Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

n deprived of spiritual freedom. He stressed that “without spiritual freedom true unity is impossible.’”’8? Local presbyters were constantly admonished from Moscow to strive to realize the unity that had been proclaimed. Clearly a modus vivendi had been achieved with the government, but quite clearly, too, the state was playing a very dominant role. Registrations of churches were undertaken in large numbers. These churches had to agree to the excessive restrictions of the 1929 law on cults. Fortunately for many, the content of the law was not generally known; the authorities, in fact, deliberately withheld the details so they were not fully conscious of what they might have promised. Initially there was a wide-scale positive response to the AUCECB. Here was the possibility to obtain legal recognition. Any such possibility following the long years of closed churches seemed welcome. The sermons of the leaders such as Karev, Orlov, and Zhidkov produced trust because of their spiritual content and tone. Leading Baptists were less active, except for Levindanto, who came to be appreciated in the Baltic. Additional men of authority such as I, I. Motorin and M. D. Timoshenko wrote articles for Bratskii Vestnik, even if the state appeared not to permit them any major post. It was in maintaining unity over a longer period that the flaws in the agreement became evident. At a major extended session of the council in October 1948 a new statute for the AUCECB was approved.* This had 44 clauses and elaborated the structural organization of the union, specifying the duties of senior presbyter, presbyter, and so forth. Copies were sent out to the churches, but a complete version of the statute was never made public. Zhidkov in his cover letter explaining the new statute stated that the congregations had full liberty and he wished to exercise no coercion. But then he went on to state in unmistakably coercive terms that those who did not accept this new statute approved by the union had no right to remain as Evangelical Christians-Baptists.® A New Evangelical Union 99 The wave of success was ebbing by 1949. There had been many church registrations, many baptisms—almost too many—so that Zhidkov urged that the candidates be given a longer proving period,8* and the tone of Bratskii Vestnik was surprisingly open and optimistic. Yet by 1949 many Pentecostals had left the union and the union itself appeared to be in diffi- culty with the state. From 1949 to 1952 no issues of the journal appeared, When it reappeared no explanation was given for the gap. All that was evident was that now peace seemed officially to be the major concern of the union. - Notes to Chapter 3 1. Kahle rightly remarks that these confessions of faith should be seen in the context of the need for more precision in dealings with the legislators, p. 47. 2. Though variously interpreted, spokesmen from numerous sides later regarded this me