Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

church also had many young people. After the eve- ning service, which had lasted from six to eight o'clock, the youth conducted their own service, which went on till 11:00 p.m. Upon question- ing, the presbyter replied that he could do nothing about it because the 300 young people had so much enthusiasm they would simply meet in spite of any cautions he might give. An AUCECB church demonstrated its own boldness and creativity. Once, when a foreign visitor attended, the local plenipotentiary for the Council for Religious Affairs suddenly arrived to attend the service. The presiding minister called on one of his preachers, who delivered an excellent sermon on the Christian’s duty to the state. The next preacher preached about the Bible, emphasizing how important it is that the contents of the Bible should also be in one’s heart. But it was not good, the preacher stated, if only one person in a hundred had the possibility of holding a Bible in his hands, It would be much better that each person had a Bible. Then the con- gregation stood for prayer, and one of the sisters managed to convert her prayer into an appeal to God and the state official. She began with profuse thanksgiving for the many blessings, and for their freedoms, especially the freedom to be able to meet together for prayer. Then she went on to ask God to help Leonid Brezhnev so that Brezhnev could see his way through to granting them a new prayer house. She also prayed for the pleni- potentiary, saying he was a good man, and asked God to help him do his work well. The service closed, the state official left, got into his car and drove away. The guest speaker had assumed he would not be invited to preach, but as soon as the state official was gone, the local leader invited everyone back into the church and the guest preached for two more hours! On the southwestern border of the Soviet Union is Moldavia, which has a very different history, more closely linked to Romania. After the war, Ilia Ivanov was sent there to reorganize and rebuild churches which had been destroyed during the war. I. T. Slobodchikov then became the senior presbyter (1946-49).?6 He liad studied four years at Bucharest at a seminary and was obviously well qualified. But in 1949 he was demoted to assistant senior presbyter and F. R. Astakhov replaced him. Astakhov had been Life in the Provinces 263 moved there from Siberia and now administered the church with authoritar- ianism. According to the reformers, after the local church had excommuni- cated him, he was finally moved to the Caucasus and spent the early sixties as an assistant to Andreev in the Ukraine.2” Astakhov was succeeded by the Pentecostal leader D. I. Ponomarchuk, who helped improve relations with the Pentecostals but that did not prevent the Initsiativniki split.2* The Initsiativniki leader in Moldavia, $. Kh. Tsurkan, was an older, highly respected presbyter in a registered church, who became