacing radio and cinema in terms of mass reach and impact. Three features of the publication methodology explain, in our view, the successes of Soviet newspaper propaganda. On the one hand, it is the “poster-like” language of the publications, i.e., the use of short notes with a minimum of specific information, vivid and colorful text written in “newspeak.” The second feature logically continues the first — the publications are built on a “black-and-white” principle, where evil and good are always separated by a clear boundary, and the reader is offered a self-evident choice by means of summarizing phrase-sentences like “punish, deprive, evict, dismiss, bring to trial, shoot.” Thirdly, the information presented in newspapers often represented a skillful mixture of truth and deception. Tendentiousness, shifting of accents, and lying by omission were inherent methods. The publications we used rightly attributed resistance to grain procurements and collectivization to the believers. Another matter is that not everything reported about the actions of “sectarians” corresponded to reality.

It is necessary to note a few more accompanying points important for a correct interpretation of the phenomenon under study. The practical absence of an antipode image, the image of a hero opposing the dark force, is interesting. This circumstance, already noted by researchers of Civil War posters, was also characteristic of the 1920s [5]. The place of the hero — fighter, hero — victor is most often taken by the figure of a village activist killed by the kulaks, i.e., the image of a “victim on the altar of the revolution.” One gets the feeling that the newspapers appealed to the “mass hero,” i.e., to the immediate reader. With a high degree of probability, it can be assumed that the primary addressee of the campaign under study was the youth, most susceptible to revolutionary leftism.

Notable also is the Bolsheviks’ use of the very term “sectarianism.” There is no doubt that this was primarily about exploiting the legacy created by the Russian Orthodox Church. From 1827, “defection” into sectarianism was punishable in Russia as a criminal offense. Despite the exceptional popularity of “sectarian” movements (by some estimates, the number of sectarians reached about 5 million at the beginning of the twentieth century [6]), the ideological work of the Russian Orthodox Church did not go in vain, especially with regard to shaping the image of the sectarian—a fanatical bigot and debauchee. Fortunately, the sects of the Skoptsy and Christ-believers, better known as “Khlysty,” were there for all to see. The very universality of the term “sectarians,” convenient and capacious, minimizing differentiation between confessions, was a true godsend for the authorities. It is no coincidence that the widely publicized arrest and exposure of Skoptsy “ships” in Leningrad and the Uritsk District of Leningrad Oblast was carried out by the OGPU precisely in 1929. Protestant churches, which had never considered themselves sectarian, fully experienced the force of the stereotype.

And third, something to bear in mind. Publications in local newspapers legally served as a form of public denunciation. Employees of the prosecutor’s office, administrative departments, district executive committees, investigators—all were obliged to monitor newspaper items and articles and take action. This added poignancy to the game in which “flesh would indeed be flesh, blood would be human blood.”

Direct Discreditation — Components of the Image of the Infernal Enemy.

In the course of working on the material, we managed to identify eight categories, eight directions along which the direct discreditation of members of the free churches proceeded. It must be noted immediately that this division is rather arbitrary; within the system, these categories functioned according to the principle of communicating vessels. Since a high level of generalization leads to loss of distinctiveness, details and colors, each of the eight categories will be briefly illustrated with excerpts from publications.

Class Enemy.

“Now it is no longer enough to talk about God and priests—now one must talk about God and religion in connection with specific bearers of religiosity, their social and economic position, their activities,” urged the Second All-Union Congress of the League of Militant Atheists (SVB). Fulfilling this main directive of the anti-religious struggle of the 1928–1930 model, Siberian newspapers sought to prove that members of “sects” were class enemies waging a struggle against Soviet power precisely because of their social status.

The “red” philistine was persistently told from issue to issue that sectarianism had become the quintessence of all anti-Soviet forces. “Stepnaya Pravda” asserted: “sectarians cannot sympathize with Soviet power, because their core, the ruling elite, are former merchants, factory owners, kulaks, gendarmes, high-ranking tsarist officials, … bipedal pests who want money, power, and the opportunity to exploit” [7]. It was echoed by “Rabochy Put”: “If you count in any district how many believers were among those boycotted during grain procurements, the picture is this—all those boycotted are all ‘pious people,’ while activists are atheists. Those who set fire to the grain of poor and middle peasants, who shoot from around the corner at activists and community workers, in most cases are also believers” [8]. Sometimes newspapers provided a detailed portrait of a preacher or presbyter, who invariably turned out to be a former tsarist police sergeant, speculator, and merchant, like the leader of the Baptist community in the village of Bogdanovka, Slavgorod District, Kalinichenko [9], or a kulak and mill owner, like the Baptist preacher, “bloodsucker” presbyter Belousov, or the Evangelical Christian Ilya Petrenko [10]. It was about them that the leader of Slavgorod Komsomol members, Lakomkin, wrote: “It is difficult to understand where the kulak ends and the priest-sectarian begins. Therefore, the Komsomol … must organize its work so as to strike at the kulak, the sectarian, and the priest simultaneously” [11]. Another favorite image from this lubok-style gallery of villains was the ruthless exploiter, such as members of the Slavgorod City Baptist Council—Mennonite I. Probst and Baptist Rudenko, who “tormented” orphans and farm laborers “in the name of the Crucified Christ” [12].

The nature of the sectarians’ deeds was meant to confirm their counter-revolutionary class essence, so sectarians were deliberately singled out by publishing data about malicious grain hoarders who resisted grain procurements. In the period from summer 1928 to summer 1929 alone, we identified about thirty cases in Omsk and Slavgorod newspapers where sectarians (mostly groups) were mentioned as defaulters on grain deliveries in the “On the Black Board” column. The Baptists of the city of Novo-Omsk looked particularly vivid: having large stocks of grain, they nonetheless—in the opinion of the editorial board—robbed the poor by buying grain in stores of Tsentrrabcoop [13]; or the Baptists of the village of Usovo, who “bribed the poor to sell kulak grain at the markets” [14]. Newspapers also blamed Baptists for attempts to disrupt village self-taxation, milk contracting, loan campaigns, and the creation of seed funds, as happened in Slavgorod District in February 1930, when the plan for establishing seed funds was fulfilled by only a little over three percent [15].

The struggle against collective farms also became a prerogative of the sectarians. On February 22, 1929, “Rabochy Put” published an editorial “Sectarians Against the Measures of the Party and Government,” which exposed the machinations of “the scattered and broken remnants of the Mennonite kulaks,” who after the liquidation of the All-Russian Mennonite Agricultural Society united in cooperative associations [16]. The largest number of newspaper reports about opposition to collective farms occurred in the first two months of 1930. Baptists resisted total collectivization in Novosibirsk, Slavgorod, Andreevsky, Nemetsky, and other districts [17]. The “malicious slander” of the Baptists about the “horrors” in the commune consisted of talk of inevitable famine, slavery, and grain seizures.

Corrupter of Youth.

A revolution triumphs when the children and grandchildren who follow the generation of revolutionaries remain faithful to its ideals. This ABC truth was well understood by the party leadership, which sought to remove all obstacles separating the state and youth. Sectarians turned out to be an unexpectedly serious hindrance on this path. The tone of the campaign was set in May 1928 by the party’s recognized ideologist N. I. Bukharin. Speaking at the 8th All-Union Congress of the Komsomol, he paid special attention to sectarianism, spoke of its degeneration, modernization, and the growth of its adherents: «We believed that the Komsomol was the only youth organization in our country. There exists, however, a whole series of sectarian organizations which unite in their ranks approximately as many as the Komsomol» [18]. Siberian newspapers seized on these theses and wrote breathlessly about the modernization of sectarians’ work in everything concerning youth. The trump cards of the malicious sectarians, especially the Baptists, were recognized as the propagation of «evangelical truths» by young, literate preachers using dancing, music, free refreshments, inviting special orchestras, equipping sports grounds with gear, organizing sports circles and providing their members with special clothing, and holding discussions and lectures. «Everyone knows their prayer house on Rosa Luxemburg Street. They have choral and music circles here, Bible regent courses have opened, for which they brought in specialists»—thus Stepnaya Pravda described the prayer house of the Slavgorod Baptist community, which the Baptists shared, beginning in July 1919, with the Mennonite community [19].

The sense of a real rival in the struggle for souls kept the authorities from sleeping peacefully. At the 4th Slavgorod Party District Conference of the VKP(b) in December 1928, it was stated that «in their propaganda the Baptists have outstripped us, agitating essentially not for God but against Soviet power» [20]. Equally critical was the Secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee, Rakhmanov, who attended the Omsk District Komsomol Conference in May 1929: «Where our work and anti-religious propaganda are poorly organized, and we cannot boast of anti-religious work, the influence of sectarian organizations grows» [21]. Local workers agreed with him: «The cultural campaign remains forgotten… Sectarians are not dozing; they recruit girls and young men into their ranks only because we are unable to attract them» [22].

«The evangelicals’ success lies in the fact that they have firmly grasped—whoever has the youth has the future,» wrote the Slavgorod newspaper, reporting that in the village of Rodino evangelicals acquired a harmonium, stringed musical instruments, and organize evening gatherings every day, and the Baptists of Khoroshee, Novo-Alekseevsky District bought a grand piano [23]. Even the five-thousand-strong Slavgorod pioneer detachment was endangered, as children were leaving it and «coming under the influence of sects, lured by the Baptists’ gifts» [24]. Solely in order to «get children under their influence,» the Baptists were prepared, as the newspaper claimed, to raise orphans, «making preachers out of homeless children,» as the Slavgorod community activist, Baptist Sakharov did [25]. Demanding punishment of the «criminal,» the newspaper at the same time, issue after issue, published articles about the unresolved problem of child homelessness and the dire state of orphanages.

Trying to present the matter as if the cunning «fishers of men» were outpacing the Komsomol mainly through various kinds of lures, the authors of these publications did not see, or did not want to see, the main reason for the success of Protestant churches. Later V. Shalamov would write: «The religious, the sectarians—these, in my observations, possessed a fire of spiritual steadfastness. The year thirty-eight fully confirmed my rightness» [26]. In those conditions, adherents of Protestant churches were almost the only ones carrying a powerful charge of humanism, which was impossible not to sense and appreciate in an increasingly radicalizing society. Sometimes this broke through even the journalistic scribblings meant to discredit the «sectarians.» Scoffing that «sectarians have started to sing in a new way, staking on culture which they so recently considered a cesspool of hell,» Rabochiy Put’ in October 1929 published a short excerpt from a Baptist preacher’s sermon «The Souls of Our Maidens»: «The souls of our maidens have withered, we must sprinkle them with divine dew… We must read more, love music, live culturally and till the land» [27].

Wrecker and murderer.

This characterization was given to the image-makers with the greatest difficulty, and although in one 1929 cartoon in an Omsk newspaper a Baptist was depicted with a cross at the ready like a rifle, the time of the mass-produced fabricated «execution» trials had not yet come. In Siberia, sectarians would be purposefully rounded up and shot as spies, rebels, and conspirators in 1937–1938. [28] In the years 1928–1930, one can note several trials reflected in the newspapers that were close in spirit to the «Great Purge.» The first of these was the case of a group of 12 «kulak-Mennonites» from the villages of Petrovka, Orekhovka, and Chunaevka in the Lyubinsky District of the Omsk Okrug, who allegedly organized a mass flogging of 15 farm laborers on November 19–20, 1928. That the trial was fabricated in the interests of a harsh grain procurement campaign in German villages is beyond doubt. Almost immediately after the accused were arrested, the deputy Siberian prosecutor I. A. Kupriyanov, contrary to all judicial norms, declared that this counterrevolutionary crime would be punished by execution «by shooting» [29]. «The flogging case» had recognizable analogues: the Ludorvay case of 1928, which had made a splash in the press, the Rosendamm case of 1929, and the case of the group of Father I. Kelsh in 1929. [30]

In August 1929, a trial of activists from the Baptist community took place in the Novo-Alekseevsky district, ending with sentences that were unusually harsh for 1929. Six Baptists and Evangelical Christians from the village of Khoroshee, led by V. I. Degtyarenko, the chairman of the district council of Evangelical Christians, who had organized a traditional “women’s wailing” in protest against the creation of a commune, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to six years with disenfranchisement for three to five years. After serving their punishment, the sectarians were to be exiled to the Turukhansk region [31]. At the same time, in the settlement of Plenko in Karasuksky district, Baptist preacher I. F. Zhukov was sentenced to eight years’ deprivation of freedom with subsequent exile for five years to remote areas of Siberia. At a village meeting, he had urged people not to join collective farms, calling them “a repeat of serfdom,” campaigned against communists, and “the surrounding peasants believed Zhukov and did not join the collective farm” [32].

The “execution” trial of members of the “Union of Evangelists” was conducted on November 16, 1930, under the direction of Slavgorod okrug prosecutor P. I. Tsygankov in the village of Verkh-Suetka, Znamensky district. The Protestants had agitated against Soviet power and for emigration to America, published a brochure titled “The Last Battle of the Evgists (Evangelists — A.S.) with Satan,” and sabotaged grain procurements. After the Chekists arrested the “ringleaders” of the group on October 8, the chairman of the village council, Chernobrovkin, who had been especially active in exposing the “counter-revolutionary group,” was murdered. The Chekists carried out additional “seizures,” and another twenty people were arrested. Poor peasants’ meetings that were held formally demanded that the “sectarian-terrorists” be shot [33].

At the end of 1929 and the beginning of 1930, newspapers began to publish reports about the wrecking attempts of sectarians to destroy collective farms from within. Baptists were exposed for wrecking in the “Molotov,” “Third International,” and “Volya” collective farms in the Slavgorod district, where they “bribed poor peasants so that they would join the commune with the aim of decomposition” [34]. The working people also demanded an end to the “harmful activity” of Mennonite preachers in the “Budenny” and “Kalinin” communes in the German district [35]. In January 1930, “Soviet Siberia” and “Steppe Truth” painted a picture of Baptist dominance in the “Siberian Giant” — one of the first creations of total collectivization, established in the village of Znamenskoye, Slavgorod district. In connection with attempts to “blow up collective farms from within and turn the slogan of collectivization into a slogan of emigration,” several articles about the emigration of Germans were published in Omsk and Slavgorod newspapers.

For “Rabochy Put,” it became typical to expose the wrecking activities of sectarians on the Omsk railway and in the city’s enterprises. The reports painted an image of potential wreckers, ready at any moment to move from words to deeds. On March 1, 1929, the newspaper urged, in connection with seasonal layoffs on the railway, to get rid of those “alien to the working class”: White officers, traders, preachers of various sects, and homeowners. According to the newspaper, eight Baptists and sect leaders worked on the railway [36]. Two of them — the Baptist preacher E. F. Melnikov, who worked in the railway management, and the preacher and locomotive driver Ryaboklyach, a “Baptist priest on a Soviet locomotive” — received special attention. The persecution of the latter was sparked by an event logically seized upon by the newspaper: Ryaboklyach was fired for wrecking because a bearing on his locomotive had failed during a trip. “Men like Ryaboklyach must be driven out of all Soviet organizations, especially from transport, the main nerve of the proletarian state,” the newspaper demanded [37].

The Lecher, the Drunkard, and the Syphilitic.

This component of the enemy-sectarian image was intended to have a direct impact on the female population, especially young girls. Due to the sex and age shifts caused by war and revolution, the role of women in the life of the Russian village had significantly increased. The authorities tried to use feminization to their advantage. Considering the fact that the growth of communities, which had become a trend in the 1920s, was largely driven by the female population, it becomes understandable why they sought to discredit the “sectarians” in women’s eyes by portraying them as lewd and debauched.

The task was made easier because, of all the elements of the enemy image, this particular line of discrediting directly appealed to the mass consciousness, which had an abundance of everyday examples of domestic and sexual dissoluteness. Those who had a chance to read the provincial press of the latter half of the 1920s would certainly have noticed the large number of publications about rapes in the countryside on one hand, and, on the other, advertisements for various lectures on sexual themes, for potions to enhance potency, the services of venereologists, and so on. Drunkenness and demonstrative sexual promiscuity flourished among the most emancipated part of village youth, primarily Komsomol members. Against this background, the “sectarian” youth stood out sharply: as a rule, they did not drink, did not smoke, and were strict in moral questions — which also attracted a great many girls and women into the congregations. This is how girls from the village of Topolinoye in Novo-Alekseevsky district, Slavgorod okrug, explained their joining the Baptist community to Komsomol members: “Why would we go to your boring meetings, to the club or the reading hut, when the Baptists have music, where they play and sing well, and there’s no hooliganism there?” [38]

Therefore, the discrediting was tasked at the highest party level. The May Day slogans of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) and the anti-Easter slogans of the SVB (Union of Militant Atheists) of 1928–1929 linked, in the mass consciousness of believers, with drunkenness and sexual debauchery: “Drunkenness, hooliganism, religious obscurantism, and sexual promiscuity dance in a friendly chorus while the cultural forces of the countryside lie low,” “The difference between Orthodoxy and sectarianism is like the difference between vodka and beer!” Fifty thousand workers in Novosibirsk, supporting the campaign to close sectarian prayer houses, demonstrated in January 1930 under the slogan “Down with prayer houses and beer halls!”

In the provincial press, instructions from above were fleshed out as follows. A series of publications we uncovered accused sectarians of rape: “There were cases where, in the village of Bogdanovka [Slavgorod district], Baptists raped women right in the prayer house building” [39]. “Der Landmann” and “Stepnaya Pravda” often accused preachers of raping hired women workers and female pupils. Thus, on November 10, 1928, Mennonite preacher Ivan Klassen from the village of Redko-Dubrovka in the German district was accused of raping worker Elena Koop [40]. Sectarians allegedly debauched and drank at their prayer meetings too. “Rabochiy Put’,” describing the rites of the “Christians of the Evangelical Faith” in the town of Leninsk-Omsky, asserted: “Vodka and kisses — that’s the program of the new sect… Sectarians wash each other’s feet, kiss, and then proceed to libations, during which ordinary Russian bitter vodka can be transformed, for them, into the blood of Christ. After drinking, brotherly kissing continues, but it takes on a somewhat different character — ‘brothers’ kiss exclusively with ‘sisters’” [41].

Logically, venereal diseases were supposed to accompany sexual debauchery. And in the summer of 1929, the Slavgorod newspaper made a discovery: “Baptists breed venereal patients.” According to its claim, during the meetings of the Baptist community in the village of Orlovo, when sick and healthy Baptists use the same mug for drinking water, venereal diseases spread en masse “through the Baptist community” [42]. Such “discoveries” were not made only in Slavgorod. In December 1928, vigilant bodies exposed a Baptist artel in the Borisoglebsk district, where “the holy fathers indulged in debauchery and drunkenness.” A medical examination allegedly found that they were “syphilitics to a man” [43]. The authorities were clearly blaming the healthy head for the sick one. According to information published in the summer of 1928 in “Stepnaya Pravda,” in some areas of the Slavgorod district up to 90% of the population suffered from syphilis. From December 1927 to April 1928, 8,060 syphilis patients were registered at the district’s venereal treatment points [44].

The malicious sectarians also used the power of Eros to recruit new members. Baptist girls of the Slavgorod community dressed as nicely as possible “to lure boys into the Baptist house” [45]. In the village of Usovo, a “Baptist den” of the Omsk district, the presbyter’s daughter “worked on” the secretary of the Komsomol cell, and the unsteady Komsomol member fell “head over heels” in love [46]. At Baptist services in the Odessa district, an indispensable attribute was “a choir of young girls in very transparent dresses, with flowing hair, raising praise to God” [47].

Obscurantist and Fanatic.

Oddly enough, this component proved to be the least developed. There were several reasons for that. On the one hand, religion was a priori regarded as obscurantism, and by definition, the believer was a fanatic standing in the way of progress. The theme, on which the French Enlightenment thinkers had already labored so well, was difficult to adjust. On the other hand, after all the talk about the modernization of sectarianism, it was problematic to use the blackest of paints. But in light of those very same innovations undertaken by the “crafty and resourceful sectarians,” it was necessary to demonstrate that their essence remained the same.

The most convincing — and having a genuine real basis — became the relationship between sectarian fathers and children. A “wandering” motif was the oppression suffered by young people striving to break free from the tutelage of their elders. “Rabochiy Put’” wrote that the Baptists “drill their youth, forbidding them to go to the club.” The classic obscurantist was the presbyter of the Usovo community, Shulkin, who “flogs his daughters for their attraction to the club” [48]. “Stepnaya Pravda” and “Der Landmann” wrote about Baptists and Mennonites in similar tones. In January 1930, “Sovetskaya Sibir” reported on the “pharisaical” Baptists of the villages Tikhonovo and Eremino in the Novosibirsk district, who organized a morality police to supervise the youth [49].

Another common theme was the fabricated Baptist “letters from Jerusalem,” which were distributed under threat of divine punishment by “superstitious people in the Borisov, Moskalenie, and Odessa districts” of the Omsk district in early 1929 [50]. “Stepnaya Pravda” also noted the appearance of “letters from God” in the summer of 1929.

To the classic arsenal of proofs of sectarian obscurantism belonged reports that in Leninsk-Omsky, Baptists agitated among workers against the liquidation of illiteracy [51], rumors “spread by sectarians” about the antichrist’s mark being placed on all who worked at the Machine Tractor Stations (Kulachinsky district of Omsk district) [52], and the opening by sectarians of a “holy cave” in the Pokrovskoe district of Rubtsovsk district, where anti-Soviet agitation was conducted under the guise of soul-saving conversations [53].

Compared to these notes, some publications that were relatively harmless at first glance carried a much deeper, symbolic meaning. Such was, for example, a report about the public refusal of Baptist preacher Derksen (from the settlement of Khoroshiy, Slavgorod district) to buy a sugar bowl in a shop with the inscription “Cooperation is the high road to socialism” [54], or the description of a baptismal ceremony conducted by Baptists on June 23, 1929, in the village of Zhelannoye, the center of Baptist organizations in the Omsk district. Alongside the brigade from the Omsk City Soviet of the Union of Militant Atheists that was holding an anti-religious debate, “they happened to witness a very interesting picture — the baptism of adult Baptists in a local swamp. The Baptist clergyman wades knee-deep into the water, and victims of religious intoxication come toward him… The victim answers, ‘I believe,’ and then the baptized person is submerged in the dirty swamp where just before pigs, cows, and geese had been wallowing” [55].

The Leper.

Here we will discuss the formation of another element with a distinctly threatening coloration, directed at potential “sectarians.” Publications were needed that would emphasize the clearly pronounced danger of “sectarian existence” and the rejection of free churches from the social organism. One of its main characteristics, which had fully taken shape by the end of the 1920s, was the extreme militarization of society, which was increasing exponentially all the time. The pacifism of the majority of adherents of free churches, who continued to refuse military service with weapons in hand, despite the fact that the governing bodies of most confessions had, under pressure from the repressive campaign of 1922–1923, declared their recognition of military service, was regarded by the authorities as a dangerous anti-Soviet phenomenon.

As a result, administrative measures through the NKVD were tightened against “sectarians” who had been exempted by court decisions, and repressions against “refuseniks” intensified, something that was notably reflected in the newspapers. In accordance with the order of People’s Commissar of Internal Affairs V. N. Tolmachev No. 108 of May 31, 1929, “On the Use of Labor of Citizens Released from Military Service on Religious Grounds,” all believers exempted from conscription in 1924–1928 were mobilized for three months to work at the logging enterprises of the state trust “Lesokhim.” Apart from creating a contingent of cheap and powerless labor for timber felling, the authorities pursued yet another goal. Believers could avoid this work, which had previously been the preserve of prisoners, only by renouncing their convictions [56].

“Rabochy Put” reported in the summer of 1929 that during the conscription of those born in 1907, “religious persons” exempted from military service would, after the call‑up, be employed in socially useful work for two years, while “lishentsy” (including ministers of religious cults) were to be enrolled in the rear militia and, at the end of the conscription, would be subject to a special military tax” [57]. In mid‑August 1929, the Omsk District Executive Committee issued a resolution according to which “religious persons” released from service were to be used for agricultural work on state farms starting from August 20, 1929. All those exempted over the previous five years were sent to work [58]. The procedure for using believers was coordinated with the NKVD. Subsequent publications revealed that more than 200 “religious persons” were to perform, with interruptions, corvée labor over five years at the state farm of the Omsk corrective labor colony, i.e., prison.

On April 9, 1930, “Kolkhoznaya Pravda” published a new NKVD order No. 180 of March 12, 1930. According to it, citizens conscripted in 1925–1929 but released from military service on religious grounds were to be drafted “for work at the logging operations of the state trust ‘Lesokhim’ within the Siberian production region from April 20 to October 20, 1930.” Compared with the order of a year earlier, the terms were harsher: in 1930, “refuseniks” were mobilized not for three months but for half a year. “Sectarians” who had renounced their convictions were now to be transferred to the army only after completing their work term

[59]. Exempted from the mobilization were “persons who had been drafted for two years.” The trend of forced exploitation of pacifists found its logical culmination in the conscription of “religious persons” into rear militia units. [60].

Alongside this information, newspapers regularly published both reports about trials of “refuseniks” and public letters of renunciation of faith by sectarian conscripts. In the course of 1929, newspapers carried several reports about show trials conducted by revolutionary tribunals against “refuseniks”: the Sabbatarian Tevs (a resident of the village of Markovka, Klyuchevsky district, Slavgorod okrug, who refused on religious grounds to perform his official duties on Sabbath days [61]), the Evangelical Christian G. Motorenko (a resident of the village of Shcheglovka, Poltava district, Omsk okrug [62]), and others. All were sentenced to terms of one to two years of forced labor. In the summer and fall of 1929, publications also appeared calling to “keep the class enemy out of the Red Army,” especially sectarians who, in military units stationed in the Slavgorod okrug, were carrying out “openly counter‑revolutionary work, enjoying the support of local sectarian communities” [63].

Another direction was demonstrating the inferiority of sectarianism in the family sphere. Public renunciations of relatives and close ones, better known from 1937–1938, manifested themselves fully toward sectarian families already in 1929–1930. Typical is the statement of one I. Vogt: “I refuse to have any connection with my father, Franz Vogt, because he is a Baptist preacher. I do not want such a father and forever renounce him” [64]. The ways of pressuring believers through their loved ones varied — from a complete break to the benevolent: “Father, you have gone astray.” That was the title of a publication featuring a Red Army soldier T. Malyshev’s appeal to his father, a peasant from the village of Novo-Andreevsky in the Slavgorod district, who had joined a Baptist community in 1929. [65].

The omnipresent enemy.

The flood of articles in 1929–1930 also demonstrated one of the qualities needed to create the image of the enemy: the enemy had to be “multiplying out of nowhere.” The publications showed that the enemies sought to oppose socialist construction not only on strategic fronts but on all others as well, manifesting their activity everywhere, often in completely unexpected spheres of endeavor.

Schools.

Already in 1928 it became clear that enemies were extending their tentacles into schools. The calling card of the Mennonites was the creation of “secret schools.” In the village of Sergievka, Klyuchevsky district, a secret school under the leadership of the wife of Mennonite preacher Friesen was uncovered, and a Baptist school in Slavgorod district was closed. In February 1929, thanks to the vigilance of the Communist parents Schultz, a secret organization of Sunday schools teaching children the Law of God was exposed in the villages of the Puchkovsky village council, Isil-Kulsky district [66]. The Margenau school of the second level also regularly came under attack.

In Slavgorod, Baptists infiltrated the pedagogical technical school and the city school, recruiting several students into the community. In the village of Lozovoye, Slavgorod county, Baptists “stuffed their children with religious dope, forcing them to pass this dope on to children not infected with superstitions” [67]. Baptist and Adventist children publicly refused to sing the “Internationale” in schools, “loudly answering that their faith and their parents did not permit them to sing it.” At the January 1930 plenum of the Slavgorod district executive committee, a certain Steinberg proposed creating courses with an anti-religious emphasis for minority teachers, since “almost every village has about three preachers from various religious communities” [68].

Elections.

A “roaming” motif was the sectarians’ distortion of the democratic procedure for re-electing local councils. “Thus, it is the custom of sectarians on the days of re-elections to arrange their prayer meetings in order to distract believers from the re-elections and to foist their own candidates on them,” — this assertion of “Rabochy Put” (Workers’ Way) became, with minor variations, a standby for the topic “Elections and Sectarians.” A scandalous incident, from the newspaper’s standpoint, occurred in January 1929 in the village of Garkushino, Moskalensky district, when “10 kulaks and 15 disenfranchised persons, mainly kulak dependents and Baptist preachers, showed up at the election meeting. All the party’s candidates were defeated; kulak candidates got through” [69]. The “Garkushino” story had a sequel: so that the kulak sectarians would feel “the power of the steel bit of proletarian legality,” 100 workers from the city of Omsk were dispatched to organize the poor of the district.

Everyday exoticism.

Most of the articles here termed “exotic” were written on themes that practically never found parallels or recurrences in later publications, but were also quite functional in light of the above considerations. Thus, in the summer of 1929 it transpired that “Dukhobor sectarians” had seized leadership of the soccer club at the Omsk city slaughterhouse, “pushing out the workers” [70]. The purge of Omsk higher educational institutions in May 1929 was conducted under the slogan “Kulak and NEP-man, bourgeois professor, priest and sectarian are lining up in a united front to disrupt the growth of socialism” [71]. In fact, it proved difficult to cite examples of sectarian infiltration of higher education. Only at the Omsk Medical Institute was a student, I. Borisov, found who had been exempted from military service on religious grounds [72]. An illustrative little article in an Omsk newspaper in February 1929 told of police removing Baptist seamstresses who had “gained access by cunning” to a family evening organized by trade unions in Isil-Kul [73]. Sectarians “wormed their way” into the Party; a Baptist presbyter engaged in worker-correspondent activity; Baptist women from Leninsk-Omsk in 1928–1929 regularly “infiltrated” the women’s departments; Mennonite sectarians “sneaked into” regional teacher retraining courses in summer 1929; the Baptists of the village of Zhelannoye, Odessky district, encroached on Party prerogatives by taking part in a Party purge through the district committee’s negligence. The hysteria of the masses, so necessary for revolutionary transformations, mounted, and quite justified seemed the cry-demand of workers at Omsk bakeries in December 1929: “Get rid of the Baptists!” [74].

Prayer houses — counterrevolutionary headquarters.

The campaign to close sectarian prayer houses, launched in the second half of 1929 and early 1930 in the towns of Slavgorod and Novosibirsk, was the logical culminating stage in the formation of the enemy image, simultaneously demonstrating the sprouts of the scattered seeds of hatred and fear[***].

Revolutions strive to change the socio-cultural encoding of reality; the formerly familiar “alien” or “old” unexpectedly becomes “counterrevolutionary.” The closure of prayer houses continued the symbolic impulse to blot out the accursed past, an event of the same order as demands to introduce an era reckoning not from the Nativity of Christ but from the first day of the October Revolution, to carry out calendar reform and introduce a five-day week with the days of Marx, Lenin, Star, Sickle, and Hammer [75]. The upheaval on the mental and psychological level, combined with an ever more frequently provoked plunge from above into mass hysteria, continued.

The signal to launch the persecution in Slavgorod came from a resolution published on July 10, 1929, in Stepnaya Pravda by employees of the district executive committee, city council, and district social welfare department: “to finish off the center of reaction, which at times slides into counterrevolution.” The principal counterrevolutionary act of the Baptists, it was claimed, was their meetings: “Lately the Baptists have gotten so brazen that they gather late in the evening and talk about something in the dark. What can they be talking about in a dark room? Anything but God, whom they use as a cover for their gatherings.”

Even more “criminal” was declared the increased attendance at the prayer house. “Taking into account the obviously counterrevolutionary activity” of the Baptists and outraged by “the most outrageous, insolent behavior of the Baptists, wholly aimed at undermining the measures of Soviet power,” Soviet employees demanded that the rental agreement with the Baptists for the house be terminated [76]. The fate of the prayer house, which had the misfortune to be symbolically located at the intersection of Rosa Luxemburg and Zinoviev streets, was sealed. In this article and the subsequent publications, the newspaper’s authors constructed a sinister image of the prayer house, akin to Baba Yaga’s hut and the den of a fearsome fairy-tale ogre, attributing to it dark supernatural powers: “a huge building, clearly harmful,” “a spiderweb in which simpletons are snared,” “a trap of the capitalists,” “a universal trap for dark and unenlightened people,” and so on. The series of articles that appeared in the following days of July both reflected and simultaneously stoked the flywheel of mass hysteria. After reports about the trial of the leaders of the Slavgorod Baptist community on July 9, 1929 [77], successive issues published doses of “workers’ fury,” their protests and demands. The list alone of the work collectives that passed resolutions demanding the closure of the prayer house could fill a page.

The campaign, which had lasted barely three weeks, ceased as if by magic at the end of July 1929. The decision had to work its way up the bureaucratic ladder, reaching its peak with a resolution of the Siberian Regional Executive Committee or, in the event of protests by Baptists and Mennonites, a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

Subsequent publications in Stepnaya Pravda give grounds to assert that in September 1929 the prayer house had not yet been closed. On September 6, 1929, workers’ meetings in Slavgorod demanded to “liquidate the Baptist prayer house,” since, amid the military conflict on the Soviet-Chinese border, it was necessary to smash the fifth column represented by the Baptists [78]. It was not closed even by early 1930 — on December 30 and 31, 1929, general meetings of Slavgorod work collectives again petitioned the city council to close the prayer house [79]. It is not yet possible to name the final date of liquidation, but the closure of prayer houses in Novosibirsk in March 1930 confirms that it met a similar fate.

The campaign in Novosibirsk was as like the Slavgorod one as two peas in a pod. The existing communities of Christian Baptists, Evangelical Christians, and Seventh-day Adventists in Novosibirsk found themselves confronting a campaign unleashed against them in mid-August 1929. On August 15, the city council decided to terminate the building-use agreements with the Protestant confessions. In early January 1930, the liquidation process received the support of the “organized lower orders” — the workers of Novosibirsk. From January 3 to 22, 1930, Sovetskaya Sibir published demands by workers and employees to close all churches, prayer houses, and, in the spirit of revolutionary consciousness, beer halls in the city. The workers suddenly became aware of the extreme incompatibility of the “new” and the “old”: the Old Cemetery Church and the garden of the Soviet Trade Employees’ Union, the Baptist and Adventist prayer houses with the headquarters of the Siberian Military District and the Red Army House. This “monstrous proximity” added fuel to their demands.

On February 7, 1930, the Siberian Regional Executive Committee resolved, “taking into account the mass petition of the citizens of Novosibirsk … no fewer than 50,000 people, and the acute shortage of premises for cultural and educational work,” to liquidate the prayer buildings of the “sectarian” communities and transfer them to the city council. On the same day, the Novosibirsk District Executive Committee approved

Secondly, “sectarianism” grounded Stalin’s thesis about the intensification of class struggle as socialism advanced. According to Marxist orthodoxy, the increased activity of the class enemy had to be accompanied by an ideological offensive against socialism. “Sectarians” suited perfectly for the role of Kulak ideologues, “mouthpiece of the class enemy.” The “godless” were tasked with linking anti-religious propaganda to politics and showing “whose class interests are served by religious organizations in the USSR”[81]. That the term “religious organizations” was primarily filled with “sectarian” content is well demonstrated by the May 1929 resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on strengthening party leadership in the cultural work of trade unions, which the Central Committee tried to use as one of the levers of anti-religious struggle. Its fourth point stated: “In connection with the intensification of class struggle and the active attempts of kulak-Nepman elements, the trade unions must intensify the struggle against religious currents, in particular against sectarianism” [82].

Thirdly, “sectarianism” was regarded as the bearer of an alternative to building socialism. “Under the religious flag, a program is presented that answers all the questions of modernity, but it is not our program; it is the program of capitalist, restorationist groups,” wrote “Worker’s Path” in May 1929 [83]. In the eyes of the Bolsheviks, “sectarians” acted as perverters, and, as is well known, a heretic is more dangerous.

Not least of a role was played by “sectarian” cooperatives and artels, which served as convincing proof, even for part of the Bolsheviks led by V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, “that one can come to communism by different paths” [84]. The “sectarians’” confession of humanism was also unacceptable. “According to the Gospel teaching, there are only two commandments of Love. Everything that does not agree with these commandments is sin … Baptists adhere to the recognition of the supreme value and dignity of every human personality,” asserted “The Baptist,” the central organ of the All-Russian Baptist Union [85]. “All evil is not in capitalism, not in economic inequality, but in the corrupt human heart,” echoed the Adventist “Voice of Truth” [86].

The purest counterrevolution appeared to be the prayers of Baptists for “those who suffered for the word of God,” “for those imprisoned” (as the Siberian Baptist leaders Ananyev and Kuksenko did[87]), the refusal to divide “God’s children” into kulaks, middle peasants, and poor peasants[88], to use the property of dekulakized peasants on collective farms because it was “theft,” statements that “without Christ there is nowhere to go, that without religion people become like beasts,” and assertions that “the proletariat is fighting an imaginary enemy”[89].

Without understanding that the Bolsheviks had identified “sectarians” as a serious competitor, the constant theme of anti-sectarian publications—depicting “sectarian” methods of work as supposedly “analogous” to party methods—remains incomprehensible. Parallels were drawn everywhere: Baptist “agitprop,” sectarian “socialist” competitions (much ink was spilled on the competition between the Baptists of Omsk and the North Caucasus), Baptist purges, circular letters, “religious clubs” among workers, the celebration of the feast of the “Myrrh-bearing Women” instead of 8 March, the singing of “No one will give us deliverance, only God will save with his hand” instead of the “Internationale,” “Christomols” instead of the Komsomol, the study of Marx–Lenin “in order to beat us with our own weapon,” the evangelization of the USSR as opposed to collectivization and industrialization, the city of Evangel’sk instead of socialist cities, etc. Only this peculiar “jealousy” can explain the zeal with which Mennonite cooperatives or Tolstoyan communes were smashed.

As can be seen from the sharply diminished anti-religious publications in the newspapers, as well as according to party documents and documents of the Siberian Krai Council of the Union of Militant Atheists, in the second half of 1930 in Siberia “anti-religious work weakened and the godless organization was in a state of collapse”[90]. This upheaval admits only one explanation: the mass closure of prayer houses and churches, repressions against the “churchmen” (according to the Krai Council of the SMA, by June 1930 about 50% of “all priests” had been brought to judicial responsibility[91]), and the winding-down of community activity were interpreted locally “as a signal for demobilization on the anti-religious front.” The ideological campaign to create the image of the enemy was finished. The logical question arises as to how deeply this image was implanted in the mass consciousness.

One Russian historian proposed assessing the long-term consequences of the Russian revolution by the presence in society of “bacilli” of revolutionism, meaning by that a propensity to solve all problems through violence, along with a charge of demagoguery and orthodoxy[92]. In this respect, the fruits introduced by the long-term policy of hatred toward the free churches have proven extremely tenacious in Russian society. In the mass consciousness, the movement of Protestant churches is still assessed quite negatively, with stereotypes from the 1920s–1930s predominating. One can speak of a paradoxical situation, where the Russian Orthodox Church, in the competition that has unfolded between it and Protestant denominations, makes successful use of the Bolsheviks’ own methods.

NOTES:

*** Omsk, the third center of “sectarianism,” remained outside the campaign because the Omsk leadership preempted events—without propaganda fanfare, in March 1928 the contract between the Omsk city council and the Baptist community was terminated on the pretext that the latter had violated the regulations for using the prayer house; on 11 July 1929, the presidium of the Siberian Krai Executive Committee decided to close the Baptist prayer house in the village of Usovo, Omsk District. However, a similar action was undertaken in January 1930 in the town of Shcheglovsk (Kemerovo).

* In Russian historiography, the term “sectarianism,” laden with negative connotations, and its derivatives are traditionally used to encompass the entirety of Protestant churches. The concept “free churches” we employ is a calque of the term Freikirchen used in German historiography. Close to this term is the definition used by believers themselves in the 1920s: “free-faith communities.” ** From January 25, 1930 – “Kolkhoznaya Pravda.”

TsDNIOO, f.19, op.1, d.49, l.21. In the report “On the Development of Sectarianism and the State of Antireligious Propaganda in Omsk Gubernia” as of May 7, 1925, a higher aggregate number of Baptists, Evangelical Christians, Mennonites, Seventh-day Adventists, and Molokans is given—16,931 people. // GANO, f.p.2, op.1, d.948, l.32
Rabochiy Put, 1929, August 11, No. 181
Dolotov A. Sectarianism in Siberia // Critique of Religious Sectarianism (An Attempt to Study Religious Sectarianism in the 1920s – Early 1930s). Moscow, 1974, p.104; A similar figure as of 1929—“over 30,000 sectarians”—is also cited by I. D. Eingorn. See: Essays on the History of Religion and Atheism in Siberia. 1917–1937. Tomsk, p.127.
See: Savin A. I. Soviet Power and Christian Sects: On the History of an Antireligious Campaign in Siberia in 1922–1923 // Sociocultural Development of Siberia in the 17th–20th Centuries. Bakhrushin Readings 1996. Novosibirsk, 1998, pp.91–100. Idem: On the Policy of Siberian Authorities toward Sectarians in the Early 1920s // Problems of the History of Local Administration in Siberia from the Late 16th to the Early 20th Centuries. Materials of the Fourth Regional Scholarly Conference, November 11–12, 1999. Novosibirsk, 1999, pp.274–278.
Plaggenborg Stefan. Revolutionskultur. Beiträge zur Geschichte Osteuropas, Böhlau, 1996, Band 21, S.173
Buldakov V. Red Turmoil. The Nature and Consequences of Revolutionary Violence. Moscow, 1997, p.25
“Priestly and Sectarian Dens Filled with Wreckers” // Stepnaya Pravda, 1928, December 22, No. 265
Rabochiy Put, 1929, November 19, No. 264
“What Is Hidden Behind Religious Preaching” // Stepnaya Pravda, 1928, October 23, No. 216
“How Sectarians Support the Kulaks” // Stepnaya Pravda, 1928, September 16, No. 185
“Komsomol Declares an Economic and Cultural Campaign in the Countryside” // Stepnaya Pravda, 1928, October 7, No. 203.
“In the Name of the Crucified Christ” // Stepnaya Pravda, 1928, November 22, No. 239; “Onslaught on the Class Enemy Sheltering Behind Cross and Gospel” // Stepnaya Pravda, 1928, September 12, No. 181
“Novo-Omsk Grain Speculators” // Rabochiy Put, 1929, April 14, No. 84
“Usovo Kulaks—Large Holders of Grain” // Rabochiy Put, 1929, June 28, No. 144
“Creation of Seed Funds Is Now the Most Important” // Kolkhoznaya Pravda, 1930, February 11, No. 40
Rabochiy Put, 1929, February 22, No. 44
See, for example: in Sovetskaya Sibir for 1930—January 10, No. 8; January 24, No. 19; February 4; February 21; February 27. In Stepnaya Pravda for 1930—February 1, No. 31; February 11, No. 40; March 11, No. 64; March 25, No. 74; April 11, No. 86; April 12, No. 87; April 18, No. 94.
Bukharin N. I. Current Tasks of the Komsomol. Report at the Eighth All-Union Congress of the VLKSM, May 6, 1928 // Bukharin N. I. The Path to Socialism. Novosibirsk, 1990, p.302
“Onslaught on the Class…” // Stepnaya Pravda, 1928, September 12, No. 181
Stepnaya Pravda, 1928, December 14, No. 258
Rabochiy Put, 1929, May 28, No. 119; May 31, No. 121
Ibid., May 31, No. 121
“The Ever-Restless Enemy Sleeps Not” // Stepnaya Pravda, 1928, October 10, No. 205
Stepnaya Pravda, 1929, June 1, No. 125
Ibid., August 10, No. 181
Shalamov V. Kolyma Tales. Moscow, 1989, p.325
“Fishers of Souls” // Rabochiy Put, 1929, October 5, No. 228
See: Samosudov V. M. The Great Terror in the Omsk Irtysh Region. 1937–1938. Omsk, 1998; Papkov S. A. Stalin’s Terror in Siberia in 1928–1941. Novosibirsk, 1997, p. 221
Der Landmann, 1928, December 1, No. 94
In the village of Ludorvai, near Izhevsk (Votsk Autonomous Oblast), allegedly “on the initiative of kulaks,” 300 poor peasants were whipped. See, for example: Stepnaya Pravda, 1928, No. 206, October 11. In Rosendamm, German ASSR, in 1929, a trial took place against a group of 12 kulaks who had allegedly flogged 85 people, several of whom were flogged to death. See Stepnaya Pravda, 1929, No. 186, August 16. A group of kulaks under the leadership of Father Joseph Kelsch allegedly terrorized the poor of the villages of Pogrelovo, Neu-Marinovka, Yasnaya Polyana, and Andreasfeld in Donetsk Okrug throughout the 1920s. See Reinmarus A., Friesen G. Under the Yoke of Religion. Germans – Colonists in the USSR and Their Religious Organizations. Moscow-Leningrad, 1931, pp. 113–114.
“The Cross and the Gospel—A Hotbed of Counterrevolution” // Stepnaya Pravda, 1929, August 22, No. 191
Ibid.
“No Mercy for Kulak-Terrorists” // Stepnaya Pravda, 1929, November 5, No. 256
“Black Cassocks in Alliance with the Kulaks Fight Collectivization”
Steppe Truth, 1929, 26 July, No. 170
There is no place for kulaks and speculators in the Red Army // Workers’ Way, 1929, 10 July, No. 154.
Workers’ Way, 1929, 17 August, No. 186
Kolkhoz Truth, 1930, No. 87, 9 April
See: Sectarians in Labour Units. Collection. Moscow, 1930; Krasilnikov S. A. At the Fractures of Social Structure. Marginals in Post-Revolutionary Russian Society (1917–late 1930s). Textbook, Novosibirsk, 1998.
Religious convictions cannot justify desertion // Steppe Truth, 1929, 4 July, No. 151
What Motorenko is being tried for // Workers’ Way, 1929, 9 June, No. 130
Do not let the class enemy into the Red Army // Steppe Truth, 1929, 25 August, No. 194
Steppe Truth, 1929, 25 December, No. 204
Ibid., 24 December, No. 203
Sectarians against the measures of the party and government // Workers’ Way, 1929, 22 February, No. 44
Baptism seeps into the schools // Steppe Truth, 1928, 17 November, No. 235
Steppe Truth, 1929, 11 January, No. 11
An unheard‑of case of kulaks disrupting an election meeting // Workers’ Way, 1929, 27 January, No. 22
Workers’ Way, 1929, 2 July, No. 147
Ibid., 19 May, No. 112
Out with the disenfranchised // Workers’ Way, 1929, 7 February, No. 31
Not to the right address // Workers’ Way, 1929, 14 February, No. 37
Workers’ Way, 1929, 1 December, No. 275
Soviet Siberia, 1930, 4 January, No. 4, 18 January, No. 15
Down with the prayer houses of the Baptists // Steppe Truth, 1929, 10 July, No. 156; Let us not allow the revelry of sectarianism // 11 July, No. 157; The class enemy under the cover of the cross // 18 July, No. 163; We await the city soviet’s decision // 19 July, No. 164; Close all prayer houses // 24 July, No. 168
Steppe Truth, 1929, 11 July, No. 157
Steppe Truth, 1929, 6 September, No. 203
A month earlier the Slavgorod City Soviet had terminated the contracts for the use of prayer houses with the communities of Evangelical Christians and Catholics. See: Belkovets L. P. The Great Terror and the Fate of the German Village in Siberia (late 1920s–1930s). Moscow, 1995, p. 35.
How sectarians support the kulaks // Steppe Truth, 1928, 16 September, No. 185
About one weak area of work // Workers’ Way, 1929, 13 June, No. 133
Workers’ Way, 1929, 24 May, No. 116
The face of the class enemy peers from behind the church scenes // Workers’ Way, 1929, 26 May, No. 118
Etkind A. Russian Sects and Soviet Communism: The Project of Vladimir Bonch‑Bruevich // Minuvshee. Vol. 20. Quoted in Buldakov V. Red…, p. 265
Baptist, 1928, No. 2, p. 27; No. 12, p. 5
Voice of Truth, 1928, No. 1, p. 16
Silence is golden // Steppe Truth, 1928, 27 November, No. 243
Baptists in Kolbasino have worked out their own plan for re‑elections to the soviets // Steppe Truth, 1928, 8 December, No. 253
Dispute in Ukrainka // Workers’ Way, 1929, 7 February, No. 31.
GANO, f. p. 3, op. 3, file 332, fol. 21
Ibid., fol. 30. Information note No. 5 of the Regional Council of the Union of Militant Atheists to the Siberian Regional Committee of the Central Committee of the All‑Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), 25.06.1930, author – instructor Yavelberg.
Buldakov V. Red…, p. 257.

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