Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

distributing aid “in order to win adherents to their union.’ But in many local areas the rapid growth was a joint effort. For example, in 1920, at a regional congress in Ekaterinoslav in the Ukraine, representatives of both unions met together, approved a merger, and jointly employed four evangelists. In the central Volga region the two unions joined in the same year with Mennonites to coordinate evangelistic activity and form union congregations. In the Don region both unions jointly com- missioned eight evangelists. Prokhanov of the Evangelical Christians also cooperated with Mennonites in the Ukraine to form the Raduga publishing house. FO Taitin Estonia 2 io loViadimir 5 i f Ne os Sg Dnepropetrovsk Krivoi ¢ Rog, Ff af TURKEY gagred an (S gasingtad) 42 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il The evangelicals were enthusiastic about their growth. Ivan Prok- hanov had visions of bringing all of Russia to evangelical Christianity. But such rapid growth also produced problems of its own. Already in 1907, when several churches in the Far East had baptized more than 100 members in one year, the longtime Baptist president Dei Mazaev had urged caution: “In our view, such a massive reception is hardly useful and desirable, because new members who have not been sufficiently trained in our teaching can by their numbers in sessions, make decisions that are im- mature or even alien to our church structure.’’54 When Pavel Ivanov-Klyshnikov reported to the Baptist World Alliance Congress in Toronto in 1928, he estimated that they had 4,000 congrega- tions and stated: “We have around 900 presbyters and 3,100 societies and groups without prepared leaders.’’55 This shortage of strong trained leadership must be regarded as a key factor in why the churches lost ground during the heavy pressure of the 1930s. Ivanov-Klyshnikov went on to identify another problem, the shortage of buildings. He noted that out of the 5,000 preaching places, “we have only about 400 of our own prayer buildings and around 800 rented buildings; the remaining 3,800 places of preaching are in private quarters, 5 Perhaps the major significance of the rapid increase was not so much that now there were many more evangelicals, but, in the words of the most recent Soviet scholarly treatment, “there was a process of change of the composition, a renewal of the cadres in Evangelical Christian and Baptist churches.”5" Based on the extensive statistical data submitted to the Conference of Anti-Religious Workers in 1926, Soviet sociologist Lialina noted that after 1917 the growth took place primarily in the village popula- tion. From 1918 to 1926, 906 new congregations with a total membership of 36,537 were established in the cities. Most of those who joined were peasants primarily of Orthodox background. According to Soviet classifica- tion, both Evangelical Christi