Church Without Walls: Post-Soviet Baptists after the Ukrainian Revolution, 2013-14, Joshua T. Searle, 2016

. *° Although the Baptists of the AUC ECB constitute the largest protestant denomination in Ukraine, other significant protestant churches include: the All-Ukraine Union of Churches of the Evangelical Faith— Pentecostals (AUU CEFP); Ukrainian Christian Evangelical Church (UCEC); the Ukrainian Lutheran Church (ULC); and the Brotherhood of Independent Churches and Missions of Evangelical Christian Baptists of Ukraine. °° The term, “Christians—Baptists”, is part of a literal translation from the Ukrainian, Bceyxpaincoxuti coi YyepKo6 EeanzenbcoKux xpucmusn-6anmucmis. For convenience, the AUC ECB is often referred to in English as the “Evangelical Baptist Union of Ukraine”. The awkwardness of the term, “All—Ukrainian Union of Churches of Evangelical Christians—Baptists”, reflects the confusion concerning evangelical and Baptist identity not only in Ukraine, but throughout the former USSR. The blurring of distinctions between Baptist, Pentecostals and other evangelical Christian groups is partly a legacy of the Soviet era. In 1944, under pressure from Stalin, the Union of Evangelical Christians and the Russian Baptist Union merged into the All-Union of the Evangelical Christians-Baptists (AUECB). Pentecostals and other independent evangelicals were pressured to register with the AUECB, whose freedom was severely curtailed by the Soviet authorities and there was even evidence that this organisation was deeply infiltrated by agents of the KGB. Some Baptists refused to accept this arrangement and were driven underground and persecuted for their faith. In 1961, these Baptists organised themselves into a breakaway organisation, known as the Church of Evangelicals Christians-Baptists, and became known as initiativniki, or “initiators”. would constitute less than 0.4% of the total population of Ukraine.*! Given their minority status, Baptist communities in Ukraine and throughout the former USSR have tended to make a virtue of necessity by idealising their marginality. Withdrawal from the world, together with a perpetual waiting for “the end times”, was often regarded as the most faithful mode of Christian existence.” Therefore, from a Baptist perspective, one of the most remarkable outcomes of the Revolution of Dignity was the appointment of Oleksandr Turchynov as Interim President of Ukraine in 2014. Turchynov belongs to the Union of Life Baptist Church in Kyiv, where he is a regular preacher. He is the first Baptist to have held such a high position of political leadership in any country of the former USSR. The fact that Turchynov was a Baptist was played up by the Russian media, who portrayed him as a pawn of American interests and as a “sectarian” who did not fit into the ideological co-ordinates of the Russian World.*’ The polls demonstrated that, despite the hugely difficult challenges he faced and the unpopular decisions he was forced to make, his approval ratings were consistently high among the Ukrainian popu