Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

ssible. On October 4, 1910, the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a circular “On the Order for Sectarian Meetings.” The circular went into considerable detail in regulating sectarian activity and reminds one of Article 17 of the later Soviet Law on Cults of 1929. Regular meetings of the sect could be held without special permission but all additional meetings outside of the registered building re- quired two weeks’ advance notice to the police with a request for per- mission. The evangelization and teaching of minors was prohibited as were also various special gatherings for reading and discussion. A representative of the police was to attend every prayer meeting. The situation for the evan- gelicals—or sectarians, as the state regarded them—worsened. During the war they were harassed as potential traitors because their faith was of foreign Protestant origin.* The Revolution of 1917 brought unprecedented relief to Russian sectarians, including evangelicals. When the Bolsheviks took over in the fall and issued the famed Separation Decree in January 1918, the evangelicals welcomed it. Finally the Orthodox Church, which had so long enjoyed a special position, had been reduced to a level of equality with all other reli- gions. Not all the clauses of the decree separating church from state were to be acceptable to them, but most important initially was Article 3 which stated: ®Every citizen may confess any religion or profess none at all. Every legal Beginnings and Patterns 37 restriction connected with the profession of certain faiths or with the profession of no faith is now revoked.37 Initially the Soviet government, due largely to the influence of the sectarian expert weciasitlal vho was also Lenin’s secretary), took a friendly attitude toward the evangelical sectarians and even hoped to cooperate with them in the building of socialism. In addition, because the evangelicals drew the bulk of their converts from Orthodoxy, their success should help the government in breaking the back of Orthodoxy. Both the Evangelical Christian and the Baptist Unions now met in regular congresses where they were able to report dramatic growth. Attempts at a union of the two bodies in 1920 failed so that their development was also characterized by undesirable rivalry. Both unions participated in congresses of the Baptist World Alliance and were particularly prominent at the 1923 congress. Beginning in 1923, however, there were increasing signs of a parting of the ways between the evangelicals and the Soviet government. Many evan- gelicals, including the dominant leaders in both the Evangelical Christian and Baptist unions, were pacifists and made use of the 1919 decree permit- ting alternative service.*8 In 1923 the Soviet authorities began putting on pressure so that both unions would abandon their antimilitarist stand. The evangelicals appealed for aid at the Stockholm Congress and were refused, Leade