Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

so appointed the first three pleni- potentiaries, naming A. L. Andreev as plenipotentiary for the Ukraine, V. N. Chechnev for Belorussia, and N. I. Kornaukhov for the Northern Cau- casus.45 All three were Evangelical Christians. Two remaining council members of Baptist origin were appointed senior presbyters during the following year. F. G. Patkovskii, initially assigned to his home territory, Si- beria, later became Andreev’s assistant in the Ukraine and then briefly re- placed the deceased Malin as treasurer in 1948 before his own death a few months later.#6 Nikolai Levindanto had liked what he saw in the Baltic on an earlier visit and asked to be assigned as plenipotentiary for this region when the Baltic unions joined the following year.*” A New Evangelical Union 91 Reactions to the Union Reactions to the union are hard to assess. How many joined initially is unclear but apparently people rejoiced wherever the news spread either through letters from: the Moscow headquarters or through visits by the leaders. Communication was difficult, but by the beginning of 1946 the All- Union Council claimed 50 plenipotentiaries and senior presbyters and about 2,000 presbyters.4® By the beginning of 1947 President Zhidkov claimed there were more than 3,000 congregations. ® It is doubtful that all local congregations were equally conscious of joining the All-Union Council. In some areas local congregations of Evan- gelical Christians and of Baptists had approved a formal union earlier. In Belorussia, Baptists, Evangelical Christians, and Pentecostals were officially united on September 4, 1942, and received official approval from the German occupation government.®° Baptist participant and later historian Waldemar Gutsche saw rather striking parallels between Nazi and Soviet religious policy. The Nazi policy included fostering a union of all denomi- nations practicing believer’s baptism, holding the leadership responsible for all the churches, and forcing Pentecostals to surrender such practices as choral prayer and speaking in tongues (glossalalia). These were also the policies of the Soviet authorities. Major church bodies in the newly annexed areas were persuaded to join the union because this was the only realistic way that they could hope to continue to exist in an unfriendly state. But for the remnants of the 4,000 congregations claimed by the Baptists in 1928 and a nearly equivalent number of Evangelical Christian congregations, the union meant above all that registered churches would become possible again. By and large these church members no longer cared about the label; they simply sought places where the Word of God was being preached. The All-Union leadership made heavy use of the few congratulatory letters that had arrived from abroad. Here the communication problem was even more difficult. A brief telegram from Moscow dated January 2, 1945, was received by Baptist World Alliance president Dr. J