Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

n ECB Union. Vasilii E. Logvinenko continued as president of the Russian ECB Union, retiring in 1992 when his successor Petr Konoval- chik physically moved to a new office building of the Russian ECB Union. Long-time general secretary Aleksei Bychkov became a vice president of the Euro-Asiatic Federation with primary responsibility for international affairs and education, Belorussian Aleksei Firisiuk took over financial and other administrative affairs, and Nikolai Kolesnikov started a new initia- tive in evangelism. Once Komendant decided to move back to Kiev, due in large part to health reasons and the death of Dukhonchenko (1992), a shift in understanding of the Euro-Asiatic Federation proceeded. Bychkov also retired, becoming involved in the formation of several seminaries of an interdenominational type. Firisiuk moved to Belarus to head the national union. It was increasingly clear that primary loyalties had moved to the national unions and each of those began developing a funding resource base of its own, often relying heavily on foreign support. Soon, too, there was a kind of rotation in the presidency of the Euro-Asiatic Federation between Ukraine, Russia and Central Asia. Thus what remained by 2001 was a new journal, Khristianskoe slovo [Christian word] and its editor, Iurii Apatov, as executive staff person for the Euro-Asian Federation. To make it simpler, we can speak of the repositioning of the ECB union into national bodies, quite independent of the Euro-Asiatic Federation, in terms of four geographic categories. First are the Baltic states which returned to pre-1941 independence, all of them having had national Baptist Unions that had been unevenly integrated into the AUCECB. In Estonia, the process of leadership transition took place relatively smoothly over a number of years. In Latvia, on the other hand, a reformist group moved into leadership, resulting in several years of tension before achievement of a more cooperative united spirit.'’? In Lithuania, the era of transitions became the occasion for competition among evangelical denominations appealing for membership. The second category includes the Slavic coun- '* This adoption of “president” to replace “senior presbyter” [starshii presviter] was patterned on the way the title of president by Gorbachev had become the most authoritative, and seemingly a more westernised style. Soon in Latvia and Georgia, then also in a few instances in Russia, ECB leaders were named bishop [episkop]. '? Valdis Térauldkalns, “Conventionalization of Baptism in Latvian [sic] after World War II” Humanities and Social Sciences: Latvia, vol. 4, no. 29 (2000), pp. 53-75. 197 tries of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, as well as a certain reorganising in Moldova. Their primary focus was on establishing a more active church union, absorbing new programmes and new churches, while at the same time seeing the emergence of competing evangelical denominations, some