Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

on did not wish to join, Karev characterizing these as the more fanatical Pente- costals. Therefore, he said, no further initiatives had been taken with the Pentecostals,&7 A more important reason why no further initiatives were taken was that the AUCECB now became preoccupied with the Initsiativniki threat to the union. It soon became apparent that the Initsiationiki had an anti-Pente- costal bias which might mean that further concessions to the Pentecostals could mean losing part of its own membership. The Moscow leadership, however, maintained its former stance toward the Pentecostals, so that as. the reformers’ position became more entrenched, it became easier for Pentecostals to return. Already at the 1963 congress, twenty Pentecostal representatives attended, while Senior Presbyter A. L. Andreev reported that in the Ukraine one fourth of all senior presbyters and one fifth of all local presbyters were Pentecostals.® At that first congress considerable at- tention was paid to the Pentecostals and Mennonites in order to balance off the Initsiativniki threat. At the next two congresses, however, Pentecostals began to complain of neglect, and Karev apologized, promising them more The Movement Toward Autonomy 287 attention next time. In fact, already at the 1966 congress he drew attention to the major impact that the Pentecostal movement worldwide was having on the churches. He informed his listeners that in the second century it was the Montanists, the ancient Pentecostals, who “saved Christianity from spiritual death in gnosticism” and with that as background, expressed a hope that the Pentecostals would provide a good ferment in their brotherhood.® Both in 1966 and 1969 Karev could report that ap- proximately another 2,500 Pentecostals had joined the union. From the beginning, D. I. Ponomarchuk and I. K. Pan’ko had worked as assistant senior presbyters in the Ukraine and Belorussia respectively, the chief Pentecostal centers. By the late fifties, this had expanded. When the AUCECB was increased to twenty-five members in 1966, Pentecostal representation increased from one person to two.” Shortly thereafter, P. K. Shatrov became a full-time worker in the Moscow headquarters, as had Vik- tor Kriger for the Mennonites. In 1974 Shaktrov also became the Pente- costal member on the presidium, where a Pentecostal voice had been miss- ing since Ponomarchuk took il] in 1961.7! The Pentecostal problem did not disappear. In 1971 eight major Pentecostal leaders sent a letter to all Pentecostals both inside and outside the union in which they once again urged Pentecostals to support the August Agreement in all its points and to follow their personal example by joining the union.” The year before, the Pentecostal question had again been discussed at an AUCECB plenum and a decision had been taken to call a meeting in the second half of the year with representatives of the Pentecostals not in the union,