Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

ian Baptist Union, holding local congresses in the south each year from 1922 to 1927. Also in 1927, a local Baptist congress was held in Ural’sk (Western Kazakhstan).*° Some Mennonite Brethren churches maintained contact with the Central Asian Baptist Union from the very first days of its existence.*! The Siberian division of the All-Russian Baptist Union in Omsk held the most congresses of any part of the Union. The twenty-fourth congress, the last before Stalin's terror, was held in 1927, with 208 delegates and 297 guests. At that final congress, the German Baptist Churches of Siberia expressed their desire to become a component part (a German section) of the Siberian division of the All-Russian Baptist Union.* It was the general wish of the Baptists to join together. This took place before the great suffer- ings beginning in 1929, the year of the “Great Break” [velikii perelom]. Many people were baptised even in 1928. The magazine Baptist, before it was shut down, published “A letter from Omsk” about the baptism of twenty-eight people. This read: On 19 February 1928 we had a festival day. Twenty-eight new “living stones” were placed into our church building. The baptisms took place in the baptistery, where Christ’s Gospel ? Oral testimony to the author of P.A. Chumakin, South Kazakhstan Senior Presbyter of the Baptist Union of Kazakhstan (1993). * Istoriia evangel’skikh khristian-baptistov v SSSR (Moscow: Vsesoiuznyi sovet evangel’skikh khristian-baptistov, 1989), p. 200. *! Istoriia evangelskikh khristian-baptistov v SSSR, p. 186. 32 Istoriia vozniknoveniia i rosta khristianskikh obshchin v Omskoi oblasti (Omsk: Ob’edineniia tserkvei EkhB Omskoi oblasti, 1993), p. 8. 97 was confirmed before the congregation. On that day also, twelve souls repented.*° According to one source, the Siberian Baptist Union on 1 January 1927 consisted of 14,546 members, 134 choirs with 2,326 singers, and thirty- seven teachers.*4 In the 1920s Baptist churches increased their focus on Christian educa- tion and the improvement of music ministry. The churches sent some of their members to study in the Bible courses held in Leningrad, Moscow, Omsk, and Nikolaevka (Ukraine). The leading brothers dreamt about establishing a Russian Baptist theological seminary, but it was impossible during those atheistic times. In 1925, Brother S. Zhuivanov from distant Kazakhstan studied at Bible courses of the Evangelical Christians in Leningrad. Two brothers, Aleksandr and Ivan Tikhonov, studied in Omsk at the courses for choir directors in the mid 1920s, and later led church choirs in northern Kazakhstan (in Akmolinsk, Petropavlovsk, Frolovo, Kaldyman, and other places).** A church member described the choir ministry of that time: The choir in the Frolovo division of the Petropavlovsk church, Akmolinsk gubernia, has existed for one year. It was organised in early 1925 by brother A.D. Tikhonov.... After we had learned abo