Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

ight destroy the decency and decorum of the service. In addition, Pentecostals were asked not to practice foot washing at the communion service and to conduct educational work among its membership to produce 94 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II a common understanding with the Evangelical Christians and Baptists on this question, In short, the conditions for joining the union were to abandon all practices that would distinguish them as Pentecostals. For the Pentecostals, however, there were also some gains. Above all, this paved the way for legal recognition and soon large numbers of their churches were registered locally. It also meant that the rivalry among the evangelicals would be considerably reduced. As with the earlier union, the authority of the union was not based on a decision by the membership but simply the promises of a few spokesmen who now had to try to persuade their followers to join with Evangelical Christians and Baptists locally, Dimitrii Ivanovich Ponomarchuk became the Pentecostal representative coopted onto the All-Union Council. Pono- marchuk, born in 1892, was well suited for this role since he had served as a Baptist preacher before joining the Pentecostals in 1925, advancing rapidly in two years to membership on the All-Ukrainian Council of the union. Besides becoming an AUCECB member, he was immediately appointed assistant senior presbyter for the Ukraine under Andreev, although for a while retaining his local church responsibilities in Dneprodzerzhinsk.® Another leading representative was I. K. Pan’ko, who was soon appointed assistant senior presbyter for Belorussia under the experienced Evangelical Christian V. N. Chechnev. S. I. Vashkevich had earlier been a leading figure in the Polish Pentecostal Union and it became his task to bring Polish Pentecostals now in the Soviet Union into the AUCECB. Vashkevich was appointed senior presbyter for Pinskaia Oblast in Belorussia. Both Pan’ko and Vashkevich had been trained in the Danzig Bible Institute before the war. The fourth person in the delegation, A. I. Bidash, soon became dissatis- fied with the union agreement and is to the present day a leader of a large, independent, unregistered Pentecostal movement.® It has been estimated that about 25,000 Pentecostals joined the AUCECB in 1945. This included more than 400 congregations. At the end of 1947 Alexander Karev claimed that most of the Pentecostals in the Ukraine plus all Pentecostals in Belorussia had joined. The disregard of Pentecostal sensitivities in the August Agreement and the treatment of Pentecostals locally soon prompted a significant portion to leave the union again. I. K. Pan’ko was arrested in 1948 and charged with having helped several young preachers to obtain military exemption during World War II, Soviet authorities claiming these men were charlatans. He received a 25-year sentence for treason which was halved