Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

n the AUCECB spokesmen traveled abroad, they would not paint a false picture of the Init- siationiki. The AUCECB later refused to produce a document showing what they had said at recent BWA meetings. !2 At this first meeting the CCECB spokesmen presented a letter that they requested the AUCECB leaders to sign and make public. The thrust of the letter was that the AUCECB leaders acknowledged their guilt, asked forgiveness for having issued the anti-evangelical documents, and also asked forgiveness for maintaining fellowship only with the registered churches.!8 CCECB spokesmen, in fact, asserted that only after a. full confession were they prepared to discuss the question of a congress and 232 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il reunification. The AUCECB spokesmen. promised that a document of repentance would be written, and it was decided to meet again at a later date. At the next meeting on May 17, 1969, the AUCECB spokesmen took the lead by reporting the decisions taken at an AUCECB plenum held ten days earlier." This decision affirmed that the daily life of the ECB churches was to be guided solely by the Word of God and the statutes approved at the 1966 congress, and that the decisions on unity taken at the 1963 and 1966 congress should serve as the basis for unification. The third point was that they intended to preserve the principles of the brotherhood in accor- dance with the existing legislation on worship. Then they handed the reformers a statement of mutual repentance and asked them to sign it. The reformers refused, protesting that instead of a repentance statement from the AUCECB, they now offered a statement in which both sides repented of their mistakes and asked forgiveness. Actually, had they read their own notes from the previous meeting carefully, they would have seen that the AUCECB participants had thought of a mutual repentance statement from the first. More significant was the fact that both sides tried to gain support by publishing their versions of the meetings. The Initsiativniki had referred to the first meeting in its journal!® and called upon its members to resist all local efforts to discuss unity, that is, to allow the CCECB to decide the ques- tion for all. Shortly after the second meeting, the AUCECB printed what it considered as the prerequisites for unity.'6 The AUCECB claimed that both sides had written harmful things and both sides had excommunicated each other, which meant that, as a first step toward unity, both sides must put an end to the mutual recriminations and must forgive each other. More talks on unity should be held and their contents should be published for the whole brotherhood to evaluate. Once Georgi Vins was released, Alexander Karev invited him to renew the unity talks, but Vins insisted on a formal invitation to the CCECB, which was his way of demanding recognition of the CCECB as the legiti- mate negotiating body