Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

But in Western Siberia a much more serious problem was the fact that the AUCECB had been able to establish only tenuous links with the churches and relatively few had received registration, primarily in the large cities. ‘A’ number of these, such as Barnaul, Slavgorod, and Omsk had been temporarily closed according to official Baptist sources, 52 Similarly in Kazakhstan there had been major changes in the leadership so that by 1960, M. S. Vashchuk, who had emerged only two years previously, now became the sole senior presbyter for all four Central Asian republics, where formerly there had been three.53 Vashchuk, born in 1904 and a Belorussian by nationality, had studied in Latvia and England. and then worked in Warsaw as publisher of religious literature.®4 After release from prison in the Karaganda region, the Baptist Union wished to utilize his considerable talent in Moscow but he was refused an internal passport. When he did receive one and became senior presbyter, local believers became suspicious 186 | Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II in spite of his good sermons and apparent commitment and he was finally excommunicated in 1970.55 If Vashchuk was not included on the Init- siativniki list of senior presbyters to be excommunicated, it may be because the Initsiativniki strength was in Tselinograd and Dzhezkazgen in Kazakhstan, which were unregistered. Several cities stand out as obvious trouble spots. Fourteen out of the fifteen persons arrested in Uzbekistan came from Tashkent and a nearby village. Here there had been several changes in local leadership until in 1962 the experienced S. P. Fadiukhin was transferred here.®¢ Soon Fadiukhin became assistant senior presbyter to Vashchuk. One of the key Initsiatiuniki leaders, Nikolai Khrapov, also lived in Tashkent. Khrapov, born 1914, had served twenty-five years in prison for his faith previously and was sentenced to a seven-year term in 1961. Before that he had com- posed some of the major spiritual articles in the Samizdat journal Herald of Salvation, as well as a major article giving advice to youth, which was widely distributed in Initsiativniki circles.57 One congregation in Dedovsk in the Moscow region summarized what had been the experience of many of the-unregistered congregations. Since 1949 the congregations had requested registration but had been refused. By 1969 this small congregation of sixty members had had its services in believ- ers’ homes disturbed more than 300 times, often some of the windows were broken and people were physically carried out into the street. The believers had been fined thirty times for a total of 1,055 rubles. The writer of the let- ter, V. I. Kozlov, who was the leading minister, could no longer show himself at home because the police were waiting to arrest him.58 Kozlov’s story is particularly appealing. Born in 1924, he lost his father whe