Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

tion of a World Peace Council in 1949, an organization controlled and sponsored by the Soviet government. It held several well-publicized conferences in Paris, Prague, Warsaw, Stockholm, and Vienna. The “AUCECB sent delegates to these conferences, as well as to a conference called by Patriarch Alexei in Zagorsk. On radio in October 1953 President Zhidkov also addressed Baptists in the whole world. In this radio speech he stated that: We know that there are Baptists, especially in the U.S.A. and England, who support the militarists and approve their aggressive actions. We, Baptists in the Soviet Union, consider that these Baptists discredit Chris- tianity and are unworthy of the Baptist name. The Baptists must be com- pletely committed to the great ideals of Christianity: The ideals of human brotherhood and peace among nations.”7 Also in 1953, Walter O. Lewis of the Baptist World Alliance had written a letter of reply in response to a packet of declarations and speeches from several conferences sent him by the AUCECB. Lewis had stated in his letter that the impression he had received in reading the Zagorsk papers was that the Soviet government was behind the conference. In his published reply Karev asked: Preaching and Peace 123 Why do you think that those in our country believing in God who truly crave peace would not be able to take a personal initiative in such a sacred matter and that for such a holy Christian task—to conduct a conference of Christian churches and representatives of other religions in defence of peace—it must have our government behind it??8 Karev argued further that the speeches the Baptists had given at the conferences had not required permission from the government. Lewis had also criticized the absence of any criticism of Soviet peace policy in the Baptist statements. To this, Karev replied that: Our government truly strives for peace and does everything possible to conserve and consolidate peace in the whole world. Why is it necessary to criticize our government, if its actions fully correspond to the most fervent desires of all our people???‘ The AUCECB public statements on behalf of the peace offensive were uncritically pro-Soviet but at least have the merit of being less vitriolic than those of Metropolitan Nikolai of the Orthodox Church. Nikolai had referred to the U.S.A. as: . the trans-Atlantic octopus [which] is trying to fasten its greedy tentacles around the whole globe.... The trans-Atlantic sirens sing of “liberties.” But only a man with a black conscience and a clouded in- tellect can say that liberty exists in a country where people are lynched, where children are kidnapped, where tear gas bombs are thrown at workers . . . liberty to rob, coerce, and slaughter—such is their liberty!89 All Soviet believers shared a fervent desire for peace. It is probably fair to assume, given their lack of access to information about the Soviet Union’s own stag