Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

ation the in- dividual’s private house which had been used for meetings was confiscated or destroyed. Seldom did the closure of a church signify the termination of religious activities, Very often fearful believers carefully avoided all group- ings of more than three persons but after a few months smaller groups began gathering again in homes. Word soon spread that whereas persecu- ' tion was quite severe in the Russian Federation and in Kazakhstan, in Kirgizia the semi-Muslim administrators were turning a blind eye to re- ligious activities. As a result, considerable moving ensued although not everyone sought refuge in Kirgizia. Others moved to the Baltic region where there was much less restriction. ® fos Initially there was widespread sympathy for the reformers, Statistical claims were wildly contradictory as one side tried to minimize the threat and the other tried ‘to dramatize its support. The Initsiativniki claimed that the AUCECB spoke only for one third of the membership since two thirds of the congregations were unregistered and implied that the latter were in the reformers’ camp. According to Soviet sociologists, at its height the ' reformers were able to claim the support of approximately ‘half of the’ un- registered congregations.** It should be noted, however, that as a rule un- registered congregations were smaller in membership. In 1958 before the Khrushchev campaign, Baptist leaders had claimed a membership ‘of 530,000.87 By 1966 Karev was saying’ that 250,000 was more likely. ‘Avail- able data would tend to ‘support the latter figure’ and suggest that the 500,000 figure was inflated unless it also included: the unregistered con- gregations. The most recent and most reliable official Soviet statistics indi- cate that by the end of 1965, 13 percent of all believers in registered con- gregations supported the split with the percentage as high as 19.4 percent in the major cities.88 This would mean a total of 30,000 to 80,000 supporters from the AUCECB registered churches plus half of the perhaps 250,000 Baptists in unregistered congregations. Therefore at its height in 1966 the reform movement very likely had around 155,000 supporters. Whatever the precise figures, this constituted a miajor threat to the AUCECB, especially during the early years, when one’ state official declared. that the reformers had the’ potential to: win over half the 194 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il membership.* After 1966, the hysterical attention paid to the Initsiativniki in the Soviet press clearly indicates that the authorities were worried. Some concessions had been granted to the AUCECB by 1963 already, but we will see in the following chapter that those turned out to be only the first of many concessions granted to the AUCECB in the subsequent years in order to win the reformers.back. As the percentage of Christians in the prison po