Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

lery Kostar In Novala-Sinchirala (Moidavia) attempting to break up a baptismal service. (Photo courtesy of Friedensstimme) BOTTOM: CCECB member Peter Rumachik. By 1979 he had served 11% years in prison, labor camps, and exile. 458 TOP: KGB agent Valerii Baraban attempting to break up baptismal service in Novaia-Sinchiraia, Moldavia. (Both photos courtesy of Friedensstimme) BOTTOM: Reform Baptist baptismal service in Novaia-Sinchiraia, Moldavia, continues despite police attempts to stop it. (Summer 1979) 459 Ivan Osalskii and Andrei Buratchuk lead a Reform Baptist congregation in Moldavia that is forced to meet outside. (Photos on both pages courtesy of Friedensstimme) 460 TOP: Increasing numbers of Reform Baptist congregations in Moldavia are forced to meet outside. BOTTOM: Communion under the trees in Moldavia in the summer of 1979. 467 TOP: Vasili Kosovan’s family living in Novala-Sinchirala, Moldavia. (Both photos courtesy of Friedensstimme) BOTTOM: Vasili Kosovan with a trunkful of paper he was transporting for the secret printing press, Khristianin. (April 1979) 462 TOP: CCECB member Ivan Antonov with his family before his imprisonment in June 1979. BOTTOM: A trunktul of paper that Philip Borinskii was transporting for the secret printing press, Khristianin. He was arrested April 9, 1979, and sentenced to three years in prison. (Photo courtesy of Friedensstimme) 463 The Evangelical in Soviet Society 465 born in 1944, was never formally approved by the local churches. The new leadership managed to direct church activities without calling a congress of delegates until a major split forced them to nearly 20 years later. By then the leaders had learned an authoritarian leadership style that is still proving difficult to unlearn. The new union was supposed to fuse distinct denomi- : nations into one so that the new evangelical simply identified himself as Evangelical Christian Baptist or ECB. But the resultant structural rigidity is regularly challenged, When church life became possible again after the war, a religious re- vival swept through the Soviet Union with a force that has not yet been forgotten. Usually there was no visible leadership for the revival and cer- tainly no centralized coordination of it. The requirement for registration placed restraints on this growth, and outright state harassment resulted in waves of revival alternated by waves of repression. In this context Soviet Gu a eee { evangelicals first learned their unique techniques for church growth. The week of prayer in the new year became an opportunity for daily evangelistic 7 meetings. Visiting preachers were forbidden by law, and as a result they developed the “greeting” as a new form of proclamation. Financial collec- : tions at such services sometimes were used to pay for the evangelist’ s services indirectly—by paying fines to the