Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2007

e West’. 35 After numerous interrogations and threats, UDBA was convinced that Strahil was ‘unrepentant’. In 1959 Asen Palankov, the Methodist pastor in the nearby town of Strumica, had disappeared and was found dead, months later. A Methodist woman, working in a police department, had stumbled upon a shortlist of three people in the secret UDBA documents, which listed Asen Palankov, Kiro Buhov and Strahil Grozdanov as the three key people to be ‘removed’ by the UDBA. The pressure in his hometown was growing, and Strahil felt that his life was in danger. 38 The president of the local TO municipality had directly threatened Strahil in a conversation in Radovis. At this time Strahil began to consider moving to Skopje, and he picked two people that he would cooperate with in his ministry. One was Vanco Rusjakov, the Baptist pioneer in Macedonia, who was already in his old age. The other was Kosta Karamazov, the preacher of the local Methodist church, with whom Baptists in Macedonia shared the same roots and close fellowship. The 1948 incident with UDBA had taught Strahil to be careful about his actions, and he sincerely believed that these two people were the ones he could trust. 34 Ibid. 35 Wolff, The Balkans in our time, p. 550. 36 Report, (10.6.1959), SG, UDBA. 37 Ibid., (18.1.1960, 22.2.1960, 29.4.1960). 38 Ibid., (22.11.1958). 39 Ibid., (29.4.1960). The life and legacy of Strahil Grozdanov 29 Regarding culture and freedom, Yugoslavia was more free than the other communist countries, especially after the break with the Soviet Union in 1948. 40 While there was relative freedom for trade and travel, a vigorous anti-religious propaganda campaign tried to keep people out of church. 41 Yugoslavia remained a twilight zone between harsh totalitarianism and western freedom. The decentralised - federalised government also meant that each local authority could act differently. John Allen Moore, the SBC Missionary to Yugoslavia, wrote that the ‘authorities in Macedonia were more hostile than in the rest of the country, and by limiting work to official church buildings, were preventing the work of the Baptist church’. 43 Similarly, while many Baptists were allowed to travel abroad to different conferences, the Macedonian UDBA noted that Strahil ‘did not deserve to go to the congress in Geneva’. 44 Whilst still considering relocating to Skopje, Grozdanov had asked Karamazov to help him find a property in Skopje for a new church building. What Strahil was unaware of at the time was that Karamazov was an informant of the UDBA, and had filed regular reports about Strahil’s plans and was also instrumental in preventing and postponing the move to Skopje from 1956, when Strahil first asked him to find a property, to 1960, when Strahil finally moved there. 45 He also asked the UDBA, in a report, that the taxes on the pastors of the Baptist and Methodist churches be increased in order to prevent them