Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

reeting from the chairman, V. A. Kuroedov, and remained seated in a prominent place throughout the congress. That failed to intimidate many of the spokesmen. The revised constitution introduced six changes. A significant one was a slight addition to paragraph 8 listing “the preaching of the Gospel’ as the first task of the union. That phrase had been restored in 1966 as task for the congregations; now it was restored at the highest level as well. A more restrictive change was a more specific wording change from “Mennonite” 428 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il to “Mennonite Brethren” with an additional clause that the addition of further denominations to the union would be determined by the AUCECB. E. A. Tarasov explained to me in a private meeting that this reflected the wish of the Mennonite Brethren to eliminate the non-immersionist Men- nonites from possible membership. Another change now required a two- thirds voting majority, which was an attempt to guarantee the election of council members who were widely trusted and to make it more difficult to elect persons more acceptable to the authorities. To offset a possible de- nominational problem, a qualifying clause indicated that the council membership in its makeup must be representative of the denominational makeup. A very major structural change was the introduction of four depart- ments (Evangelism and Christian Unity, Preparation and Qualification of Church Workers and Musicians, International Department, and Publica- tion, Finance, and Management). These departments were to be subor- dinate to the presidium with the head of each department required to be a member of the AUCECB Council. Not only did that mean the creation of a new department for Evangelism and Christian Unity, which was a bold step, it also meant new leadership for the international department, al- though few were optimistic this would change the power relationship very much. But delegates hoped that an additional clause in paragraph 13, requiring that all office employees sign a working contract, might eliminate some of the younger staff on the international department that came under such severe criticism from delegates. Others hoped these changes would lead to the introduction of job descriptions, including those for the general secretary. Two other major changes were directed toward strengthening the role of the senior presbyter and the presbyter locally. New carefully specified procedures for their election were intended to provide built-in guarantees against some of the abuses Andrei Klimenko had complained of as late as 1978. There were cases where church members had excommunicated the presbyter in his absence, or had collected signatures on behalf of his ouster. A year earlier Klimenko criticized the arbitrary and careless behavior of some senior presbyters. In Dnepropetrovsk, for example, the membership . in the presbyter coun