Towards Understanding of the Practice of Proclamation: The Core Element of Russian Baptist Worship, Timofey Cheprasov, 2015

mmune was turned into a collective farm called “Dobrovolets” [Volunteer]. For a while, it continued to exist under a different label, without changing the way they lived. Their members still worked together. Each individual continued to receive clothes and food according to their needs. Their work was accompanied by singing Christian psalms and hymns, and every day was concluded with a worship service in the open air with all the inhabitants of the village participating. In the late 1930’s Communist repressions began. Several families followed their husbands/fathers who were sent to prisons or labour camps located in distant parts of the USSR. Some member-families were killed in the World 3? Nikolay Shutkin, a secular historian from Voronezh, is one of the people whose family lived in Ivanovka, but was forcefully moved, when his parents were given a prison term in Solovki during Stalin’s persecutions in later 1930s. His detailed description of the life of the commune points to the fact that many of its members have been to Europe during the war, and thus, experienced a different way of life. This was one of the reasons for them building their agricultural business differently from locally accepted forms. (“Selo Ilvanovka” [“The village of lvanovka”], in N. G. Pegarkov, ed., Zemlia Khokhol’skaia [The Land of Khokhol] (Voronezh, Izd. im E. A. Volkhovitinogo, 1998) pp 57-58). 38 A. Cheprasova, personal interview (Voronezh, 01.10.2007), available through the author. 3° Collectivization was a process of the formation of collective farms, when independent farmers were invited (and those who didn’t accept the invitation were forced) into it. Those who disagreed were robbed and either killed or sent to Siberia, a place where political prisoners were sent. In the Soviet time, most of the concentration camps were located there — prisoners had to work in extreme weather conditions without proper nutrition or clothing. Many thousands, some say even millions of people, died there (e.g. O. V. Khlevnyuk, “Politburo. Mekhanizmi Politicheskoi Vlasti v 30-e Godi” [“Politburo. Mechanisms of Political Power in 1930-s”], in Rossiiskaia Politicheskaia Entsiklopediia (ROSSPEN) [Russian Political Encyclopaedia] (Moscow, ROSSPEN, 1996), Chapter 1). 146 War Il. Others had moved into the city of Voronezh. Many outsiders, including a number of fanatical Communists, deliberately moved into the village and joined the collective farm, radically affecting the dynamics of communal Christin life.“° So, shortly after the end of the World War II, when two more families were arrested and sent to serve their prison sentence in Siberia, Dobrovolets ceased to exist. Let me touch upon some preaching themes and the role of the Bible in the Dobrovolets community. Such an examination can provide a clear picture of what it meant to be a Christian, what it meant to read the Bible, and what the Bible itself meant for people. Since having a B