Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

press.27 In late July 1954 a major article urging the “expansion of scientific-atheist Propaganda” appeared in Pravda. In August Radio Moscow announced that a new periodical to be named Science and Religion was about to be published. This journal would specialize in the struggle against God, renew- ing the atheistic propaganda campaign of the 1980s. But in November 1954 Nikita Khrushchev personally signed a resolution from the Central Com- mittee of the Communist Party which, though it emphasized a need for an increase in the ideological struggle with religion, condemned administrative Renewal and Church Growth, 1944-1957 65 continued to decrease. Events would show that it had been futile to hope for the release of all Prisoners, but many were released. Many Prisoners who had been arrested to risk reading the Bible to them in the secrecy of the home. Other prisoners, arrested several years later, benefited from Stalin’s 66 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il Germans, including those in the Ukraine. In total, about 650,000 Russian Germans were transported to the east in 1941 and 1942. Because of the rapid advance of the German army, most of the Soviet Germans on the west bank of the Dnieper were still awaiting resettlement when the Germans came. These made the trek to the German Reich with the retreating army in 1943. Many died. Perhaps 100,000 managed to stay in the West: the re- mainder were forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union. Those not shot im- mediately joined their brothers in the prisons and concentration camps of Northern and Eastern Russia and Central Asia, 90 All these Germans were placed under a special command: which re- quired them to report to the local command either weekly or monthly. They received no identity papers and it was therefore impossible to move. After Konrad Adenauer’s visit to the Soviet Union in 1955, a decree affect- ing all German citizens in the special settlements was issued. According to this decree, dated December 13, 1955, the special command administration was dismantled. The Germans now received identity cards and were free to move to places of their choice. They had to sign a promise, however, never to move back to their former places of settlement, nor were they given com- pensation for losses incurred. A fuller rehabilitation did not come till 1964. The Germans, like other members of the camp system, provided in- voluntary labor for the great industrial recovery that followed the war.%2 Many were sent to the forests of Northern Russia and Western Siberia. Others found themselves in the Ural Mountains region and in Kazakhstan working in the mines. Usually they were housed in barracks with extremely limited facilities. Untold numbers fell victim to hunger, disease, and frost. Those who managed to survive would never forget how, in their hopel