Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2017

ls of this period, one can be again convinced of this. From the life of the local churches: the city of Gorky. ...The grand meeting dedicated to the celebration of the Millennium of the Baptism of Russia took place... A sister recited the poem Russia... Hieromonk [a priest and monk] Makary, representing the Orthodox Church, addressed himself to the audience with a word of greeting... The holiday meeting was ended with the choral singing of Derzhavin’s ode God and with prayers of thanksgiving. 17 Similar reports came from all over the Soviet Union, too many to be ignored. Finding common ground: Slavophile tendencies The specific character of some of the material written by foreign authors and published in Bratsky Vestnik is also significant. The editorial board chiefly selected for publication comments by Western Baptists who, having visited the USSR, praised the Soviet way of life and also spoke of the superiority of the Christian life of Russian Baptists by comparison with Baptists in the English-speaking world. Slavophile tendencies were being reinforced. In 1962, Bratsky Vestnik reported on a visit to the Soviet Union by a delegation of African-American Baptist pastors: In Moscow, the guests visited the Kremlin, Red Square and V.I. Lenin’s Mausoleum. They also admired the great success of our country at the Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy... They were impressed by all that they saw and heard in the Soviet Union: the clean streets, the vast scale of building, free medical service, sincere warm-hearted Christians devoted to God... And they said, ‘Yes, truly the light will come from the East! ’ 18 The correspondent, representing the AUCECB, put the standard praise of socialism in the American pastors’ mouths, but a sense of real conviction is present in his final, Eastern Christian proclamation, ‘Yes, truly the light will come from the East! ’ In the Russian Orthodox tradition, the East (in contrast 16 ‘Patriarkhu Moskovskomu i Vseya Rusi Pimenu’ [To Pimen, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia], BV, no. 4 (1971), pp. 14-15. 17 BV, no. 1 (1989), p. 74. The ode is a famous poem by the Russian (Orthodox) poet, Gavrila Derzhavin, in the eighteenth century. 18 K. Pilipyuk, ‘Prebyvanie v Sovetskom Soyuze Gruppy Negrityanskikh Baptistskikh Pastorov iz Ameriki’ [Visit to the Soviet Union by Black Baptist Pastors’ Group from the USA], BV, nos. 5-6 (1962), pp. 32-4. 28 Journal of European Baptist Studies 17:1 (2017) to the West) was always associated with the Kingdom of God and the Divine Light. 19 And Baptist Bratsky Vestnik stood solidly in that Russian tradition. Similar sentiments were carried in Bratsky Vestnik in the 1970s. In 1972 reflections by Andrew MacRae, who was General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Scotland and who was then President of the European Baptist Federation, were featured. The editorial board of Bratsky Vestnik published an article by MacRae under