Eastern European Baptist History: New Perspectives, 2007

rmed me that Urban visited Aleksandra in her home on at least one occasion in Zagreb.) Another was Safronij Tverdovski [Safronii Tverdovskii] who, like Urban, with whom he was associated, belonged to the Evangelical Christians. Tverdovski served for a period as a pastor of the Brethren church in Belgrade, but he also taught children’s Sunday School in the Baptist church in Belgrade. Finally, from 1935 to 1937, another Russian Evangelical Christian became a member of the Baptist church in Belgrade. That was Vasil S. Prohanov [Vasilii $. Prokhanov], the youngest brother of Ivan S. Prokhanov. According to the minutes of the Belgrade church, Prohanov left for San Francisco in 1937. Taking my cue from the 1937 photograph from the Baptist church in Zagreb and armed with insights about Lidija Kalmikova, I decided to find out more about Baptist womens ministry in what was then Yugoslavia. After considerable efforts the former president of the Baptist Women's Association in Yugoslavia (which was dissolved fifteen years ago when Yugoslavia was dissolved) suggested I contacted the current president of the Baptist Women’s Association in Serbia, to check if there were any early records. I called a friend of mine in Belgrade, and within two weeks he sent 229 me about four hundred pages of minutes of the women’s association in the Baptist church in Belgrade under the leadership of Lidija Kalmikova, as well as miscellaneous documents, reports, and private letters from leaders of Baptist women’s ministry from all over Yugoslavia ranging from 1931 to 1970. A considerable number of documents are written in Serbian Cyrillic, and there are several letters to Lidija in Russian, written by Russian women in Serbia. There is one letter from Aleksandra to Lidija as well. This corpus of evidence threw more light on the role Aleksandra played in the Womens Association in the Zagreb Baptist church. She was elected treasurer of “Tabitha” in 1937, the duty she performed for the next couple of years. In the 1930s she attended several youth conferences, sang in the choir, organised Bible study and translation of Russian devotional litera- ture at women’s meetings, and visited the sick. Her house served as the gathering point for several other Russian Baptist women who during this period attended the Baptist church. The return to family tradition for the purpose of double-checking again proved useful. I learned that the leading sister in “Tabitha” was the wife of the presbyter [elder] of the Baptist church in Zagreb, himself a former pris- oner of war from World War I who had also been imprisoned in Siberia, although not in Omsk. During that time he learned Russian, developed an affinity with Russia, and became a Baptist there. As a result this couple became close friends of Aleksandra, and on several occasions made finan- cial contributions to the money Aleksandra sent to her relatives in Siberia. (More about them in the second se