Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

in the amnesty program following Stalin’s death. His associate, Vashkevich, managed to A New Evangelical Union 95 emigrate to Poland in 1947, where he is still a leading figure in the United Evangelical Church of Poland. That meant that by 1948 only Ponomarchuk of the four still worked for the AUCECB. Obviously his influence did not suffice because in October 1948 a letter approved at an expanded meeting of the council was sent to local churches, urging them to eliminate from their church services all noisy manifestations such as choral prayer. Another instruction from Zhidkov advised the local ‘presbyter to maintain personal control of the entire worship service including assigning who would pray in order to stop noise and disorder. Shortly before this a brief’six-line announcement appeared in Bratskii Vestnik stating that on April 2, 1947, an agreement was signed with representatives of another group of Pentecostals who called themselves Evangelical Christians in the Spirit of the Apostles. N. P. Smorodin, the leader of this group, together with N. I. Shishkov and E. M. Prudnikov, signed the agreement. This agreement had four points. First of all, the three representatives accepted the August Agreement in full and promised to abide by it. But the second and longest point clarified the issue on which the Evangelical Chris- tians in the Spirit of the Apostles (or Smorodintsy) were unique, namely in their rejection of the Trinity in favor of “Jesus only.” Point 2 of the agreement affirmed that to baptize in the name of “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” or to baptize “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” were validly based in Scripture and had equal force. But in future the Smorodintsy promised to use the AUCECB formula: “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” The other two points involved promises not to engage in any activity that would reflect negatively on the teaching and order of the AUCECB but rather to be fully subordinate to it. Smorodin and many of his followers left the union a short time later, Perhaps that explains why the details of the agreement were not published in 1976. It is doubtful that this brief unification was voluntary in the first place, The Union Expands: Baltic Evangelicals From the AUCECB point of view, the incorporation of Baltic evangel- icals was a much more desirable achievement of the August 1945 meeting. Doctrinally, they were in fundamental agreement and the Baltic evangel- icals were able to enrich the AUCECB because a large number of their leaders had obtained high-quality theological education before the war. The first believer's baptism in the Baltic took place in 1860. In Latvia 96 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il the Baptists developed a strong organization with their own publications, seminary, and charitable enterprises. As small countries, both Latvia and Estonia had little chance of survival in the competition b