Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

rights movement, participants in both soon came to be called dissidents, and in addition to human rights, people began speaking about “the right to believe’’.58 Generally in Christian theology, the emphasis is not on rights but on duties.5® The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights did in- clude religious freedom. Freedom of belief was one of Roosevelt's Four Freedoms and has been accepted in several international documents which the Soviet Union also signed. When the Russian Samizdat journal, Chronicle of Current Events, began circulating, it regularly included information about religious dissidents, including Baptists. Initially it was only Boris Zdorovets who had developed any personal links with the human rights movement, having be- come acquainted with dissidents in prison.*! More recently a handful of So- viet evangelicals have become involved in the human rights movement, notably Peter Vins, son of Georgi. The most famous Soviet dissident, the physicist Andrei Sakharov, is not a believer, but he has shown himself more non-partisan than many others in taking up the cause of any individual who is experiencing injus- tice. In 1976 the so-called Sakharov Hearings were held in Copenhagen, Denmark. These were organized by Dansk Europamission, and a lot of recent immigrants, including believers, testified. The hearings were published subsequently; further hearings were attempted in other cities. Following the signing of the Helsinki Agreement in August 1975, monitoring committees were established in many countries, including the Soviet Union. The Helsinki Monitoring Committee in the Soviet Union was broken up rather viciously by Soviet authorities and Iurii Orlov and Anatoli Shcharanski received lengthy prison sentences. Regional committees also developed, and young Peter Vins was one of the Baptists who joined the Ukrainian committee. Fellow Baptists criticized him for engaging in what they regarded to be political action, but he persisted until he was arrested Assessment of East European Mission Societies 411 and given a one-year prison sentence under the anti-parasite laws, In spite of the arrests, by December 10, 1979, there were five Helsinki Monitoring Groups in the Soviet Union (Moscow, Ukraine, Lithuania, Armenia, and Georgia). Two allied groups were formed in Moscow, one focused on the use of psychiatry for political purposes and the other was called the Chris- tian Committee to Defend the Rights of Believers. Still other groups were formed to defend the rights of invalids, of Reform Adventists, and of Roman Catholics. A total of 92 persons were active in these groups, of which 89 are in prison or exile. Further arrests continued in 1980,% When Georgi Vins was interviewed following his arrival in America, he confirmed the testimony of many other prisoners when he stated that “all Western support—supplying information, demonstrations, and prayer— helps a great deal ... whenever th