Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

K. possibly with the aid of his new assj eet assistant, Arthur Mitskevich i Zhidkoy necessarily h Pe alias: y had to assume responsibility. but i considering his many trips abroad a that summer, hi ibuti rile ete , his contribution may not jor. There had been a shake-up of: ip i -up of leadership in ay ery leadership was entrusted to three men (Zhidkov Karev i ee vi i former yan (Orlov and Goliaev) were demoted icular meeting of the presidium had be d ha chairmanship of N. A. Levindanto ee LA. , who also emerged as first vi i feciirpentuaterts ed as lirst vice-president, presented th ee ee e revised statute to the 1963 congress eee es of instruction had explained that revised church statutes quired so that they would correspond to existing Soviet legislation 180 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II on religion. Such a new statute was necessary because copies of the 1929 law were rare. In April 1959, for the first time since the 1930s, a docu- mentary collection of legislation on religion was published:.24 Two hundred thousand copies were distributed, marking an unusually large edition. This volume included the 1929 law in full and described it as the most important document which at the moment regulated the changing relations between the religious organizations and the state. But a second edition of this collec- tion printed in 1961 omitted the 1929 law. As a matter of fact, the full text of the law has not been published since. An official commentary, also published in April 1961, affirmed that this law was still binding but neglected to mention that only a month previously, the two councils for re- ligious affairs had issued an officially binding instruction which drastically altered the law. This legal trickery by state authorities meant that local churches should consult their new church statute to discover what the law did not permit. Since the new statute was issued nearly a year before the Orthodox Church: was forced to revise its statute, it seems likely that the Baptist leaders hoped that with immediate acquiescence they would get fa- vored treatment compared with the Orthodox and therefore stand a better chance to survive the new attack that had obviously begun.” Since the Initsiatiuniki regarded the new statute as the last and worst manifestation of a leadership that had become unfaithful, let us look at this leadership more closely. In general these were men whose actions and state- ments on behalf of the Soviet state caused suspicion yet whose spiritual and pastoral qualities are equally striking. These contradictory qualities remind one of Metropolitan Nikolai and his successor Metropolitan Nikodim. By 1960 primary leadership was in the hands of three men: Jacob Zhidkov, president; Alexander Karev, general secretary; and Ilia G: Ivanov, treasurer. Zhidkov had already been acting president of the Evangelical Chris- tian Union since 19