Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

Mikhail Gorbachev, not much changed in the relation- ship between the Reform Baptists and the Soviet state on the one hand or the registered Baptists on the other. There were, on the contrary, tumul- tuous events affecting the lives of thousands of people, but the basic posi- tions were by now entrenched. The Reform Baptists were not prepared to accept that the concessions offered by the AUCECB provided grounds for reconciliation; Soviet officialdom did not retract its position of treating the ° Bourdeaux, Faith on Trial in Russia, p.127. 130 Reform Baptists as criminals, and it was not until the days of perestroika that they were free of the daily threat of persecution. The AUCECB congress of December 1969 made further gestures in favour of reconciliation, but apart from some individuals who returned to the union, these words fell on deaf ears. The AUCECB considered that from this time on the question of unity would be remitted for resolution to the local situation in each region. The Soviet state made one significant concession after 1969: it gradually permitted the registration of autonomous congregations, groups of believers who had their reasons for not coming under the banner of the AUCECB, but who nevertheless did not wish to remain outside the law.”* This did not greatly affect the life of Baptist congregations which were already regis- tered, but it did have the effect of weakening the adopted hard line of the Reform Baptists, illustrating that from now on there was a middle way. For the Reform Baptists there were still traumas ahead. Georgii Vins wrote two extended works in prison, Vernost’ [Faithfulness] and Semeinaia khronika [Family Chronicle]. His family managed to send them out of the Soviet Union; Keston College (as it then was) received the manuscripts and the late Jane Ellis headed a team of translators who prepared them for publication in the United Kingdom. Some commentators have considered that this work should stand beside Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison as an outstanding example of prison literature in the twentieth century, but the impact of this work was somewhat dimmed. Although the family had given written permission for its publication and all royalties were kept for Vins himself, when he was free to do so he insisted on with- drawing the book from publication, saying he wished to prepare a new version and publish it himself, but this never happened. Vins received a second sentence in 1974, this time of ten years. In a dramatic exchange of prisoners in April 1979, he was expelled from the Soviet Union to the USA, from where he did his best to re-establish contact with Kriuchkov, who continued the ministry and leadership inside the Soviet Union. This was a difficult undertaking, only partially successful, but his strength of character saw him through until his eventual death in exile.” From 1987 Gorbachev's new deal for believers led to the releas