Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

t evangelicals on unity or autonomy have an aspect of artificiality because too often they were not the spontaneous expression of a personal viewpoint. Rather, they reflected the vacillation in state policy toward religion which church leaders then had to clothe with re- ligious language. Soviet policy toward the churches started out by opposing religious centralization in order to break the institutional power of the churches, especially that of the Orthodox Patriarchate. The basic law on cults speaks almost exclusively about a local religious society which orga- nizes and administers itself as an autonomous unit. When church life began again after the war, special dispensations from Stalin permitted the restora- 274 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II tion of religious headquarters, and the new church statutes (including that of the AUCECB) reflected the new centralism. The 1960 statute increased the power of the Moscow headquarters at the expense of the local presbyter. The advantage for the state was obvious: control over and domination of the churches through pressure focused on a few leaders would be easier. When this failed, the state resorted once again to the earlier divide and rule tactic by encouraging autonomous registration of churches which were not affiliated with the AUCECB. Although the AUCECB had nearly recovered from the split with the Reform Baptists, this new tactic has kept it on the de- fensive in its relations not only with the CCECR, but also with the Pentecos- tals and Mennonites. The CCECB and the Autonomous Churches State encouragement of autonomous registration after 1969 was a greater threat to the CCECB than to the AUCECB. The state has remained intransigent in refusing to legalize it as a second ECB union. But in order to prevent evangelicals from meeting in private homes, often in secret, state authorities now began offering registration, sometimes even an uncondi- tional registration. At its legal congress in 1969, the CCECB had decided to advise its churches to renew their application for registration. They also devised their own application form, which included only that information about church life which they felt the state was entitled to know.’ Because that meant that these churches thereby refused to promise complete obedience to state legislation on religion, most of such applications were refused. But some CCECB churches, perhaps as many as fifteen, succeeded in obtaining regis- tration that was not conditional upon obeying state law.4 Sensing that the registration of the Kiev church in August 1975 was being used by Soviet propaganda to undermine imprisoned Georgi Vins's own position, the CCECB issued a sharply worded warning to its churches.® In it they stated that authorities were illegally preventing local registration unless the local church agreed to be autonomous from the CCECB. The CCECB therefore urged th