Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

he pursuing authorities. Their supporters staunchly refused to give evidence that might incriminate them. This changed after the mass demonstration in Moscow in May 1966. Within a few months, both Vins and Kriuchkov were behind bars, as well as most of the other leaders. The two men were put on trial together and gave an eloquent defense at a trial whose outcome had been predetermined.’’ For three years they were kept in prisons, which ruined the health of both, especially Vins. Kriuchkov utilized this period of enforced idleness for extensive reading and emerged as the reformers’ au- thority on Soviet law and philosophy. Vins wrote poetry which was later to move the hearts of thousands around the world. The Council To become a member of the reformers’ leading council (CCECB) was much more dangerous than election to the AUCEGB. Perhaps this explains why they have never elected a full fifteen-to-seventeen-member council as provided for in the statute which they issued in November 1965.38 The membership hovered around eleven, with a discouragingly high percentage serving what could only be an honorary membership while they were lan- guishing in prison. Those that were free spent their time on the road, These persons, plus a small corps of evangelists, traveled throughout the Soviet Union visiting congregations, trying to win more supporters, maintaining the vital communication links, and helping supervise the local leadership. The CCECB has demonstrated impressive organizational skills by suc- cessfully directing a well-developed, nationwide church program; yet this did not appear to be the key quality supporters looked for in the leaders, Most of the CCECB members, especially the older men, are held in honor as spiritual giants.39 A. A. Shalashov was a key initial leader, who died in December 1968 at age seventy-three. Born in 1890, he was converted in 1914 and immediately began a ministry as evangelist in the Volgo-Kamsk ECB church. He had spent a total of nineteen years in prison for his faith and at his death was presbyter of the unregistered church in Cheliabinsk. He had made a major contribu- tion to the revivals in the fifties.49 238 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il Ivan Iakovlevich Antonov was somewhat younger, having been born into a Russian Orthodox family in Kalinin Oblast in 1919. In 1938 Antonov started medical school in Moscow but after the third year the war interfered with his studies. In the summer of 1941 he had gained access to a Bible which he read for a month with the result that he got rid of his icons. But in .the army he took to drinking until in June 1944 he met a young woman whose witness led to his decisive conversion. Soon several other soldiers were converted through his work with the result that in November 1944 a military tribunal sentenced him to ten years in the prison camps in the Far North. Soon after his release in August 1954 he was baptized.