LITHUANIA
In 1967 the publishing house Mintis (‘Thought’) issued a pamphlet, “Dying, They Fought”, edited by Vytautas Denas and published in Vilnius. One of its short articles contained a description of how the priest Vincentas Gelgota killed a man.
In May 1968 Gelgota wrote a letter to Denas in which he demanded a public refutation of this article. In his reply Denas asked Gelgota to forgive him for his error, which had been caused by false information, and told him that he would try to get this fact published. He enclosed in the letter the text of his refutation. However, neither the official republican-level Lithuanian newspapers nor the local town papers of Kapsukas [Marijampole] [1] and Sakiai published the refutation sent to them by Denas.
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On 15 September 1975 the education department of the Mazeikiai Town Soviet Executive Committee demanded that the married teachers Antas Skiparis (27 years’ teaching experience) and Marija Skipariene (25 years’ teaching experience) should resign ‘at their own request’, because their son had entered the priests’ seminary that year. They were forced to submit.
In August 1975 music teacher Bukauskaite was married in church in the town of Silute. The next day she was dismissed from her job.
In 1975 the Kaltinenai Town Soviet Executive Committee fined an invalid, Miss Vismaniaite, 20 roubles for having prepared five children for their First Communion.
On Roman Catholic feast days taxi drivers in Kaunas are forbidden to drive people to the town of Raseinai. On 9 September 1975, the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, one of the taxi drivers was deprived of his permit by the motor inspectors’ office for violating this ban.
In June 1975 the Vilnius KGB returned to Father A. Keina some articles which they had confiscated from him during a search. Of 50 prayer books confiscated from him, only one was returned.
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Dnepropetrovsk (UKRAINE). On 7 September 1975 the police carried out a raid on Baptist believers.
During a service in the home of a church member (I. A. Petrenko), seven men — some in police uniforms, some in civilian clothes — walked in among the praying people, insulted them and threatened them with violence, moreover at the hands of criminals. (“We’ll let a gang loose on you,” said local policeman M. P. Reshetnik.)
The believers sent a declaration concerning this incident to international and Soviet authorities.
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RUSSIA
VOLGOGRAD. Religious believers report, in declarations addressed to L. I. Brezhnev, that the local authorities are persecuting them.
On 31 August 1975 the police arrested N. N. Lyubarsky at his home, without any reason, and imprisoned him for 15 days in detention cells ‘for not obeying the police’. While he was under arrest, an administrative commission fined him 50 roubles in his absence, for ‘illegally carrying out a cult ritual’ (a religious service).
On 28 September a detachment of police and their assistants in civilian clothes turned up at a harvest thanksgiving service. Police first lieutenant V. A. Tsekhmistrov, who was in charge of the operation, ordered the believers to leave their ‘illegal prayer meeting’, and then cut off the electricity.
The 85-year-old pensioner V. N. Kharitoshin has been fined repeatedly because Baptist meetings take place in his house. In the autumn of 1975 he was fined 100 roubles (Kharitoshin’s pension is 28 roubles a month).
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ELEKTROSTAL (Moscow Region). On 18 October 1975 the following telegram was sent from here:
- “Finland, Helsinki. To [President] Urho Kekkonen.
- Copies to L. I. Brezhnev and A. D. Sakharov
“Respected Urho Kekkonen,
“We Evangelical-Baptist believers of Moscow and the surrounding districts appeal to you, as the Chairman of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, because our government responds to all our petitions asking to hold religious services freely by increasing repression, thus crudely violating the documents signed at Helsinki.
“Today, when we were celebrating the feast of Harvest Thanksgiving, representatives of the authorities came to the place where the congregation had gathered, at 16/15 Dachnaya Street in the town of Elektrostal, used physical violence, and took everyone to the police station, threatening them with fines and imprisonment. For 14 years we have been regularly deprived in this way of our right to confess our faith. We ask you to direct our government to observe Article 7 of the Declaration signed at Helsinki.
“Elektrostal, Moscow Region, 16/15 Dachnaya Street
“G. Z. Rudnichenko.“
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MOSCOW. On 22 June the administrative commission of Babushkino district in Moscow warned A. A. Vlasov, a member of a Christian-Pentecostal congregation: “If we catch you again at one of your religious get-togethers, we’ll put you on trial.”
This year A. A. Trushin, the Moscow Region commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs, has three times summoned Christian Pentecostal preachers to his office for discussions: on 24 October KGB officials A, D. Shilkin and S. P. Shalev took part in such ‘discussions’ at Trushin’s office. They demanded that the congregation should register, threatening it with trials if it refused. The congregation regards the conditions of registration as incompatible with the demands of the Christian religion.
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MOSCOW REGION. The priest Dmitry Dudko (CCE 32.20), who was working in the village of Kabanovo, Moscow Region, has once again been left without a parish.
At the end of December the elder of the church, without the agreement of the ‘Twenty’ [the Parochial Church Council], cancelled his employment contract, explaining to the parishioners that such was the decision of the district Soviet executive committee. On 28 December Father Dmitry came to the church to attend a service (his place had already been taken by another priest). The parishioners do not want to part with their pastor and a spontaneous meeting took place near the church; over 300 people signed a petition on behalf of Fr Dmitry Dudko.
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ZHITOMIR (Ukraine). The fight of believers to preserve their Orthodox church (CCE 34.12) has ended in defeat: in August their church was tom down before the eyes of a stunned crowd of parishioners.
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Village of Srednyaya Elyuzan (Gorodishche district, Penza Region). Until 1970 there were three active mosques open here. In the autumn of 1970 one of them was closed and in 1972 the local authorities closed another — because of alleged infringement of sanitary regulations. Since then the mosque has been used to store damp mineral fertiliser.
On days of prayer, up to a thousand Muslim believers assemble in the only remaining mosque, which can barely hold them all.
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SAMARKAND (Uzbek SSR). On 28 August 1975 the police carried out searches at the homes of citizens V. K. Novikov, E. Nedavnyaya and A. V. Shelkov, members of an Adventist congregation [2]. The following were confiscated: Bibles, religious literature (also the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Covenants), tapes and cassettes ‘containing religious recordings’ (to quote the search record). There is a striking comment in the search record: “Religious books were found in the cellar of the living-room.”
After the searches, Novikov, Nedavnyaya and Shelkov [3] were interrogated about where they had obtained the religious literature; they were threatened with criminal proceedings.
As a result of constant requests, the Bibles the remaining literature was not returned.
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KURSK REGION. On 27 June 1975 Zinaida Petrovna TARASOVA, an Evangelical Christian-Baptist sentenced in the case of the Christian publishing house (CCE 34.12, CCE 37.8), was released under a ‘women’s amnesty’. She was refused a residence permit (in a village in the Kursk Region), as she had not been “exculpated, but only amnestied”. Only three months later, after complaints to higher authorities, was Tarasova given a registration permit (according to the law, an amnesty erases a conviction, Chronicle).
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KOKCHETAV (Kazakh SSR). In September or October 1975, a group of reform Baptists [initsiativniki] were tried here.
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BELOVODSKAYA STATION (Kirgiz SSR). On 19 July an official of the district Soviet executive committee warned M. Ya. Bakhareva, a mother of five children, that she would be deprived of her parental rights.
Bakhareva is a religious believer (probably an Adventist), and her children do not attend school on Saturdays. An administrative commission has fined Bakhareva four times, although her children are good pupils. Her last fine was 25 roubles; this is almost as much as she receives per month in alimony payments for all her five children.
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KRIVOI ROG (Ukraine). The Bulletin of the Council of Relatives of Baptist Prisoners No 27, publishes a report on the death of Baptist Ivan Vasilevich BIBLENKO (b. 1928). Released from imprisonment in 1974, a member of the Baptist church in Krivoi Rog.
On 13 September I. V. Biblenko set off for a religious festival in Dnepropetrovsk. It became known that he had not arrived in Dnepropetrovsk; neither did he return home. Biblenko’s wife and mother informed the police, drove round all the hospitals in Krivoi Rog, and later made similar inquiries in Dnepropetrovsk, but no one, anywhere, knew anything about Biblenko. At the traffic police office, they were told that on 13 and 14 September there had been no motor accidents on the roads between Krivoi Rog and Dnepropetrovsk. Two weeks of searching yielded no results.
On 22 September they appealed to the procurator’s office. On 26 September the family received a telegram from Dnepropetrovsk saying that I. V. Biblenko had died in the Mechnikov hospital on 24 September. In his death report, death was stated to have occurred as a result of a blow to the head suffered in a motor accident on 13 September. Biblenko was in a hospital in Krivoi Rog for four days and on 17 September was transferred to a Dnepropetrovsk hospital.
Basing themselves on the fact that Biblenko’s relations had received contradictory evidence and that his presence in the hospital had been hidden from his family, the members of the Krivoi Rog Baptist congregation consider Biblenko’s death to be the result of a violent attack. In a statement of complaint addressed to Brezhnev, Podgorny and Rudenko, the congregation asks for
“a commission of investigation to be formed to discover the real cause of death and those who were really guilty of causing it”.
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DAUGAVPILS (Latvia), penal institution OTs-78/11-4. Yevgeny Kiryanovich GAUER, an Evangelical Christian-Baptist, 55 years old, sentenced under Article 151, pt. 2 (Latvian SSR Criminal Code), to four years’ imprisonment (CCE 34.12), has been forbidden to conduct his personal correspondence in his native language.
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Religious prisoners in the prisons and camps are forbidden by the administration to have religious books. A prisoner on whom such books are found is punished.
Baptist prisoners V. A. Pikalov, Ya. F. Dirksen, Ya. Ya. Enns, I. F. Tevs, M. M. Desyatnikov, and P. G. Adrian, in corrective-labour colony 8 in Omsk (Siberia), asked the camp administration to allow them to have a Bible and were refused. The reason for the refusal: “The Bible is not included in the list of permitted articles.”
A. T. Kozorezova, wife of prisoner A. T. Kozorezov (Omsk, p/ya UKh-16/7) was told by Turchenko, an official of the camp’s operations section, that if a Gospel were found on her husband, he would be punished for harbouring a forbidden book.
The Baptist prisoner M. A. Pshenitsyn (CCE 34.12), held in a camp with the address Novokuibyshevsk 14, penal institution UR-65/3, had a Gospel confiscated from him during a camp search and was put in the camp prison. Because of this he declared a hunger strike on 29 June 1975.
His wife wrote a number of protests and declarations: to the camp commandant, to the Council for Religious Affairs, to the procurator-general of the USSR. On 18 July I. I. Borodin, the deputy commandant of the camp, replied to Pshenitsyna stating that “the confiscated object has been returned to your husband”.
The case of the Pshenitsyns allows one to suppose that official directives banning religious literatures (or at least the Gospels) in camps do not in fact exist.
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It has become known that in August 1974 in the village of Beregomet, Vizhnitsa district (Chernovtsy Region, Ukraine) the sisters Maria Nikolayevna FLORESCUL and Olga Nikolayevna KONDRYUK were sentenced: the former to three years’ imprisonment; with confiscation of property, the latter to two years’ imprisonment.
Both were charged under Articles 123 (pt. 1) & 124 (UkSSR Criminal Code) — that is, with educating their ten-year-old nephew Seryozha in the spirit of religion. Both sisters are Adventists. The Kondryuk family brought up and supported Seryozha after the death of his mother. Olga Kondryuk was released under an amnesty in August 1975. Maria Florescul is being held in a camp with women who suffer from venereal diseases.
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The prisoner Lydia Alexandrovna KORZHANETS (Belorussian SSR, Gomel, penal institution UZh-15/4), an Evangelical Christian-Baptist, has appealed to Brezhnev, Podgorny, Kosygin, the USSR procurator’s office, and the International Women’s Committee. She was sentenced in 1973 under Articles 139 (pt.2), 186, and 222 (pt. 1) of the Belorussian SSR Criminal Code, term — four years.
Korzhanets is shocked that the ‘women’s’ amnesty of 16 May 1975 (to mark International Women’s Year) did not include those sentenced for their religious beliefs. The Council of Baptist Prisoners’ Relatives, in support of L. Korzhanet’s appeal, calls for the release of women sentenced ‘for religion’ and has submitted the names of these women Baptist prisoners:
Dina Josifovna KRAVCHENKO (b. 1941), sentenced to four years in the camps on 10 September 1973 under Articles 142 (pt. 2) and 227 (pt. 2);
Olga Georgyevna NIKORA (b. 1950), sentenced on 5 March 1974 to four years in the camps and three years’ exile, under Articles 209 (pt. 1) and 138 (pt. 2);
Elya Valterovna KASPER (b. 1949), sentenced on 8 February 1974 to three years in three camps under Articles 170-1 and 200-1;
and Lydia Alexandrovna KORZHANETS.
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The reports in this section have been based on the materials in The Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church Nos 18 (August 1975) & 19 (October 1975); in The Bulletin of Baptist Prisoners’ Relatives No 27; and on declarations and complaints by believers to various authorities.
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Public Statements by Priests and Believers
Gleb Yakunin and Lev Regelson
“Appeal to the Delegates to the Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches”,
10 pp., 16 October 1975 [4]
The authors express themselves in favour of the ecumenical movement. They are optimistic about the healing of Christian divisions through the Christian love that has grown up in answer to mass Christian witness and martyrdom. They recall examples of such Christian love and fellowship which united representatives of different denominations in the period of the Russian Orthodox Church’s sufferings — examples which, in their opinion, should also inspire the activity of the WCC. With regret they note that
“in the wide circle … of important problems (dealt with by the WCC) the subject of religious persecution has so far found no place — although it would seem to be a central theme of Christian ecumenism”.
The authors put forward a set of practical proposals which could help to attract the attention of Christians to martyrs for the faith and could serve to ease their lot. They call on Christians to support those who openly profess other faiths and “all those fighting for freedom and human dignity, for the preservation of the image of God in man”.
On 27 December the same authors issued the following ‘Declaration to Foreign Journalists’:
“The joyful news has reached us that the World Evangelical Baptist Congress has declared 6 January a day of prayer for Christians persecuted in the USSR.
“We express our deepest gratitude for this manifestation of true Christian solidarity and hope that Christians of other denominations will support this important beginning.
“We ask you to remember Father Dmitry Dudko, recently dismissed at the behest of the authorities from service as a priest in the Church of the Holy Martyr Nikita in the village of Kabanovo (Orekhovo-Zuyevo district, Moscow Region); and also hiero-deacon Varsonofy Khaibulin, dismissed in November from service in a church in the town of Murom, Vladimir diocese, because of his extensive preaching activity.”
At the same time as Father Dmitry Dudko was dismissed, Father Gleb Yakunin, one of the undersigned and one of the authors of the appeal to the delegates at the Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Nairobi, was also dismissed from his work.
On 25 December the elder of the Troitse-Kainardzhi church (Balashikha district, Moscow Region), where Father Gleb Yakunin worked as a reader, declared that she was dismissing him from his work at the demand of A. A. Trushin, the Moscow Region commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs.
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On 14 December 1974 the Orthodox Metropolitan of Krutitsa and Kolomna, who is the administrator of Moscow diocese, issued Decree 900 to all the senior clergy of the diocese.
The Decree forbids the administering of extreme unction to groups of old people in their homes, enjoins strict registration of parents’ consent to the baptism of their non-adult children, and forbids the mention of ‘political or social examples’ in sermons.
On 2 December 1975 Father Gleb Yakunin published a commentary on the Decree. In particular he writes:
“The Decree was read to senior diocesan clergy, specially assembled for the purpose, after which the priests added their signatures to it, as proof that they were acquainted with the Decree. The text was not circulated and it was forbidden to make copies of it.”
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On 16 December 1975 hiero-deacon Varsonofy (Khaibulin) appealed to the Secretary-General of the World Council of Churches, asking him to add to the materials of the 5th WCC Assembly’s “special committee for the defence of believers’ rights” his Open Letter (dated 23 November 1975) to Archbishop Vladimir of Vladimir and Suzdal, a member of the Russian Orthodox Church delegation to the Assembly.
The open letter was written as a result of hiero-deacon Varsonofy’s dismissal from service in the Blagoveshchensky Cathedral in Murom. The author links the real reasons for this dismissal and his earlier experience of persecution with ‘the most basic problem of the Church’s position in our country’ — its ‘take-over by the State’.
Criticizing the conformism of Russian Orthodox Church leaders, hiero-deacon Varsonofy asks the question:
“. . . does the episcopate have the right to agree to the take-over of the Church by the State, by an ideocratic regime which openly proclaims to the world its aim of completely rooting out the idea of God from human consciousness?”
The author rejects possible accusations of anti-Sovietism, writing:
“The future of Soviet Russia — great and glorious future — lies in the cooperative coming together of communists who respect the freedom of the Church, and Christians who respect the social truth of Communism, but are always prepared to sacrifice everything for the Church’s independence.”
Referring to KGB interference in the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church and the toleration of this interference by Church leaders, hiero-deacon Varsonofy gives an account of his talks with Colonel A. T. Shibayev, head of the operations section of the Vladimir KGB (in March 1975, after an interrogation about the journal Veche), and with First Lieutenant V. G. Zaitsev, operations commissioner of the Murom KGB department.
“The logic of the Moscow Synod leaders — ‘We are compromising to save the Church’ — is the logic of heretics”: this is how the author sums up his arguments on the functions of the Church and the position of the Russian Orthodox Church. He calls on the Ecumenical episcopate of the Orthodox Catholic Church to apply ‘the appropriate canonical sanctions’; he calls on all Christians to help the Russian Orthodox Church.
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V. A. Shelkov
“The Single Idea” (19 pages, October 1975) [5]
The author expounds systematically the Adventist arguments which oppose State coercion directed against the spirit, against free will, and against the freedom of conscience, belief and convictions given by God to each person. To combat this coercion, sacrifice, a single ideal, a single aim are necessary, ‘Our single ideal has been given to us in the historic personality of Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . . The emulation of this one ideal should be the aim of the progressive minds of humanity . . .’ Shelkov argues against those who link their hopes for the moral regeneration of the people with the idea of nationality or with the idea of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Vladimir Andreyevich SHELKOV is the chairman of the All-Union Church of Free Christians, the True Adventists. He has spent more than 20 years in prison for his religious activity; in 1945 he was condemned to be shot: this was later commuted to a ten-year sentence. He spent his last ten-year term in Mordovia, between 1957 and 1967. After his release he settled in Central Asia.
In 1970 he was detained on the street. A search was carried out at his home, but nothing compromising was found and he was released. He did not wait to be arrested, but went into hiding.
Since then Shelkov has been leading an illegal existence. A countrywide search for him has been proclaimed: recently, at the home of his family, a new search took place.
This year V. A. Shelkov celebrated his 80th birthday.
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NOTES
- Named after Kapsukas, a Lithuanian communist, from 1955 to 1989, the town had a population of 32,700 in 1975; Sakiai’s population, then and now, was less than 10,000.
↩︎ - See “Soviet Seventh-Day Adventists” by K. Murray in Religion in Communist Lands, 1977, No. 2.
↩︎ - On Shelkov, see CCE 49.14-1, CCE 52.11, CCE 53.3-1 and Name Index.
↩︎ - The full text was published in Religious Liberty in the Soviet Union: ICC and USSR — A Post-Nairobi Documentation, edited by M. Bourdeaux, H. Hebly and E. Voss, Keston College, 1976.
↩︎ - Full text in possession of Keston College. (See also note 1.)
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