Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

shared by Baptists throughout Eastern Europe, church- state relations varied according to time and place. The antagonism of the Russian Orthodox Church toward evangelicals in the Russian Empire plays a role in the papers of Randall, Dyck, Nichols and Corrado, while Soviet oppression sets the stage for Konstantin Prokhorov, Aleksandr Negrov/ Tat’iana Nikol’skaia, Michael Bourdeaux and Toivo Pilli. In Catholic lands, however, Baptists faced different issues, hinted at in works by Peterlin and Wierzchowski, and certainly deserving of further exploration. The influ- ence of the predominant Lutheran Church in Estonia and Latvia was not a primary focus of Téraudkalns or Pilli, yet attentive readers will note conspicuous divergence from the patterns described in primarily Orthodox and Catholic lands. During the Soviet period, literature in the West, as well as samizdat publications, tended to focus on the limitations and persecution faced by Baptists in Soviet-bloc countries. Individual believers - about whom few details were available - were often viewed as larger-than-life heroes whose great faith had been strengthened through suffering. Recent research, however, has presented a more complex picture. While persecution by the Soviet regime indeed took place, Bourdeaux and Pilli demonstrate that believers were not simply passive victims. Bourdeaux describes the open protests of Russia's unregistered Baptists in the 1960s as Russias first demo- cratic movement - indicating a savvy manipulation of the situation, rather than passive acceptance, as they demanded what they held to be their rights under the Soviet constitution. Pilli describes the relationships of the registered Baptist church in Estonia with Soviet authorities as bordering on mutual respect, in which Baptists strategically navigated the system, often preferring informal methods of resistance, while the Council for Reli- gious Affairs turned a blind eye toward certain church activities. Mean- while, Konstantin Prokhorov and Valdis Téraudkalns boldly investigate the initial acceptance by Baptists of communist ideas and the early collabora- tion of some evangelicals with the regime. Prokhorov notes that the early years of the Soviet regime were “golden years” for Russian Baptists, whose significant growth was at times at the expense of the persecuted Orthodox Church, and some of whom enthusiastically endorsed a “Christian Commu- nism’. Téraudkalns observes that Christianity is not inherently opposed to communist ideas per se, with numerous Christian leaders in Latvia and 10 elsewhere historically supporting aspects of the communist cause. Certain topics, however, remain to be investigated in future research. While the number of women, in virtually all accounts, equalled or surpassed that of men in most Baptist congregations, their historical role remains little explored. Of the authors in this volume, only Davorin Peterlin focuses explicitly o