Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

ary statements like Zhidkov’s have succeeded in creating the impression that Soviet evangelicals are not pacifists, Actually in the early 1920s more than 50 percent of the evangelicals were pacifists. 116 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il Zhidkov claimed that the influence of the Tolstoyans on some indi- viduals in Evangelical and Baptist ranks had prompted them to protest against the imperialist war and in a few cases against military service in general. The influence and its impact was much broader. In South Russia and the Caucasus one could point to the influence of Mennonites and Molokans who rejected military service. The war-weariness after World War I and the Civil War also accounted for the rise of pacifism, but it is also possible that pacifist convictions developed among evangelicals simply through the influence of the Bible. In any case, by 1920 pacifism appeared to be the dominant position in the Baptist and Evangelical Christian unions.“° During the war, 837 persons had refused to accept military service; 870 of them were Evangelical Christians and Baptists.4! At the union congress held in 1920, they passed the following statement: Considering ... the participation of Evangelical Christians and Baptists in the shedding of human blood under every state system as a crime against conscience and the exact teaching and spirit of the Holy Scrip- tures, and likewise recognizing for Evangelical Christians and Baptists as impossible both the bearing of arms, the making of such for military pur- poses in all forms, and also the study of military affairs which would be equivalent to direct participation in the shedding of blood, ... to consider it to be our sacred obligation openly to refuse military service in all its forms. In 1919 the Soviet government issued a decree permitting exemption from military service for conscience reasons. It is estimated that more than 40,000 pacifists made use of this exemption.‘ Jacob Zhidkov, for example, was one of those serving on the review board and advising Evangelical Christian conscientious objectors of their rights.44 As the Soviet state became more sure of its power, it began to exert every pressure on the sectarians (includ- ing the evangelicals) to renounce pacifism. Denunciation of pacifism be- came the litmus test of loyalty to the Soviet state. Prokhanov, leader of the Evangelical Christians, published an appeal in 1922 calling upon Christians in the entire world to take concrete steps so that every Christian would refuse all involvement in war. In 1923 he was imprisoned and finally allowed to meet with one of his associates, A. L. Andreev, in the Moscow interrogation prison. Andreev, who was personally not a convinced pacifist, informed him that the other Evangelical Christian leaders had discussed the matter and agreed in principle to recognize the Soviet government and to accept military service in it. Prokhanov