Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

f, was young Josef D. Bondarenko, who functioned as the Billy Graham of Russia whenever he wasn’t in prison. Bondarenko, born 1947, was first arrested at home in Odessa and sentenced to three years in 1962. After a brief period of freedom he was sentenced to another three years (1966-69) in a strict regime labor camp. Upon his release he was married in a huge outdoor ceremony with 2,000 present, which upset the authorities because it was more like an evangelistic rally. He therefore spent a number of years in hiding but in the three years before his arrest in May 1978 he was leader of the church in Riga. Following highly successful evangelistic campaigns in the spring of 1978 he was arrested and sentenced to another three years. He has four children and suffers from a heart condition since his second arrest.4! Soon the responsibilities of the council were eased by the formation of regional unions. A precise organizational structure could never develop satisfactorily because of the need for secrecy. By 1976 an internal dispute had broken out between those who affirmed the necessity of centralized, authoritarian leadership by the CCECB over against others arguing for a federated structure, where the regional unions would have more power.‘ The regional unions were the product of local initiative. There is insufficient data available to determine how many regional unions there were, but by the mid-sixties there were regional unions in the Caucasus, in Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan, in the Baltic region, in Moldavia, in the Leningrad area, and probably one or several in the Ukraine. The Baltic region represented eighteen or nineteen congrega- tions who elected a seven-member presbyter council which met monthly. The Siberian union (which included Northern Kazakhstan) consisted of nine oblasts, in each of which a senior presbyter had been elected by the local.churches. The Siberian union itself met semiannually and usually two 240 : Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il or three CCECB members participated. This was a very secret meeting last- ing up to two days (without any pause for sleeping) with forty-five to sixty people participating. In addition to edificatory preaching, the local regions reported their literature needs, how many had been sentenced, and the fi- nancial needs of the members, especially those with relatives in prison. They discussed general church life and the CCECB reported on its work. The entire church program had to be conducted with great secrecy so that there was the constant danger of an abuse of power. Participants at all levels have affirmed that their activity was highly organized and that all fi- nances were recorded and reports were given on a need-to-know basis. Re- gionally, church activity was organized sufficiently ‘so that one person supervised youth work, another organized transportation, while others were responsible for communic