Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

s of Men’, “In the Slough of Religious Sectarianism’, “Leaving the Darkness’, and “Monsters”. These fantasised and exaggerated publications described believers’ lives in dismal terms, including fanaticism resulting in physical and mental illness; asceticism and denial of worldly delights; the carefree lives of religious leaders at coreligionists’ expense; their allegedly collabo- rationist past; and sexual adventures among young ‘sisters in Christ’. Many such attacks targeted Baptists specifically or nameless “sectarians” easily identified as the Baptists. In 1962, Mosfilm produced “The Sinner” [Gresh- nitsa], a film about the Baptists directed by Fedor Filippov and starring the young and talented actress lia Savvina. Locally, unfounded accusations against whole confessions grew into specific attacks on communities and individuals. In 1958 a campaign was launched against a local Evangelical Christian-Baptist congregation in Borovichi (Novgorod oblast). The district newspaper Krasnaia iskra [The Red Spark] printed an article entitled “Preachers of Ignorance and Obscu- rantism in Borovichi’,,* and later published a series of furious responses under the rubric “Readers Judge the Sectarians’. Among them only two authors had attended the house of prayer for a prolonged period - Maria Duchko (“Sectarians Go Their Way”’’) and I.P. Serkova (“Why I Have Left the Sect”’*). The rest humiliated the Baptists, despite lacking even super- ficial knowledge about them. Sometimes the propaganda took believers of other confessions for Baptists. For instance in 1962, local authorities in Zelenyi Gorod (Dnepropetrovsk oblast) attempted to take children away from Seventh Day Adventist Dmitrii Zaloznoi, referred to as a Baptist by the local newspaper Metallurgist.”” 4 L. Vladimirov, “Propovedniki nevezhestva i mrakobesiia v Borovichakh” [Preachers of Ignorance and Obscurantism in Borovichi], Krasnaia iskra, no. 149 (29 July 1958). 'S Krasnaia iskra, no. 151 (1 August 1958). '6 Krasnaia iskra, no. 154 (5 August 1958). '7“Porvite s religiei!” [Break with Religion!], Metallurg (15 December 1961). 137 ony, The accusations of fanatical cruelty and ritual sacrifice were the most serious and frightening of the anti-sectarian stereotypes persistently incul- cated upon Soviet mass consciousness. Yet there were also cases of Orthodox believers accused of fanatical cruelty. For example, in 1959 the Borodin family in the Kalinin oblast was sentenced to death for alleged sacrifice of their son Lenia.’* However, the rumours and, moreover, published allega- tions of cruel rituals seemed more believable when lodged against unfa- miliar confessions, and hence became grounded in the mass conscious- ness, as with Jews before the Revolution. To strengthen these stereotypes, propaganda utilised unfounded accusa- tions, provocations, and certain falsely interpreted actions of the mentally ill. Not surprisingly, the horror stories of i