Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

several other problem patterns that would persist. Trained leaders remained rare. Trusted leaders were regularly threatened with prison. The lack of buildings remained a problem. And after a short euphoric period of unity in adversity, the inter-evangelical bickering was resumed. Which side, whether the state authorities or the evangelicals, would learn from their mistakes the quickest remained to be seen. Notes to Chapter 1 1. Walter Kolarz, Religion in the Soviet Union (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1961), p. 286. Kolarz’s solid book has retained ils valuc as a basic reference work, Paul D. Steeves, “The Russian Baptist Union, _19!7-1935: Evangelical Awakening in Russia” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Kansas, 1976), see pp. iii & 267; Wilhelm Kahle, Evangelische Christen in Russland und der Sowjetunion: Ivan Stepanovich Prochanov (1869-1935) und der Weg der Evan- geliums-christen und Baptisten (Wuppertal: Oncken Verlag, 1978), pp. 229-32. Steeves’s dissertation is without question the most thorough and reliable treatment of the Baptist Union before World War II, whereas the Kahle book is the definitive study of the Evangelical Christians for the same period and reflects admirable breadth and maturity. Kahle and Steeves have strongly influenced this introductory chapter. : 2.. Steeves, p. 250f.; Kahle, pp. 260-74. Beginnings and Patterns 51 3. Paul Miliukov, Outlines of Russian Culture, Vol. I: Religion and the Church in Russia (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. 1, 1942), p. 200, 4. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (Pelican Book, 1968), is the best his- tory of Stalin’s purges, See pp. 699-718 on casualty figures. 5. John Shelton Curtiss, Die Kirche in der Sowjetunion (1917-1956 (Munich: Isar Verlag, 1957), p. 236. This slightly revised German translation of the English edition (1953) devotes considerable space to the League of Militant Godless. 6. Good treatments of the Orthodox experience are in William C. Fletcher, A Study in Survival: The Church in Russia, 1927-1943 (London: S.P.C.K., 1965); Nikita Struve, Christians in Contemporary Russia (London: Harvill Press 1967); Lev Regel’son, Tragediia russkoi tserkvi, 1917-1944-(Paris: YMCA Press, 1977), 7. Quoted in Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Conse- quences of Stalinism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971 , p. 71. 8. Bratskii Vestnik, 5/1947, p. 19, 9. Walter Sawatsky, “Baptist Claims About Dramatic Improvement Assessed,” Keston News Service, May 21, 1976, 10. Grigori Skovorda, Sochineniia v doukh tomakh (Moscow: “Mysl’,” 1978), On Skovoroda, see James M. Edie et al. (ed.), Russian Philosophy (Chicago: Quad- rangle Books, 1965), I, 8-62 and James H. Billington, The Icon and the Axe (New i: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), pp. 328-42. Skovoroda was one of the few religious thinkers read and admired by Lenin. 11. Quoted in Miliukov, p. 126. 12. Ibid. ; 13. Ibid., p. 147; cf. John S. Curtiss, Church and