Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

y 1962 Article 227 was added, which specified up to five years’ prison or exile for persons leading others to violate the religious legislation. Once the antireligious course had been resumed by Brezhnev and Kozygin, additional clauses of the criminal code.were revised, involving greater restrictions and harsher treatment of the sectarians in particular. !® Ho Sond _ With the secret revision of the fundamental law in 1962, the two coun- cils for religious affairs were given greater discretionary power and soon both Orthodox and Baptist Samizdat writers complained that these councils seemed to be the chief agents in the antireligious campaign. In December 1965 these two councils were united and given still greater discretionary powers, Also after 1966 local.commissions were introduced which had the task of supervising religious activity in its minute detail. These commissions had the right to submit any violations to the Council for Religious Affairs which recommended appropriate measure to the police or courts.”° The Khrushchev Campaign Against Religion 137 Although one can identify such a creative variety of vospitanie: and administrirovanie, for those affected, the most striking feature:was the inti- mate cooperation of their persecutors: the Council for Religious Affairs, the Committee for State Security (KGB), the police, the courts, and the local city or county officials. The believers complained about the vospitanie method, but they complained much more about the ‘crude administrative measures that were used. ph Ae In‘a major summary of the first decade, the Reform’ Baptists’ Council of Prisoners’ Relatives listed 14 different administrative abuses?!: More than 500 had been put in prison; numerous congregations had: experienced physical force from the authorities; hundreds of children: had been inter- rogated; hundreds of children had been.refused entrance into’seconda and higher education because their families were believers and they cane church; all the leaders and ‘most of the members had been subjected to harassment and terrorization; many had lost their jobs ard were then prosecuted under the newly introduced parasite laws; large‘ quantities’ of literature had been confiscated; houses had been confiscated in Tula, Novo- sibirsk, etc.; authorities had. prevented church’ services Bye physical transporting believers elsewhere; the old and thie’ sick were kept in nrion, contrary: to Soviet legislation; frequent arrests—some persons arrested os often as three times in nine years; preventing marriage and funeral sérvices; fines for attending an unregistered worship service which by. 1970. totaled over 100,000 rubles; and finally, they complairied: that the leaders of the Reform Baptist union weré not being permitted to work full time as-cler and had therefore been forced into hiding. ° vous ar i Since ‘ the illustrative documentation has -become immense. the temptation to go into detail