Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

hese ex-Orthodox Baptists slackened off sooner in teaching religion to their children. The so- ciologists argued that by the middle fifties, the overall membership was much older, far fewer members came from the educated ranks, and most serious of all were the major inroads on membership through advancing se- cularization. ’ os The split developed because younger leaders in the Baptist movement panicked and tried to launch a major missionary drive to rejuvenate the membership .and preserve it from extinction. The Soviet scholar Lialina noted that the AUCECB leadership agreed with the dissident leaders on 158 - Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il these goals but differed on the methods for achieving them. The official leaders emphasized religious education and did not wish to violate the law, whereas the dissident leaders paid no attention to the law and focused their efforts on isolating believers as much as possible from the pernicious in- fluences of society. The argument is logical and the statistical data sounds impressive but this interpretation has several fundamental weaknesses. All sources convey a sense of crisis, Dissident Baptist sources have been the most explicit in describing the excessive administrative measures employed by state au- thorities to try to make Baptist membership as unattractive as possible. Lialina is somewhat more forthright than some of her earlier colleagues or even the official Baptist journal has been in acknowledging this factor. So- viet sociology has improved, but the tendency to manipulate statistical data to prove a predetermined point of view still makes the overall conclusions suspect. What Went Wrong? Had the Baptist union changed significantly? The key leadership in “ Moscow and Kiev had changed very little. That of course meant that the small ruling elite was 15 years older than. when they began in 1945. President Jacob Zhidkov was now seventy-five, Vice-President A. L. Andreev was seventy-eight, Vice-President N. A. Levindanto was sixty-four and. suffering from a heart condition, General Secretary Alexander: Karev was sixty-seven. All these men had been aggressive influential workers before the war and continued to work with astounding energy to make the new unity a reality. . e WAS: From the start, the new union was threatened with splits. One small group of Pentecostals left almost as soon as they had joined and by 1948 it was necessary to issue sharp instructions to Pentecostals to adhere to the agreement. From 1957 to 1959 continued cooperation with the Pentecostals was threatened once again. Almost annually top-level conferences: were held between -members of the AUCECB Presidium and former key Pente- costal leaders who now agreed to.travel through the churches to: settle disagreements and to persuade those still keeping aloof of the advantages of joining.4 Bratskii Vestnik prin