Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

ed that a unified front be presented to the government, Ivan Prokhanov and the alliance-oriented congregation in Petersburg invited fellow evangelicals to meet to work out a joint declaration to the government. This congress, meeting January 15-19, 1906, at Princess Lieven’s house in St. Petersburg, involved the participation A New Evangelical Union 79 of Evangelical Christians, Baptists, and New Molokans. The conference had been fairly amicable until the Baptists vehemently rejected a clause which declared that children had the same confession and church membership as their parents. All compromise amendments failed and the New Molokans who could not regard their children as heathen, as did the Baptists, left the meeting. A foreign observer, greatly disappointed by the results of the meeting, described the participants as sitting in blocs very similar to the left, right, and center groupings in the state Duma.? On the right sat Dei Mazaev at the head of a forty-man Baptist delegation; on the left were five representa- tives from the New Molokans; and in the middle were the Evangelical Christians. Although Ivan Kargel was the chairman, Mazaev very quickly proceeded to dominate the meeting in a style that reminded a foreign ob- server of an Eastern despot. Mazaev announced the Baptist proposals, called for a vote, and all the Baptist representatives shot their hands up into the air, often raising both hands to make a stronger impression.° Swedish missionary Johannes Svensson, who attended this meeting, described Mazaev as follows: He is tall and stately, the head is bald, the graying beard covers both his chest as well as the bottom part of his face. He is a good speaker, adroit and clever, and he is Baptist from head to foot.4 Once the New Molokans had walked out, the character of the conference was no longer that of an Allianzkonferenz, according to Svensson, but purely a Baptist conference, since anyone having a different opinion from Mazaev did not say a word. Svensson went on: You felt you were in Russia, where despotism had placed its stamp on everyone and everything. He who has the power rules and pays no heed to what others feel and think.5 The historian of the Russian Baptists, Paul Steeves, took a more friendly at- titude to Mazaev. He described Mazaev as a skillful administrator who, due to his wealth, appeared better able to avoid imprisonment. He was busy or- ganizing illegal congresses during the decades when Pobedonostsev was ha- rassing the sectarians severely. Steeves also repeated a rumor to the effect that in 1905 Dei Mazaev was elected as a delegate to the new state Duma . (parliament), but the election was stopped by the authorities because “with his mind, Mazaev will also very likely achieve the chair of president of the 80 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il Duma, and then he will become a minister, and we certainly must no