Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

ar from synonymous.) The Reformers were shocked at the murder of a recent convert, Nikolai Khmara, in January 1964, just after he had been sentenced to three years in prison.'® The first “All-Union Conference of Baptist Prisoners’ Relatives” which opened in conditions of secrecy six weeks later seems to have been a direct response to the murder of Khmara. This was a significant step in the devel- opment of civic consciousness, since never before had there been such an organisation defending prisoners anywhere in the communist bloc.” At this point Lidiia Vins, Georgiis mother, emerged as a character as formi- dable as her son, taking on the organisation of this group until her own arrest. This first conference of 1964 gathered information on 155 prisoners, publicising as many personal details as they could and which seemed rele- vant, while listing also the articles of the penal code under which they had been arrested and the lengths of their sentences. By the second conference in July 1964 this number had increased to 197, excluding five who had died in prison or while under investigation. Their dependants were listed - the children could starve as far as the State was concerned, because it provided no social security for the relatives of prisoners. These documents provided a range of new information about the Soviet prison-camp system, including the precise location of many camps themselves.’* The initiators of this campaign soon found themselves in prison, because they publicised their own names, but others were always ready to step into their shoes and there was no interruption in the systematic gathering of news. The legal expertise of Vins and Kriuchkov (whether aided in secret by qualified lawyers or not) was another step forward in the evolution of under- '6 Bourdeaux, Faith on Trial in Russia, pp. 96-97. '? Western journalists, in considerable numbers, later - but mistakenly - reported that the first such organisation emerged in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring of 1968. '§ Bourdeaux, Faith on Trial in Russia, pp. 97-98. 127 standing of what a law-governed state should be. The document which they wrote on 14 April 1965 to Leonid Brezhnev in his capacity as president of the Commission on the Constitution was epoch-making. No such legal analysis of a Soviet law had ever before seen the light of day, and it remains a unique document to this day. The closest comparison is with the letters circulated by Frs Gleb Iakunin and Nikolai Eshliman in November of the same year.” The Baptist initiative, however, is more detailed in its study of the law itself.”” Here is a summary by the present author of the legal issues, as seen by those who petitioned the commission: The laws affecting religious activity are both imprecise and ambiguous. Some may look all right on paper, but in practice they are an instrument of persecution. As they now stand, they deny Lenin’s original ideal of the separ