Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

duce a larger membership. The AUCECB promised to announce the number of registered churches once the process was completed. !° This never materialized and the Statistics that were given have only relative value. Moscow Baptist officials claimed 3,000 congregations in 1946, 3,500 congregations in 1947, and 4,000 congregations in 1948.20 That would indicate a phenomenal increase 62 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II Detailed statistics have never been shared but the partial information published in Bratskti Vestnik during the first decade suggests that there were probably fewer, rather than more than 350,000 members in 1947.2! The statistical breakdown tends to confirm that without the western border areas which had formerly been outside the Soviet Union the total figure would have been significantly less. F orty-eight percent of the membership was in the Ukraine and three fourths of the believers in the Ukraine came from the Western Ukraine, especially from Volhynia, Rovno, and L’vov provinces. Scattered across the vast regions of the RSFSR from Leningrad in the Northeast to Vladivostok in the Far East were another 21 percent of the membership. More than half of these were located in the central provinces around Moscow. Very likely many more unregistered congrega- tions existed in Siberia and the Far East, since these had been centers of strength before the war and it was to these areas that many believers had been sent to serve their prison sentences and terms of exile. These believers, however, experienced greater difficulties in communicating with the Moscow headquarters. A further 20 percent of the total membership was found in the Baltic republics, White Russia, and Moldavia. The remaining 10 percent was scattered in the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is not possible to obtain a fully accurate statistical picture but it is sufficiently clear that the Soviet evangelical movement was still alive and that its growth rate would probably not peak very quickly. State authorities were watching events with considerable care and by 1949 there were un- mistakable signs that they were worried, As renewed pressure was put on the fledgling congregations and ministers were arrested, many congrega- tions drew back in fear. The State Becomes Worried The Soviet state has never been able to demonstrate its conviction that religion is a thing of the past bound to disappear with the advance of scien- tific progress. Rather, the Soviet state has regularly responded to religious organizations with fear. Therefore, even though the main body of evangel- icals and the Orthodox had convincingly demonstrated their patriotic love for the fatherland, when the growing Cold War threatened Soviet security, renewed restrictions on the churches followed. We have insufficient evidence to permit a detailed analysis of what happened to the AUCECB. By 194