Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

difficult to absorb, hence the heavy campaign against the papacy as described in Dennis Dunn, The Catholic Church and the Soviet Govern- ment 1939-1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977) and Michael Bourdeaux, Land of Crosses (Devon: Augustine Publishing House, Keston Book 12, 1979), Chap. 1. 81. Georg von Rauch, A History of Soviet Russia (5th ed.; New York: Praeger Publishers, 1967), pp. 328-32. 82. BV, 1/45, pp. 15-18; 6/57, pp. 47-51; cf. Fletcher, Nikolai, pp. 45-46 on the role of Metropolitan Nikolai in writing church propaganda for distribution be- hind German lines. 83. BV, 1/45, pp. 17. 84. Brandenburg, p. 130. “What brought you here?” | asked. “What did you read?” They answered: “We don’t know what brought us here. We just felt that something was missing.” “Have you read anything?” “Nothing in particular.” “The Gospels?” | asked. “How could we have done that, since they’re impossible to obtain?” ... “We don’t doubt any of this. It’s all we can believe in, otherwise life would be meaningless.” —Dmitrii Dudko Our Hope, p. 147 2 The Leap Forward: Revival and Church Growth, 1944-1957 At the end of the Napoleonic War in 1815 when a religious revival swept through Russia, a leading Orthodox hierarch tried to explain the phenomenon to a representative of the Russian Bible Society. “We have a proverb,” he said, “that when the thunder rolls, the peasant crosses himself.”! War, with its thunder and lightning, has often led to increased religiosity. That was true after the Second World War, or “The Great Fatherland War,” as it is known in the Soviet Union, which was responsible for extreme social disorientation, Twenty million Russians perished and un- told numbers suffered lesser injuries. Every family was affected by the war in some way. : The war became the scapegoat for all the suffering that had been experienced. It had caused hunger, loss of loved ones, and homelessness. The hated fascists who started the war had also engaged in religious persecution. Bratskii Vestnik, the official evangelical periodical, has never dared describe the brutal treatments its members received from Soviet au- thorities but it has given some details about fascist treatment. Ilia Ivanov, who later became president, claimed that the fascists “completely closed the Evangelical Christian-Baptist churches, beat and tormented the presbyters and preachers, and demanded that they renounce their faith.”2 Revival Begins In most areas, however, churches had been closed for at least twelve 56 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il years—that is, much longer than the duration of the war. The local presbyters had disappeared, many of them forever. But after the war the state showed itself tolerant toward religion, and the search for spiritual faith took on major proportions. Bratskii Vestnik began reporting many and large baptis