Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

presence, their attempts to maintain their identity, and their lived-out convictions were themselves acts of peaceful resistance, prophetic criticism of a godless approach to life. However, in some cases the resistance took more active forms. Some Estonian Evangelical Christians-Baptists were involved in “underground” activities in defiance of restrictive Soviet laws. During the Soviet years, ECB leadership tended to understate this fact, as they tried to distance themselves from the confusion created by the “split” of the 1960s among Soviet Baptists. “These questions do not concern us directly,’ emphasised the Senior Presbyter in 1974.'° Nevertheless, this does not mean that the “Baptist underground movement” did not reach Estonia. According to the Commissioner of the CRA, in addition to some small and non-organised groupings (130 persons) of “underground” evangelicals, there were five groups of Pentecostals (350 persons) and three groups of “Baptists-split- ters’, i.e., Reform Baptists (230 persons) in Estonia in 1977." These groups consisted primarily of Russian or German-speaking persons. Some Estonian Baptist preachers were actively involved in aiding “under- ground brothers and sisters’. In the small village church in Puka in southern Estonia, the local ECB presbyter helped to organise a secret Orgkomitet [organisational committee] meeting of Reform Baptist representatives with hundreds of participants from all over the Soviet Union.” In the mid-1970s, another “brother” transported a vanload of paper to an under- ground printing press in Latvia.’* Bibles and New Testaments in Russian * Laur et al., History of Estonia, p. 304. '° The Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of Estonia (UECBE) Senior Presbyter’s report (12 December 1974). EKB vanempresbiteri aruanded [The UECBE Senior Presby- ter’s reports] (VpAruanded), Eesti EKB Liidu arhiiv [Archive of the UECBE], Tallinn. '! Oiend Eesti NSV-s asuvate usukoondiste tegevusest ja iildisest olukorrast 1977. aastal [A report of the general situation and activities of the churches in the Estonian SSR in the year 1977] (29 March 1978). Aruanded ja iilevaated 1971-1990 [Reports and Surveys 1971- 1990], Usuasjade Voliniku Arhiiv [Archive of the Commissioner of the CRA], Tallinn. 2 Enno Tuulik, private correspondence (20 February 2005). T. Pilli personal archive. '. Enno Tuulik, private correspondence (20 February 2005). T. Pilli personal archive. 145 and in German, often smuggled into the Soviet Union via Finland, were forwarded through Estonia to Siberia and other parts of the Soviet Union. Arpad Arder, ECB presbyter in Rakvere and later in Suure-Jaani, devel- oped a large literature ministry. He received thousands of Bibles and other Christian literature in German from the German Democratic Republic, where he had correspondence with approximately seven hundred persons. As the German Democratic Republic was a socialist country, the litera- ture