The sect called ‘Christians of the Evangelical Faith’, better known by the name ‘Pentecostalists’, was considered officially forbidden in the USSR until 1963.
The ban on the sect’s activities was lifted in that year. Today the Pentecostalists are formally amalgamated with the Baptists [1].
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SIBERIA AND THE FAR EAST
Communities of Pentecostalists are found in several towns and cities in Siberia and the Far East (Kansk, Chernogorsk, Barnaul, Nakhodka and others), and also in Crimea and the North Caucasus.
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Since spring 1973 many members of the communities in the cities of Nakhodka and Chernogorsk [2] have been trying to obtain permission to leave the USSR.
It may be presumed that their reason for wishing to leave the country is not only the constant persecution of the authorities but also their conviction that on the Day of Judgment all genuine believers should be near the Tomb of the Lord.
The authorities have refused until now to consider the Pentecostalists’ application to leave, on the grounds that they have no invitations from relatives or the governments of the countries to which they wish to go. Thus, the head of the passport office in Nakhodka, Major Morozkin, declared:
“Present us with an invitation from your relatives and then we will draw up your exit papers.”
Morozkin also said that he had instructions from the authorities not to give a written answer to the visa application.
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On 5 February 1974, 20 members of the sect from Nakhodka and Chernogorsk appealed to the UN and the UN Committee on Human Rights to help them to leave for Israel or Australia: many members of their sect live in Australia [3].
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BRESENDEN & PRESBYTER VASHCHENKO
On 18 February a Pentecostalist, Yevgeny Bresenden, was received by Colonel Danilov, an official of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). Danilov confirmed that the visa office could not draw up exit documents for them as they had neither official nor private invitations.
Colonel Danilov did not object to Bresenden’s intention of writing a letter to the UN Committee on Human Rights, asking it to help them come to an agreement with the government of Israel or another country. Colonel Danilov assured Bresenden that such a letter would reach the addressee.
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A statement dated 25 February 1974, written on behalf of 80 Pentecostalists by Bresenden and Senior Presbyter Grigory Vashchenko and addressed to the UN Committee on Human Rights, says, in particular:
“Our ministers have been freed from imprisonment and the official ban on the activities of our sect has been lifted, but an unofficial ban has still remained in force.
“We are forbidden as before to hold peaceful prayer meetings, and we are fined and threatened with imprisonment, while representatives of the Council on Religious Affairs (USSR Council of Ministers) — Comrade Shlandakov in Nakhodka (Primorsky Region), and the official representatives in Chernogorsk (Krasnoyarsk Region) — know all about it.”
According to the authors of the statement, the deputy head of the Soviet executive committee in the city of Nakhodka (Far East) called those who wished to leave the USSR traitors and betrayers of the Motherland. He threatened to put them on trial and deprive them of their parental rights.
“When we started to say that… the Soviet government had ratified the Covenants on Human Rights, the Procurator of Nakhodka, Bokhan, said in this regard:
‘We spit on international laws … Our instructions come from the ministry and we follow them.’
“The fact that we are unable to obtain permission to emigrate because of our religious convictions proves that Bokhan, the Procurator of Nakhodka, is right.”
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On 5 May Vashchenko and Bresenden appealed to Christians throughout the world on behalf of the Pentecostalists of the USSR.
Their appeal calls on foreign Christians of all orientations to petition their governments to agree to admit the Pentecostalists for residence in their countries. The reason for their emigration, says the appeal, is “religious intolerance in the USSR”. The authors believe that all Christian services were forbidden in the USSR from 1938 to 1945 and all churches closed [4].
Of the present situation of Christians of the Evangelical Faith it says:
“Ministers do not have the right to visit their flocks and to meet together to resolve religious questions. If this is done, it is done underground, at great risk, and not infrequently ends in arrest.
“For example, in Chernogorsk alone in recent years about thirty men and women have been convicted for their religious beliefs and sentenced to various terms (from three to ten years) of imprisonment, camps and exile …
“We do not have, in our country, the rights and opportunities to be true believers, to educate our children in religious belief, and to preach the Gospel to others. We have no religious literature, as during recent years it has been confiscated from us almost everywhere: Bibles, Gospels and hymn books.”
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On 7 May 1974, 188 Pentecostalists sent an Open Letter to the US President. “Since 16 April 1973″, it said:
“right up to the present time we have been applying to emigrate without any results. Every official says in reply that he cannot give us permission to leave as we have no invitation from relatives or from a government.
“We have no relatives abroad and so we are appealing directly to you, Mr President, to accept our families for permanent residence in your country.”
The same day, 7 May, G. L. Vashchenko and Ye. A. Bresenden met foreign newspaper correspondents and answered their questions [5].
Vashchenko and Bresenden talked about the intervention of the authorities in the affairs of their community and about the threats and persecution to which believers were subjected. For example, a KGB captain in Chernogorsk, Ikonnikov, and the supervisory procurator in Krasnoyarsk had said to them:
“There will soon be none of you left.
“We will grind you to dust or deport you to the Far North to join the polar bears. They’re building camps for you up there, and they’ll test the atom bomb on you.”
Fines of 30 to 50 roubles were being imposed on those who took part in the holding of services, and the leaders of the communities were often arrested.
Pentecostalist believers had practically no chance to receive higher education.
Deputy chief Bogdanovich of corrective-labour colony ITK-27 in the Primorsky Region (Krai) said to Yevgeny Bresenden:
“A foreman or an engineer is primarily an educator. Educators with religious convictions, educators who are Pentecostalists, are of no use to us.”
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Vashchenko and Bresenden refuted the charge that the rites of their sect were harmful to health.
They reported three charges that were made in accusing the Pentecostalists of fanaticism:
1. Their prayer houses were cramped, dark and stuffy. Their reply: they were not allowed to rent or build prayer houses of the appropriate size.
2. In the opinion of the accusers, the Pentecostalist custom of kissing each other as a form of greeting was harmful to health. This notion was encountered even in court indictments.
3. According to the assertions of physicians, the rites of the sect overtaxed the human psyche, their prayers led to neuroses, and their religious experiences caused hypertension.
Regarding these points, Bresenden and Vashchenko declared:
“The physicians whose medical conclusions serve as grounds for suppressing our communities and for imprisoning us are either carrying out orders or, because of their materialism, are convinced in advance that all sincere belief in God is a psychic illness.
“Instead of physicians who are militant atheists carrying out the instructions of State agencies, let them send us a commission from the International Red Cross.
“Then the whole world will learn what is overtaxing our health: our prayer meetings or the incessant, exhausting persecution, and years of imprisonment in camps and prisons with their cruel and inhuman regime.”
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NOTES
- These two sentences are not fully accurate.
In fact, provided that Pentecostalist communities have been ready to affiliate to the official All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians (i.e., Pentecostalists) & Baptists, formed in 1944, they have been allowed to register with local authorities both before and after 1963, and thus become legal. But many have not been prepared to do this.
After 1963 the Chernogorsk community was allowed for a time to function legally without affiliation, but this was a special case: see documents and article by Michael Rowe in Religion in Communist Lands, Keston College (Nos 1-3, 1975).
↩︎ - Nakhodka, a port in the Primorsky Region (Soviet Far East) had a population of 121,000 in 1974.
Chernogorsk in central Siberia (Republic of Khakasiya) had a population of 64,000 in 1973.
↩︎ - See the full texts of this appeal, and of the two further appeals summarized below, in CHR 1974 (No. 10). See also the Vashchenko documents in No. 15.
↩︎ - An error, presumably caused by mistyping or faulty knowledge.
In fact, the period of greatest persecution for Soviet Christians was between 1929 and 1941, by which date most churches had been forcibly closed. On Hitler’s invasion of the USSR Stalin sharply reversed this policy.
↩︎ - None appear to have reported on this, but later Bresenden gave another interview to Peter Osnos, whose report appeared in the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune, 23 April 1975.
In autumn 1975 Yevgeny Bresenden was allowed to emigrate.
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