Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

atives (Gennadi Kriuchkov, S, G. Dubovoi, M. P. Kondrashov, M. G. Baturin, and M. P. Khrapov) met with nine of the Moscow leaders.* The meeting lasted four hours, and, according to the stenographic report from the reformers’ side,’ the exchanges were surprisingly frank. The meeting nearly ended before it began because the reformers refused to greet the others with a brotherly kiss. When Karev asked why, Gennadi Kriuchkov said they still recognized the correctness and legality of the excommunication and did not regard them as brothers. The reformers had planned their discussion and simply went through the major points of their agenda, otherwise refusing to enter into dialogue. Their purpose was to find out whether the AUCECB was now ready to eliminate the causes of the split. That is, would thé leaders reject what they had written in 1960 and repent of their cooperation with the state? Karev and the others asserted that the 1960 statute had never been approved, but they defended as necessary their action in issuing the offending documents. Karev declared that it was the Soviet authorities which had split the evan- gelical brotherhood into registered and unregistered groupings and that the statute for the registered churches was based on the law, in particular the unpublished laws. 230 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il Reunification Rejected, 1964-1974 231 Karev went on to say that the Bible refers to doors being opened and closed. During the history of the atheist state, the door was sometimes wide open for Christian work. Then in 1929 the door closed. “We all went to prison. Then Stalin died, and the door again began to open, but only till 1959, when the Twenty-first Party Congress decided to make a swift end to organized religion. Then that door became very small . . ..and so, in view of this situation, we in 1960 articulated the ‘closed doors’ by means of the let- ter of instruction and the statute.”’® Kriuchkov responded that Christ did not close doors; one should not let circumstances dictate. But Karev replied that Paul’s missionary tour, which finally brought him to Europe, was shaped by a series of closed doors. The remainder of the discussion concerned their differing attitudes toward the state. The reformers repeatedly charged that the leaders were urging cooperation with the state, were united with the state, whereas they affirmed absolute separation. Karev had once sent them a copy of the 1918 declaration on separation. which affirmed that the church was separated from the state and had penciled in the remark: “But not the state from the church! That's what all believers should know!’’® For Karev, this was a statement of political realism, but he also understood this to mean that the church must subordinate itself to the state. That was how he understood Romans I3. Space does not permit repeating more of this fascinating exchange of views, but it was clear that they were