Brotherhood of the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists Today

· AUCECB, Who's Who, USSR

Today, by God’s mercy, all 12 unions of the brotherhood of the Council of Churches live and continue their ministry in all the former republics of the USSR, walking the narrow path of following Christ.

It is not customary for Christians to boast of their accomplishments, so I want to say: for all that is good in the brotherhood today, glory be to the Lord, for only by His mercy we live and move and have our being. The brotherhood, desiring to live according to the laws of Christ, took the path of sanctification, and this changed our entire life, filling it with true spiritual content and meaning.

After the collapse of the USSR, many Western preachers flocked to its territory, and they did not always take into account the living conditions of the already existing Protestant communities. During this period, many distorted evangelical concepts and sometimes outright heresies were intensively introduced among God’s people. By the mercy of God, the original apostolic type of ministry is preserved in our brotherhood, as we understand it from the pages of Holy Scripture. Praying and trusting in God, the leading brothers sought the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to navigate correctly in the new conditions. It was precisely at this time that the Church needed to be especially vigilant and not let a fire break out, because foreign fire — no matter from which side it comes — will burn everything. Here the brothers showed unanimity and took resolute measures. Thus, in defending the truth of the gospel, our brotherhood has in recent years stood somewhat apart. It did not merge or cooperate with any foreign missions (except for the German mission “Friedensstimme”). And this was justified. This is easy to see by looking at the statements of an American Baptist minister, which were published in the magazine popular in the West, “Christianity Today.” Here is what it says:

“Dear friends! To all who have worked and are working in the former USSR. I am writing to you frankly, because hardly anyone else will speak as frankly as I do. God willed that His Word, as recorded in the Bible, should come to post-communist Russia, not the substitute that is passed off as Christianity. Many of us tried to carry out His commission honestly. Today, however, one can say openly and honestly: in our practical ministry, not in our reports, we did many things carelessly. Many mediocre books were published that, due to poor translation, became a parody of Christian thought. Many TV and radio programs were also quite mediocre. It seemed that their hosts admired not Christ, but themselves. We had far too much purely American overconfidence. We replaced ignorance of the life of the Russian peoples with indifference. We tried to present ordinary things as God’s revelation. Our preachers spent millions of dollars renting stadiums, on advertising, on publishing self-promotional religious literature about themselves… Uprooted from real life, by their stubbornness they killed in many the desire to seek the great God. They shouted that they were preaching only Christ, but they preached their own churches, their own groups, their own practices… Missionaries wrote reports to their donors, sent out letters full of deceit, a desire to pass off wishful thinking as reality… We did not believe the truth because it did not match our reports. We aroused irritation in a weary Russian society… Where are the millions of people we brought to the Lord?..”

These are only a few statements by a person who worked in our country during the years of perestroika. The question arises: did the Holy Spirit send these preachers? Were they acting from God? We acknowledge the fact that there are many God-fearing pastors abroad as well, but there are also many who, without inquiring of the Lord, went on their own, implanting their own, often corrupt, pattern of spiritual life. Often, elements of American culture were imposed on the churches working with them. Therefore, our brotherhood did not merge with them during those years.

The brotherhood continues to refuse registration (which does not contradict the legislation of Russia or the laws of the republics of the former USSR), preferring to remain in the freedom of Christ. In 1981, the Council of Churches wrote in an official message: “As long as freedom of preaching is not legally secured and clear, stable signs of ensuring this freedom in practice do not appear, any registration will serve as an obstacle to fulfilling the Church’s primary purpose on earth: preaching the Gospel to a perishing world” (Fraternal Leaflet No.5-6, 1985). Since then, our country has split into separate states, each of which has adopted its own law on religious associations. In some cases, this law has been amended, and not always in a direction favorable to believers. Therefore, it is difficult today to speak of stable and evident signs of ensuring freedom of conscience in practice. Be that as it may, the brotherhood’s statute reflects the following: “The question of registration of congregations of the Union of ECB Churches shall be decided by the All-Brotherhood Congress. If necessary, an extraordinary congress may be convened to resolve such questions” (paragraph 33).

Today the brotherhood, just as in the years of persecution, carries out widespread Gospel proclamation, especially in northern Russia. In 1996 alone, 156 new churches and groups appeared within the brotherhood. The Lord’s work is expanding. According to data for the year 2000, the brotherhood consists of 2,100 churches and groups. The membership is 59,290 people. It includes believers from more than 50 nationalities, and what is interesting: where it is more difficult and sorrowful because of war or other reasons, there the evangelism is carried out more successfully. It is impossible here to describe each association of the brotherhood in detail, but I hope that even these brief facts will encourage the brothers and sisters who read these lines, because our brotherhood is one, independent of borders and conditions, filled with one Spirit, and joyfully labors in the work of Christ’s evangelism. The open preaching of the Gospel, just as in the pre-perestroika period, has provoked a series of persecutions from local authorities. In certain regions of Russia, as well as in some republics of the former USSR, our brothers face oppression from local authorities (sometimes with the involvement of Orthodox Church priests), fines, beatings, and bans on preaching. Probably the harshest persecution for faith in Christ is endured by the brothers in Turkmenistan, where for the first time since 1989 there is a prisoner — brother Shageldy Atakov.

But by the Lord’s mercy, we do not lose heart. Our course remains the same — fixing our eyes on Jesus Christ, for only in Him is the Church strong. She has no strength in herself; she draws all strength from her Head — Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory for all things! Amen!

A Brief History of the CC ECB

The history of the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (CC ECB) begins in 1960, with the adoption by the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (AUCECB) of anti-evangelical and anti-Christian documents regulating church life: the “New Statute of the AUCECB” and the secret “Instructional Letter to Senior Presbyters.” These documents were based on the authorities’ directives regarding religion and diverged from the fundamental principles of the Baptist faith. The “Instructional Letter” charged senior presbyters with “curbing unhealthy missionary manifestations”; they were ordered to “eradicate the unhealthy practice of chasing after new members.” Baptizing people under 18 was forbidden, and for those older—only after a harsh two-to-three-year probationary period. The “New Statute” forbade preaching outside one’s own congregation, and for members of the congregation—only within the prayer house; it forbade attendance at worship services in other congregations, i.e., it violated the broad fellowship with fellow believers that distinguishes Baptists, the traditional forms of that fellowship—joint outings to the countryside, conducting home services with large numbers of believers, frequent hospitality, etc. The ban on mutual aid among congregation members contained in the new Statute left the families of arrested fellow believers and those fined for conducting worship services and rites to the mercy of fate. The “New Statute” even regulated the order of worship services, as it banned many types of musical instruments (for example, guitars), inviting a choir from a neighboring congregation, moving the service outside the walls of the House of Prayer, etc. The AUCECB’s submission to the Soviet authorities’ prescriptions led to a decrease in the number of those baptized and even to the dissolution of some congregations. From 1944 to 1965 in Ukraine alone, over 800 congregations closed and the number of believing Christian-Baptists shrank from 180,000 to 120,000. In Estonia and Latvia, in 1957–1959 there were 1,246 baptisms, but in 1960–1962—only 195. Over those three years, 14 congregations closed there. Roughly the same situation existed across the whole country. The ECB Church was undergoing a deep spiritual crisis. However, the imposition of the “New Statute” and the “Instructional Letter” as guiding documents turned out to be an overestimation of the AUCECB’s capabilities. The “Instructional Letter” was secret, intended only for senior presbyters, but it could not be hidden from ordinary congregation members. It provoked widespread indignation and became the impetus for the mass of believing Baptists to resist a church leadership submissive to outsiders. One might say that the revival of the ECB Church began. The meaning of this revival was in cleansing the ministry of distortions introduced by the pressure of the authorities, the AUCECB, and its supporters. This struggle within the ECB Church was essentially not doctrinal but civil; the divergence was only on the question of the relationship between the church and secular authority, in other words, it was a struggle for the purity and holiness of Christian life, for the complete separation of church from state. The brothers through whom God began His work in the ECB brotherhood stood against both church and secular authorities and advocated for freedom, referencing both the Gospel and the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of conscience. Our brothers—A.F. Prokofiev, G.K. Kryuchkov, G.P. Vins, and others—perceived the “Instructional Letter” as evidence of the AUCECB’s apostasy and considered it impossible for themselves to remain inactive. In May 1960, they united into an Initiative Group, and as such addressed the AUCECB with a message in which they accused it of violating the most important evangelical principle forbidding rendering “to Caesar” that which is “God’s.” The Initiative Group called on the AUCECB members to repent before the brotherhood. The AUCECB did not respond to the message. Then the members of the Initiative Group reproduced the text of the “Instructional Letter” and sent it out to congregations (both registered and unregistered), accompanied by their own appeal, in which they explained the meaning of the “New Statute” and the “Instructional Letter.” Since the AUCECB members refused to repent and revoke these documents, the Initiative Group called on ECB believers to appeal to the authorities with a request for permission to hold a congress (there had been none since 1926) in order to abolish the “Statute” and the “Instructional Letter” and to decide on the church’s leadership in the future: the Initiative Group considered it necessary to re-elect the AUCECB. The Initiative Group proposed striving to ensure that the congress represented all Baptist congregations in the USSR—both registered and unregistered. The brothers called for both inner purification and sanctification before God and for the cleansing of the entire brotherhood’s life. This appeal awakened many congregations from long-standing apathy. Strong support from believers deterred the authorities from immediately arresting members of the Initiative Group (only A.F. Prokofiev was arrested—in 1962). Not only the Initiative Group, but also ordinary church members—both individually and as entire congregations—began writing to the Council for Religious Cults, demanding that they be allowed to hold a congress. The AUCECB, opposing the congress, began excommunicating active supporters of this idea and even facilitating their arrests. The AUCECB members asserted that going against the “New Statute” and the “Instructional Letter” meant going against the authorities. During 1960–1963, the period of the most intense struggle for a congress, about 200 active “initiativists” (as our brothers were called at that time) were arrested; however, this did not weaken but strengthened the movement for the awakening of the Church. Relying on the force of secular authority in an intra-church dispute accelerated the decline of the AUCECB’s authority. One by one, congregations refused to recognize its leadership, excommunicated AUCECB members from the church, refused to participate with them in the Lord’s Supper, and demanded a congress ever more insistently. On February 25, 1962, the Initiative Group was transformed into an Organizing Committee for convening an all-union congress of the ECB. Members of the Organizing Committee conducted negotiations with the AUCECB and the Council for Religious Affairs, tirelessly addressing the government with open letters. They distributed copies of these letters to congregations. The Organizing Committee began publishing the “Fraternal Leaflet,” in which the Committee’s demands, their legality from a juridical standpoint, and their justice from a doctrinal one were constantly explained. The authorities realized that to resist convening a congress any longer meant making the departure of believers from the AUCECB irreversible. It was decided, for the sake of saving the AUCECB members loyal to them, to sacrifice the “New Statute” and the “Instructional Letter.” In order for the AUCECB not to lose the initiative, the following trick was employed. The Council for Religious Affairs gave permission not for a congress, but for a conference of the AUCECB. When this conference gathered (October 15, 1963), it renamed itself a congress. The congress revoked the “New Statute” and the “Instructional Letter,” replacing them with the AUCECB’s Charter, which was less overt in its anti-evangelical essence. At a closed meeting in August 1965, the Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs, Puzin, explained the reasons for these concessions: “The local organs, as you know, have already tried putting the schismatic Baptists in prison, but this did not yield good results… Persecution elevated and strengthened the authority of the Organizing Committee’s leaders and helped them… win many believers over to their side… It must be said directly that some time ago a real threat arose that the Organizing Committee might succeed in taking over the leadership of the entire church. This danger has not yet been completely eliminated.” The Organizing Committee and its supporters in the congregations did not recognize the self-appointed congress, since not all congregations were represented there, but only those that supported the AUCECB. The trick with the congress finally convinced them that the Council for Religious Affairs was completely on the side of the AUCECB. The Organizing Committee began seeking a meeting with the head of government to complain about the illegal actions of the Council for Religious Affairs. On September 22, 1965, a delegation of five believers was received by A. Mikoyan, who was then serving as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, but this yielded nothing. After two years of fruitless efforts to get the decisions of the “pseudo-congress,” as the opponents of the AUCECB called it, overturned, it became obvious that a congress could not be achieved. Having lost hope for the convocation of a congress, congregations that did not recognize the AUCECB decided to withdraw from the AUCECB’s tutelage and to create a separate church. In September 1965, they elected a permanent governing body—the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (CC ECB). The Council included 11 people, most of them former members of the Organizing Committee. The chairman of the new independent ECB Church became G.K. Kryuchkov, and the secretary—G.P. Vins. With the creation of a brotherhood independent from the world, active work in preaching the gospel began. Evangelism was conducted, festive prayer meetings were held, to which thousands of believers from across the country gathered. At these meetings, newly converted were baptized, replenishing our congregations incomparably faster than arrests emptied them. The reasons for the success of the ECB brotherhood’s awakening in the 1960s can be explained in various ways. For example, the Orthodox priest Gleb Yakunin explains it by the very fact of the existence of an official and an unofficial, or semi-legal, church. Yakunin calls it semi-legal in the sense that its congregations, while not hiding from the state, nevertheless refuse registration and other forms of state control. With such a structure, the official and unofficial churches are connected, as it were, by the principle of communicating vessels: when pressure on the official church increases, believers from registered congregations renounce registration and move to the unofficial part of the church. Because of this, the authorities do not dare to put too much pressure on the registered congregations. This explained why the Baptist congregations subordinate to the AUCECB lived more freely than Orthodox parishes: the authorities tolerated the election of congregation leaders, allowed more or less regular congresses at which the AUCECB reported on its activities. Restrictions on children’s participation in services, on preaching, etc., were far less severe. G. Yakunin considers such a “communicating vessels” structure to be “the ideal form of the church’s existence” under Soviet conditions, enabling it to withstand the heaviest pressure from a militantly atheistic state. The believers themselves, however, say that the Lord Himself led the brotherhood in those troubled years. The brothers were guided by the principle set forth in Psalm 119:126: “It is time for the Lord to act, for they have broken Your law.” The Lord stood up for His people, because He saw a sincere desire to walk the path of unwavering sanctification. Jesus Himself said that all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12), so the awakened brotherhood was met by the authorities, who did not wish to tolerate the existence of a living church in an atheistic state, with harsh persecution. Persecution began in 1961 and continued until the end of the 1980s, with a particular tightening from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. (In some republics of the former Union, persecution continues to this day). Members of the Council of Churches M. Khorev, G. Kryuchkov, and G. Vins were arrested in May 1966. They received 3-year camp sentences. Since then, all members of the Council of Churches lived under the threat of arrest. Most of them served several camp terms, and in the intervals they were forced to live almost constantly in an illegal position. The chairman of the CC ECB, G. Kryuchkov, had been hiding from arrest since 1971. A nationwide search was declared for him. In May 1974, in the house where his wife lived, a listening device was discovered in the electricity meter—apparently, the KGB hoped to learn from conversations in the house where G. Kryuchkov was hiding. In 1981, all members of the CC ECB except Kryuchkov were arrested—Nikolai Baturin, who had already served 5 terms, totaling 16 years; deputy chairman of the CC Petr Rumachik, who had previously spent 12 years in camps; Nikolai Khrapov, who had given 26 years of his life to imprisonment, and others. Members of the CC ECB were convicted under Articles 142 and 227 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (“violation of the law on the separation of church from state” and “performance of rituals harmful to believers”). Sometimes Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (“slander of the Soviet system”) was added. Sentences—up to 5 years in a strict-regime camp, for some—with subsequent exile. Constant fines (sometimes exceeding the brothers’ monthly wages), arrests, the installation of listening devices, the plundering of property, etc., were not uncommon. Congregations refusing registration had no prayer houses; believers gathered in apartments or private homes. Prayer meetings in private homes were not prohibited by Soviet laws—they were forbidden only by the AUCECB’s charter. However, such meetings were broken up by the police and volunteer auxiliaries, usually very roughly, often with insults and beatings of believers. Presbyters and congregation leaders were arrested for holding religious gatherings outside a prayer house. They were tried under the same Articles 142 and 227, and sometimes—for “parasitism” (it became absurd—brothers were taken away from their workbenches at factories and tried for parasitism). Typical sentences—up to 3 years in a camp, but many presbyters served several such terms. Often the owner of the house where the service took place was arrested. Standard charges in such cases were “hooliganism” or “resisting the police” based on false testimony from police or volunteer auxiliaries, since there was no article in the Soviet criminal code for such arrests. Sentences in these cases—1-2 years in a general-regime camp. Furthermore, believers who provided religious upbringing to their children were tried—for violating the law on the separation of church from state. For example, Pavel Rytikov, his son Vladimir, and Galina Vilchinskaya were convicted in 1980 for organizing a summer camp for children of arrested believers or those hiding from arrest. Ordinary members of unregistered congregations also experienced constant persecution. For participating in religious gatherings outside a prayer house, brothers were systematically subjected to fines, often exceeding the monthly income of the person fined. Brothers endured very great hardship because of weddings and baptisms. For instance, according to tradition, weddings among our believers are very crowded, since we usually invite the entire congregation and even neighboring ones to the celebration. In large congregations, there are several hundred guests. The house cannot hold the guests, and the celebration is moved into the yard, into the garden. But according to the instructions of the Council for Religious Affairs, “ritual gatherings” in the open air are forbidden. Therefore, weddings were often broken up. Sometimes funerals were also broken up if a large number of mourners accompanied the deceased to the cemetery. We are characterized by a striving for the closest and broadest possible fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. But the authorities hindered this as well. For example, youth outings to the countryside were banned, as was the Harvest Festival, which is usually celebrated jointly by several congregations. Here is how the “Chronicle of Current Events” describes the dispersion of a youth gathering: “Baptist youth from Omsk, Kokchetav, and Tselinograd regions (Kazakhstan) decided to hold a joint Sunday service on June 4 (1978) in a forest in the Isilkul district. The day before, traffic police blocked all approaches to the place of worship, stopped and turned back cars, checked everyone’s documents, taking away license plates and fining people. Those who managed to reach the site held the service relatively calmly for about two hours, and then the clearing in the forest was surrounded; tractors were brought in, which began to plow the ground, running over people and drowning out prayers with their powerful motors. Finally, the police and volunteer auxiliaries began provoking a fight. Despite the fact that the believers offered no physical resistance, the arrested were packed into a paddy wagon, taken to the police station, where they were kept until evening. The rest were dispersed, hurling insults and using brute force: they applied sambo techniques, dragged people by the hair, beat them with sticks, threatened them with weapons. Food, dishes, and other things prepared for the meal were confiscated and taken away. The tractors, chasing Baptists through the forest, broke down bushes and saplings. Many of the volunteer auxiliaries were tipsy…” Another terrible event of that time was the taking away of children from believing parents. This cruel practice is not new; it was used even by the Orthodox Church in relation to “sectarians” before the October Revolution—children were placed under the guardianship of Orthodox relatives, and if there were none, in special institutions. We cite lines from a letter of I.F. Sloboda addressed to Kosygin, Rudenko, and Gorkin: “When I became a believer, I immediately began to be subjected to mockery and persecution. Stones began to be thrown into the windows of our house, doors were torn off, they burst into the room, cut off the lights, and … then, by court decision, my children Galya and Shura were taken away for religious upbringing. The children twice ran away from the orphanage, but they were chased after and returned… On 16 October 1968, my wife, Nadezhda Stepanovna Sloboda, the mother of five children, was sentenced to four years. On 16 January 1969, a false report was drawn up on the basis of which the remaining children were taken away… The children were taken on 13 February 1969 at 1 p.m. under the following circumstances: the school principal seized my son Kolya by the arm and pushed him into a police car hidden behind the school. He was not even allowed to say goodbye to his father. At that time, an ambulance from the Osveya hospital drove up to my house… The poor children were read the verdict aloud and ordered to get dressed. They began to cry desperately. They were dressed forcibly and put into the car. I was ordered to accompany them. We were driven as far as Verkhnedvinsk, where they let me out, and they, my weeping, unfortunate, lonely little children, were taken further… Oh, where can I find words to express the grief of my children and my sufferings? Only the Almighty knows my path. He gives me strength to endure the unbearable weight of my children’s sufferings.” Here is what was written in Fraternal Leaflet No. 5 for 1973: “At present, persecution of Christians’ children is spreading ever more widely. Besides the threats, mockery, interrogations, and beatings already familiar to them, cases have become more frequent where children are forcibly taken away from believing parents and placed in orphanages and boarding schools for atheistic upbringing. In the town of Saki, the convicted brothers Romanovich and Zdorov have been deprived of parental rights. In Perm, Sister Z.P. Rodygina has been deprived of parental rights. Two children have already been forcibly taken from their mother… Beloved ones! Salvation belongs not only to us, but also to our children, whose angels always see the face of our Heavenly Father (Matthew 18:10). And to give them into the hands of atheists is not merely a question of changing worldviews, but a matter of eternal life or destruction for our children. Therefore, exercising our lawful right to raise our children, and most importantly—fulfilling Christ’s command (Mark 10:14), let us not abandon our little ones, but go into the Heavenly Canaan with our sons and daughters (Exodus 10:9).” The authorities opposed the believers’ gatherings in every way, resorting to many means, including the destruction of houses of prayer…….. In February 1964, a “human rights organization” was created—the Council of Relatives of Prisoners of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. This elected body arose as a temporary one during the period of repression, but became permanent due to the constancy of persecution of independent congregations. The Council of Relatives assumed the following duties: to gather and disseminate information about arrests and convictions among believers; to gather information about the removal of children from parents for raising them in a religious spirit; about the dispersal of prayer meetings, fines, confiscation of houses where services were held; about dismissals from work; about the harassment of children at school because they are believers, etc.; to appeal to the government with petitions for the release of prisoners, the return of children, and the cessation of other repressions against believers; to provide material and other assistance to prisoners and their families. The first chairman of the Council was Lydia Vins—the wife of the preacher Peter Vins, who perished in Stalin’s camps, and the mother of Georgi Vins. She continuously headed the Council for 15 years (except for 1970–1973, when she herself was in camp). In 1960, “samizdat” appeared when the Initiative Group began distributing appeals to congregations in this only way possible under Soviet conditions for people not supported by the authorities. The Initiative Group began to issue from time to time the “Fraternal Leaflet” with information about its activities and with appeals to believers on religious and social themes. From 1964, it began to appear regularly—once a month. The Council of Churches of the ECB retained this publication as its information organ. In 1963, the CC ECB’s spiritual-edifying journal “Herald of Salvation” began to appear. In 1976, it changed its name to “Herald of Truth,” and under that name it is published to this day. The Council of Relatives of ECB Prisoners, from 1964, issued “Extraordinary Communiqués” concerning the latest repressions. From 1971, the “Bulletin of the Council of Relatives of ECB Prisoners” began to be published every two months (later it became monthly). All congregations independent of the world experience a need for spiritual literature—Gospels, collections of spiritual hymns, etc. The AUCECB from time to time printed such literature with the permission of the authorities, but in very tiny quantities and only for “its own” congregations. For long years, all unofficially published spiritual literature of the ECB was printed on a hectograph. By this method it was impossible to supply the congregations with religious literature in sufficient quantity. In 1966, the Council of Churches of the ECB appealed with an official request to be allowed to print 10,000 Gospels and 5,000 collections of spiritual hymns. But the authorities did not even respond to this inquiry. The need for religious literature pushed the brothers to create their own printing press and their own publishing house. It was called “The Christian.” The printing press was made according to believers’ blueprints and assembled by them. The printers also became believers, specially trained for this. The publishing house “The Christian” was forced to conceal the names of its workers and the location of the printing press. In June 1971, the newly established publishing house “The Christian” addressed the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Kosygin with a notification about the commencement of the publishing house’s activities. The statement read: “The publishing house ‘The Christian’ is a voluntary association of ECB believers united for the publication and distribution of religious literature. The publishing house is maintained by voluntary donations from believers, and therefore distributes literature free of charge.” By 1983, the publishing house “The Christian” had printed about 0.5 million Gospels and spiritual collections in Russian, Ukrainian, Moldavian, Georgian, Ossetian, German, and other languages. The “Fraternal Leaflet,” the “Herald of Truth,” and the Bulletin of the Council of Relatives of ECB Prisoners began to be produced by typographic method. During the decade since the establishment of the publishing house “The Christian,” its printing presses were uncovered several times. The first time this succeeded only three years after its activity began: in October 1974, the printing press on the Latvian farmstead Ligukalis was tracked down from a helicopter. Seven workers of the printing press were arrested, the printing machine was confiscated, as were 9 tons of paper and 15,000 already printed Gospels. Then similar printing presses were discovered: in 1977 in Ivangorod, Leningrad Region; in January 1980—in the village of Starye Kodaki in Ukraine; and in June 1980—in the village of Glivenki, Novorossiysk Region; in 1982—in the city of Tokmok (Kirghizia). Workers of the underground printing presses were tried, as a rule, under Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code—“slander of the Soviet system”—and simultaneously for “engaging in a forbidden trade.” The standard sentence—3 years in a general-regime camp. Many believers from the registered congregations of the AUCECB and even believers of other persuasions also used Gospels and spiritual literature published by the publishing house “The Christian.” To cut off contact with our brotherhood, the authorities were forced to authorize the printing of Bibles in state printing houses, not suspecting that this was God’s providence! All books and other publications of the publishing house “The Christian” were and are published on donations from believers and therefore are not subject to sale—“Freely you have received, freely give.” In the struggle for the independence of the church and for freedom of conscience, the Council of Churches of the ECB and the Council of Relatives of ECB Prisoners appealed to believers not only in the USSR but also abroad, so that the AUCECB ceased to be the only source of information about the situation of Baptists in the USSR. In May 1970, the president of the Baptist World Alliance, W. Tolbert, visited the USSR. He was received by the AUCECB, in his own words, “royally.” During Tolbert’s visit to a Leningrad congregation that recognized the AUCECB, a prayer meeting in an unregistered Leningrad congregation was dispersed. Believers were not allowed into the prayer house but were kept behind a police cordon so that none of them could catch the eye of the distinguished guest. The information that Tolbert brought from the USSR was very favorable to the USSR and to the AUCECB. However, the repeated appeals to the international community by the Council of Churches of the ECB and the Council of Relatives of ECB Prisoners, independent of the AUCECB, broke a breach in the wall of disinformation. Soon after Tolbert—in August 1970—a Baptist missionary from Denmark, Ulf Oldenburg, came to the USSR as a tourist. He visited persecuted congregations in Central Asia. Oldenburg was expelled from the USSR, but he could tell much that Tolbert had not seen. The leadership of the Baptist World Alliance continued official relations with the AUCECB. Official visits by Baptist religious figures from abroad continued, but tourist visits to the supporters of the Council of Churches also took place (approximately 800 Baptists a year visited the USSR). A significant part of the Baptist public in the West sided with the persecuted. In Baptist congregations in the West, funds were collected and transferred to the Council of Relatives of ECB Prisoners, which distributed them among the prisoners’ families. Tens of thousands of signatures of US Baptists demanding the release of Georgi Vins—secretary of the CC ECB, again arrested in 1974—undoubtedly contributed to the fact that Vins was among the Soviet political prisoners who were freed in exchange for Soviet spies in the spring of 1979. President Carter (a Baptist by faith) received a delegation of the AUCECB chairman, but then met with Georgi Vins. G. Vins organized an overseas representation of the Council of Churches of the ECB in the USA, in the state of Indiana. Lydia Mikhailovna Vins became the foreign representative of the Council of Relatives of ECB Prisoners. The task of their joint representation was to promptly inform Western public opinion and the governments of the Helsinki signatory countries about the situation of Baptists in the USSR, and to organize assistance from the West for persecuted believers and congregations. The many years of human rights activity by believers contributed to breaking out of isolation inside the country, to contacts with human rights defenders, which, due to the specifics of Soviet conditions, was perhaps no less difficult than overcoming international disinformation. The first mention of Baptists in the human rights information bulletin “Chronicle of Current Events” is found in the fifth issue (December 1968): the “Chronicle” took note of a letter from the Kiev congregation of the ECB in defense of G. Vins. The next report about Baptists in the “Chronicle” dates to 1970—that was information about the arrests of Baptists in 1969–1970 in the south of the USSR. How incomplete the “Chronicle’s” information about Baptists was at that time can be seen from the fact that from 1968 to 1975, the Chronicle reported on 21 arrests among them, while the Council of Relatives of ECB Prisoners knew of 110 of their fellow believers in prison as of June 1, 1975. Only from 1974 did information about Baptists become regular—the transmission to the “Chronicle” of the latest issues of the Bulletin of the Council of Relatives of ECB Prisoners was arranged. The first action by Moscow human rights defenders in defense of persecuted Baptists also dates to 1974. The Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR and Academician A.D. Sakharov appealed to the international community in connection with the case of G. Vins. In 1976, immediately after the creation of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Baptists appealed to the group with a complaint about the taking of children from believing parents. The MHG issued a document on this matter, “On the Persecution of Religious Families.” On December 5, 1976, G. Vins’s son Peter Vins, with a group of young people, took part in the traditional human rights demonstration on Pushkin Square in Moscow. They threw a bouquet of red carnations to A.D. Sakharov, hemmed in by a ring of KGB agents and volunteer auxiliaries. In 1977, Peter Vins became a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. The dynamics of arrests of Evangelical Christians-Baptists are as follows: over the 10-year period from 1961 to 1970, 524 people were arrested (about 200 of them—during the period of the most active struggle for a congress, from 1961 to 1963). Among these 524 were 44 women; 8 people died in prison over those 10 years. In 1971, there were 48 arrests, in 1972—53, in 1973–1975—70. As of January 1, 1980, 49 Baptists were in prison; by May 1982, there were 158, which constituted half of all those then imprisoned “for their faith.” The intensification of repressions is seen not only in the increased frequency of arrests, but also in the growing number of women among those arrested, and in the toughening of sentences.

Constant persecution reduced the number of adherents of the independent church. If in the second half of the 1960s, immediately after its separation, at least 50% of all believers joined the Council of Churches, by the 1980s about 2,000 congregations remained faithful to it, roughly 70,000 adult members. The rest, with a heavy heart, agreed to registration: ascetic commitment is always the lot of a minority. However, it was only thanks to the ascetic commitment of the independent congregations that the ECB church maintained relative independence.

Print, save, letter .pdf

Alliance of Slavic ECB Churches of the USA Elects New Chairman From November 6 to 8, the 4th Congress of the Alliance of Slavic Associations and Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists took place…
Today Ivan Petrovich Fedotov Passed into Eternity Last night, the presiding bishop of the United Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith (UCFEC) of Russia, the CIS, and the Baltic countries, Ivan Petrovich Fedotov, passed away. He…
What Tasks Does God Set Before Us Today? The world is steadily, step by step, taking revenge on today’s church for past crushing defeats. And…
Christ and the Intelligentsia: Yesterday and Today(?) Who Is Most Guilty for Christ’s Death? Christ and the Intelligentsia: Yesterday and Today(?) I published this text on Interfax-Religion. I would be glad for comments….
No Longer Can the Apostate Shepherds Continue Fornication with the Godless Power of the USSR “History must be known not because it has passed but because its consequences are indelible.” Why…
Three Periods of Persecution of Evangelical Christians-Baptists Based on archival documents, the causes of the spiritual crisis of the ECB church in the 1920s–1930s are analyzed. From…
The Case and Fate of Baptist Georgy Vins Today the history of the evangelical and human rights movement in the USSR is studied through the books of Georgy Petrovich Vins. In…
Persecution of Pentecostals in the Kirovograd Region in the Early 1950s Unexpectedly, the senior presbyter N. V. Kuzmenko also fell under the millstones of Stalin’s repressions in 1950….
Report of the Commissioner for Religious Cults of the Kiev Region and Kiev, Oleinikov, 1950 The synchronicity between the Council and the AUCECB, which many suspected at the time, becomes entirely clear…
From the Reports of the 4th Department of the 5th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR: Soldiers of the Invisible Front – Priests of Registered Churches in the Service of the Godless Authorities. A Striking Example: Patriarch V.M. Gundyaev. Their Name Was: “Legion” Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev was born on November 20, 1946, in Leningrad, into the family of a priest and…
The Pentecostal Movement: Its Development in Soviet Times This religious movement in its current form has existed in Russia since the early 20th century. The greater…
Appeal of G.G. Ponurko and S.M. Buta to All Brothers and Sisters from Christians of Evangelical Faith Who Did Not Join the United Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists The letter of renunciation of the first “bishop” of the Pentecostals, Gavrila Ponurko, approved by the Reich Commissioner of Ukraine Erich Koch, and another Pentecostal presbyter…