Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

inary at The major substitute for a seminary has been Bratskii Vestnik. General Secretary Karev and his assistant Mitskevich devoted major effort to fillin this journal with high-quality didactic articles. If a local presbyter oy fortunate to receive a subscription (it began with 3,000 copies, graduall increasing to 10,000 in 1978) and had built up a file, he would have a onl reference library available. A number of other major contributors to Bratskii Vesinik were former graduates of Bible classes that had been held i Moscow and Leningrad from 1924 to 1928.58 ach With the incorporation of the Baltic states and the Western Ukraine into the Soviet Union after the war, the Baptist Union also benefited b gaining access to better-educated clergy in this area. The most sAnGaaiae individual was Oswald Tiark, leading minister of the 2,000-member rie congregation in Tallinn, Estonia. Tiark had obtained a Master of Theolo degree at Columbia University before returning to Estonia to become a i tor.® In addition to organizing seminars and correspondence ey Estonia, he has written Bible commentaries on Mark’s Gospel, on Ephesians, and has recently completed the first half of the Book of Romins This is a major contribution, since a Russian-language commentary on the Bible does not exist, not even in translation, Unfortunately, Tiark, aged 75 cannot anticipate many more productive years and there is an ident need for persons of his ability and training. The Reform Baptists have been hampered even more in their access to theological materials. They have, however, been very aggressive in trying to collect valuable articles from old Baptist journals for reprinting and ie been influenced by the growing supplies of religious literature that have been brought into the country by tourists and other individuals Copies of the AUCECB correspondence course material have been obtained in the West, resulting in reproduction for widest circulation. In one instance stra this writer, a dozen Reform Baptist preachers came together heel airs sa instructions for the course on homiletics, and tried to The Soviet Union is the largest and oldest of the communist countries 332 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il thereby making it important as a case history for the role of the Christian in Marxist society. Joseph Hromadka, theologian and teacher at the Comenius Faculty in Prague, Czechoslovakia, is still the best-known contributor to the subject. Many of his speeches on the subject of peace were reprinted in Bratskii Vestnik, but not his major writings discussing the role of the church under socialism. No person of his quality has emerged in the Soviet Union and there are no articles in Bratskii Vestnik that one would recommend reading on this subject. Neither the AUCECB nor the CCECB has produced a Hromadka or even a Joseph Ton, a Romanian Baptist pastor w