Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

state bank. Apparently he helped them because his wife was a believer.” Now since the establishment of the Council of Prisoners’ Relatives, the whole church knew the details about the prisoners and their families. Soviet legislation prohibits the church from providing aid to prisoners, but the CCECB had informed the government that all their families would be sup- ported. This was a rather bold promise, Lidia Vins acknowledged, but so far Reunification Rejected, 1964-1974 | 247 they had managed to keep it. Their first task as CPR had been to make certain that no one went hungry even if the breadwinner was in prison or in hiding. Then they made sure that the schoolchildren had adequate clothing for school. Next they arranged for adequate bedding and heating. Once the financial aid from the West reached them, they were finally able to ensure that. prisoners’ families did not live worse than other families. Yet another major. problem was to help returning prisoners find work because many managers were afraid to employ them lest the authorities show displeasure. Without doubt, state authorities have been most irritated by another activity that they have been unable to stop. In 1971 the CCECB journal Braiskii Listok (Fraternal Leaflet) declared that since 1966 they had been appealing to the government printing presses to print 10,000 Bibles and 5, 000 hymnbooks and other literature. Since this was refused, they had started their own press, they announced, which they had naméd Khris- tianin.73 After 1971 most copies of Bratskii Listok were printed, and soon it became apparent that one of their printing presses was capable of printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. This was no mean achievement. In addi- tion to conducting everything in secret, the reformers were forced to con- struct their own printing press because all duplicators or presses in the Soviet Union are registered and a careful watch is kept on all paper supplies. Khristianin was the name of a semi-independent publishing house which was closer to the CCECB than to the CPR but also made its services available to other evangelicals. The authorities soon discovered that once they had confiscated one press, there were others that could continue the work. For example, in 1974, after.a careful and prolonged search, a printing press was discovered in Latvia and seven workers were arrested.”4 Two days after the arrests, the Khristianin publishing house was already printing photos of those arrested plus the full story. Another printing press was dis- covered in 1977 but the work of Khristianin continues.” Khristianin’s ability to survive is not only a dramatic expression of the tremendous hunger for religious literature, it is also an illustration of widespread Christian cooperation under the most severe circumstances. One printing press was run by a small electric motor which used only a small amount of electric current so that a high e