Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

278 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II begun to appreciate and imitate. But the Anabaptists themselves were sub- jected to fierce persecution during which the best of them were killed many more fled to America and Russia, and others were beaten into sith mission, What remained was a martyrology made possible by the “Sa- mizdat” of that time and the attempts by a later generation to recover the Anabaptist vision. !9 The striking similarity in emphasis makes one wonder whether the Reform Baptists may not represent some of the new Anabaptists of the twentieth century. Very few conscious links are apparent; their most-cited hero from the 1920s is Ivan Kargel, a man deeply imbued with Calvinism, and they never refer to Ivan Prokhanov or Pavel Pavlov who had some ad- miration for the Anabaptists. But another striking feature of the Init- siationiki prisoners’ lists is the disproportionately high number of names which betray a Russian-Mennonite background. In the list of thirty-five persons, in January 1979, ten are Mennonite names.”° Is it possible that the Anabaptist theology, which the Mennonites claim to follow, caused some sons of Menno to make common cause with Reform Baptists? Most of these ex-Mennonites, such as K. K. Kreker, reject their Mennonite roots with a near passion, but what they reject are the traditions and mores of a people that has largely forgotten the vision. Such observations also make one wonder whether the new Anabaptists of Russia will, like their spiritual forebears, lose their greatest leaders as martyrs, lose others through emigration,?! and will themselves disappear into the surrounding conformity to await rediscovery in less tempestuous times. Who Are the Mennonites? This is the question asked in the title of a recent book about Soviet Mennonites. The author, A. N. Ipatov, thought this question was important because, through their mission and preaching activities, this rather small Protestant church was influencing other confessions. In fact, “many Men- nonite forms and methods of religious molding of the population have been \ adopted by the Baptists—Initsiativniki . . .”’22 Although they had sixteenth- century roots in the Anabaptist movement, the exclusivist emphasis had be- come so strong in the nineteenth century, while during the Soviet period their historical awareness had become so weak that even unbelievers from this ethnic-confessional society call themselves Mennonites.23 In some So- viet passports these persons had even listed their nationality as Men- nonites.24 The Movement Toward Autonomy 279 A bibliography of Mennonites, including Russian Mennonites, now fills volumes,2° and there are multi-volume Mennonite encyclopedias in both German and in English,2¢ yet most writing on Soviet religious history betrays surprising ignorance about them. The few Soviet publications which have usually served as source ma