Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

rs were absorbed into the union.”> Karev and Andreev undertook a visit to Transcarpathia in the southwestern Ukraine. When they set out on their trip they had not one single address of believers in the oblast. Gradually they found various churches belonging either to the Hungarian- and Ruthenian-speaking Baptists or to another group not quite as large called Free Christians. After visiting a large number of congregations, they held a conference of Free Christians on February 22, 1946, followed by a conference of Baptists on February 28 and finally a joint conference on February 24. The Free Christians represented by 48 ministers agreed to unite with the AUCECB and promised “to conduct baptism of believers in all their con- gregations as well as communion . . .” and to register their congregations in accordance with existing Soviet law.7* Thirty-six preachers representing Transcarpathian Baptists agreed to unite with the AUCECB and with the Free Christians and to register their congregations according to the require- ments of Soviet law. ; At the joint conference a senior presbyter for the oblast was elected, as well .as two assistants. The senior presbyter was a Baptist, his assistant represented the Free Christians, and the second assistant represented the Ruthenian-speaking Baptists.”’ On their return Karev and Andreev could report that 81 churches representing about 2,200 members had been added to the union. Free Christians needed more coaxing on a second visit two years later but generally speaking they were absorbed into the union.” No separate recognition was made of the Polish Church of Christ, 71 of whose 85 congregations found themselves in Soviet territory after the war. These were absorbed automatically into the AUCECB in 1944.7 As late as the 1920s the German Baptists based in South Russia and Volhynia had played an influential role and felt themselves distinct from the Russian and Ukrainian Baptists because their church life was more orderly, 8° German Baptists had disappeared from the Ukraine, as well as from Volhynia, and were treated as non-persons till 1956 when the Germans fi- nally received identity papers. German Baptists then joined existing Russian churches and any separate influence they were to exert on the AUCECB came in concert with the Mennonites in the 1960s. 98 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II Had Unity Been Achieved? A year after the Moscow unity conference the little connective word “and” was dropped from the title so that the name of the union was the All- Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists to be abbreviated as AUCECB.8! What had been achieved? Had unity finally taken place? A longtime Evangelical Christian leader, I. I. Motorin, noted that some might feel “that the unity accomplished meant the loss of inner spiritual freedom for the churches.”’®? Motorin vigorously denied this, feeling that the churches had not bee