Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

on the Soviet situation would help Western Christians to respond more intelligently and would therefore also help Soviet evangel- icals in the long run. The AUCECB leaders initially expressed sharp criticism of this assign- ment, charging that Bourdeaux was biased toward the Initsiativniki; therefore this action must mean that the Mennonites were also siding with the Initsiationiki instead of with the AUCECB. Mennonites saw the criticism as an attempt to force Mennonites to be partisan in the AUCECB- CCECB conflict, and refused to bow to the pressure. Eventually relations improved when it became clear that a sympathetic attitude toward both unions was possible. Mennonite Central Committee has held numerous consultations on East/West questions, seeking to develop a relationship in keeping with Mennonite emphases. That meant the rejection of secret or deceptive. tactics such as Bible smuggling. Mennonites hoped for mutual enrichment in the area of biblical study, peace, and service. It was time, they felt, to recognize that American and Soviet citizens had a joint responsibility for the The Foreign Connection 381 poor of the Third World, since North America and the Soviet Union represented the two big and rich superpowers, . The Mennonite World Conference was first organized in 1925. At that first conference in Basel, Switzerland, one Soviet delegate managed te come as far as the train station on the Swiss boundary but was not permitted into Switzerland. Since then no Soviet Mennonites were permitted to leave the Soviet Union to attend the Mennonite World Conference, even though ten percent of the Mennonite body still lived in the Soviet Union. Some Men- nonites were particularly disappointed when, in spite of the many Baptist conferences to which AUCECB leaders were traveling, no delegation was permitted to attend the Mennonite World Conferences in Amsterdam in 1967 and in Curitiba, Brazil, in 1972. N egotiations for the 1978 conference in Kansas were long and complicated, but eventually a six-man delegation from the Soviet Union received a standing ovation when they were in- troduced. The delegation included one representative of the Mennonites one from the independent Mennonite Brethren, two Mennonite spokesmen within the AUCECB, plus a translator, and Michael Zhidkov as leader of the delegation. It was a beginning, even though the AUCECB had to serve as the umbrella for the unaffiliated Mennonites,” Both MCC and Mennonite World Conference have made a conscious attempt to regard the Mennonites within the AUCECB as fully part of that union. But North American Mennonites are concerned about the apparent tendency to force Mennonites and Pentecostals to be swallowed up by the Baptists. Mennonite trips to the Soviet Union, like Pentecostal trips, have usually been underplayed in contrast to visits by Baptists. At the 1974 Congress, for example, Mennonite representative Peter Dyck’s words o