Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

. It is limited in a literal sense in that printed music is : ea - scarce as are Bibles. Usually the leader of the service lines out : e tex 0 each verse before the rest of the congregation, lacking unre s, are in the singing. Many members, however, know great numbers o are dias memory. One of the functions of the choir is to teach new songs to the co Sais hymnals were produced for the early Russian ac movement. One hymnal, Gusli, attained wide popularity as it —~ with each edition until it was finally included in a larger . pen : Spiritual Songs containing more than 1,200 songs. eLaerneae a ‘ been composed by Prokhanov and the remainder were cule German and English gospel songs. As a result, Soviet evangelical ae i became a mixture of the typical songs produced by Senet ate 2 s and songs having a distinctly Slavic character. By 1947, President Zhi “i acknowledged that all the published collections of hymns sek seat : was necessary to issue a new hymnal. They hoped to provi oS gregation with several copies of this new hymnal and ee — ae ing the printing in 1948, provided the problem of the paper shor rae : resolved. Permission to publish the hymnal finally came in ae ioe é : following year the Sbornik Dukhoonykh Pesni (Collection : ‘in = Songs) first appeared, This is ae pareuns onion hymnal, althoug ations have no more than a few copies. tia rer did not remain the only composer. The AUCECB ath claim to a number of composers such as Sheve, Kazakov, and Mote i from the inter-war period, as well as others such as N. 1. Vysotskii, ° a : sisty, Kazimirski, I. M. Skirdy, S. I. Voevody, and V. M. Kreiman. a Alexandrovich Kazakov (1899-1973), Prokhanov’s brother-in-law, provi words and music for 65 hymns printed between 1924 and 1928. "2 1950s and 1960s he was again active in Leningrad, providing music for the Preaching and Peace 111 more demanding choirs that were developing. His Christmas oratorio was performed for the first time in 1969. He had also written a cantata based on Psalm 41,18 Another influential musician was Nikolai Ivanovich Vysotskii, who was deliberately transferred from region to region in order to foster music. From 1951 to 1953 he led the choir in the large Kiev church and used it as a labo- ratory to try out the hymns of the new composers emerging among the Baptist brotherhood. By reporting on this activity in Bratskii Vestnik, he sought to stimulate the work of other composers. His article contained a request to all composers to produce melodies in the national church spirit with the national motifs and to send them to the AUCECB.!9 Many songs, including many written by Christians in prison, circulate in manuscript form only.2° More recently, the Moscow choir, under the able direction of Leonid Tkachenko, has become well known. Tkachenko has played a significant role by teaching choral conducting to other choir leaders in the Union and has also made known the compositions of the