Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

8 there were increasing complaints in Bratskii Vestnik about violations of the August Agreement by Pentecostals, Zhidkov and Karev issued several instructions intended to suppress the Renewal and Church Growth, 1944-1957 63 emotional aspects of Pentecostalism. Whether this reflected purely Baptist distaste of Pentecostal emotionalism, as seems plausible, or whether the Possibly to increased restrictions on church activity. These restrictions may have been reflected in the new church statute, Only two issues of (Bratskii Vestnik) appeared in 1949. The last issue was almost entirely devoted to articles dealing with the subject of Easter— Persons got only eight or ten years, One story illustrates the procedures. ‘Heinrich Wiens and Dietrich Klassen had both been prisoners of war, Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il 64 Klassen having been sent to America. After the war, the Americans, using deception and force, turned them over to the Russians. Upon their return to the Soviet Union, Wiens and Klassen were sent to Kirgizia in Central Asia for forced labor in a uranium mine. Soon they and several others began meeting for fellowship and eventually an evangelical church was formed. Wiens and Klassen were among seven men arrested in 1951 and charged as spies. They were accused of having received training in America in order to organize a fifth-column movement in the Soviet Union by means of reli- gion. Heinrich Wiens received the death sentence and was executed a year later. Although seven of the leadership were in prison, the small congrega- tion continued to meet, Finally it decided to submit a list of its members to the authorities in Moscow with the request to have the congregation registered. In response, nine of the laymen were arrested in April 1952. They were charged under Article 58 and sentenced to 25 years in prison with five years’ exile,26 The severity of this treatment had the desired effect. Leaderless con- gregations drew back in terror and ceased meeting. The revival movement had been stopped. A Second Revival—The Mid-Fifties A second revival in the mid-fifties had a greater impact on the central and eastern regions of the Soviet Union than on the western border areas where churches grew so rapidly after the war. This movement was also grass roots in character but perhaps more directly affected by preachers recently released from prison. The Russian Germans were to play a major part in it, On March 5, 1953, Joseph Stalin died. With him died the Stalinist ter- rors. Some people dared to hope that a better world, a freer world was dawning. Some hoped that in honor of his death an amnesty for prisoners would be declared. From 1958 to 1956 the struggle for Stalin’s succession also affected the religious situation. A violent assault on religion was begun in the