Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

specifically. I ac- knowledge also those persons who have written and transported the vast amounts of Samizdat materials which are indispensable to a full story. On numerous trips to the Soviet Union believers have been incomparably hos- pitable and I am grateful as well to friendly authorities who were persuaded to accede to some of my requests. The strongest encouragement and unfailing support at every stage came from Peter J. Dyck, longtime European Secretary for Mennonite Central Committee with deep ties to the Soviet Union. This association I will always treasure. In addition to Peter Dyck’s solicitous attention to the text, I had the pleasure of working with an editorial committee consisting of Robert Kreider, Cornelius Krahn, Frank H. Epp, Cornelius J. Dyck, and Lawrence Klippenstein. Their careful criticisms and suggestions helped me to think deeper and write better. I also received helpful detailed criticism of the text from Michael Rowe of Keston College and on chapter 12 from Keith Parker of the Baptist Theological Seminary in Rischlikon. I also thank Michael Bourdeaux of Keston College for granting free access to the wealth of materials at Keston College; in fact, this book began during my three-year stay there. Many others, too numerous to mention, stimulated my thinking and provided helpful information. That some mistakes and bad judgments persisted must be attributed to the failings of the author alone. For the many hours of typing, preparation of card files, and other 22 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il technical assistance I am heavily indebted to the voluntary labors of Dorothy Wiens, Rosie Yoder, and Lydia Penner, the latter typing the bulk of the manuscript in several drafts. The skilled editorial aid of Paul M. Schrock and his colleagues at Herald Press is acknowledged gratefully. The creation of a book invariably becomes a major painful process deeply affecting the writer's family. Were it not for the way Natasha and Alexander humanized me and above all that my wife, Margaret, continued to believe in the project, this book might not have been born. I thank Mar- garet not only for this support but also for the personal labor she contributed and the experiences we were privileged to share together in the Soviet Union. Neuwied, West Germany September 8, 1980 List of Abbreviations To provide appropriate English equivalents for many Russian names, words, and phrases is virtually impossible. Not only do the Russians employ a different alphabet (the Cyrillic), the decades of socialistic-communist government have produced a wealth of Soviet bureaucratic jargon for which no Western equivalents exist because such social arrangements do not exist. The acronym, for example, is so endemic that it takes an effort to recall that a Kolkhoznik is an abbreviation for a person living on kollektionyi khoziastvo (collective management or