Evangelical Christians & Baptists, Aug 1976 (41.2-4)

<<No 41 : 3 August 1976>>

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At the beginning of the 1960s a schism took place among the Baptists in the USSR, when some congregations left the All-Union Council of the Evangelical Christians & Baptists (AUCECB).

These congregations wanted to obtain greater autonomy from the State than the 1929 law on religious cults allows, particularly over the question of freedom of religious education for children. The movement was headed by an Initiative or Action Group (because of this they are called ‘Initsiativniki’), then by an Organizing Committee set up to call an All-Russian ECB Congress (cf. CCE 32.7). The believers stopped registering their congregations. In reply, the authorities began to disperse religious gatherings as illegal, to fine believers and arrest activists. Almost all members of the Initiative Group were sentenced under ‘religious Articles’.

In 1965 [1] a conference in Tula of the congregations that had broken away worked out conditions for regulating relations with the State (including the registration of congregations) and founded the Council of Churches of the ECB (CCECB) and the Council of ECB Prisoners’ Relatives. The authorities did not recognize the Tula conference as legal; the repression continued.

Some members of the Council of Churches went over to leading an illegal existence.

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CCECB

At the beginning of 1975 Georgy Vins, Secretary of the Council of Churches, was tried and convicted (CCE 35.3). His sentence aroused massive protests in the USSR and abroad and attracted public attention to the position of the CCECB.

That same year the authorities themselves offered many congregations the opportunity to register, on condition that they did not declare their affiliation to the CCECB. Many of the congregations which decided to register soon felt themselves subject to unacceptable State pressure. Some of them began to take back their declarations.

Congregations which refused to register were subjected to fresh repressions.

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CECB Prisoners’ Relatives

On 6-9 February 1976 a conference of the Council of ECB Prisoners’ Relatives took place in Voroshilovgrad [Luhansk]. Constant surveillance was maintained on those who took part in the conference and the house where it was held.

On 9 February at Voroshilovgrad airport Antonina Antonovna SENKEVICH was searched before boarding an aeroplane bound for Kiev. Tape-recordings, some religious pamphlets and copies of declarations from believers to the government were confiscated from her.

On the evening of the same day some Baptist women were standing at a tram stop in Voroshilovgrad. Under the eyes of a policeman some unknown men snatched from them a bag containing documents belonging to the Council of Prisoners’ Relatives and a typewriter. The thieves hid in a yard. Later an official version emerged: the lost bag had been discovered in the automatic left-luggage room at Voroshilovgrad station. Now it is in the care of the KGB.

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In May the KGB and the Procurator’s Office interrogated the following persons in various towns and cities in Ukraine: Ekaterina Shevchenko, Tatyana Shovgan, Alexander Kozorezov, Nina Andryushchenko, Galina Rytikova, Valentina Kokurina, Alevtina Panfilova, Serafima Yudintseva, Margarita Pugacheva and others. They were all accused of participating in the ‘slanderous’ activities of the CECB of Prisoners’ Relatives, by compiling petitions and producing its Bulletin.

During interrogation the women were warned that, if they did not cease their activities, criminal charges would be brought against them.

On 29 May 1976 the Council of Prisoners’ Relatives sent a letter to Kosygin and Podgorny. The letter states that the persecution and threats directed against the council will not lead to the results desired by the authorities, there will be new prisoners, new relatives, and new petitions from a re-constituted council … The authors of the letter suggest to the authorities a different solution: to release and exculpate the prisoners and to stop persecuting believers. Then the Council of Prisoners’ Relatives would automatically cease to function.

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APPEAL

Issue 29 of the Bulletin of the CECB Prisoners’ Relatives includes a New Year Appeal from the Council to the Soviet government. This is a review of the relations between the Baptist ‘reform’ [Initsiativniki] congregations and the authorities over the last 15 years.

The appeal is divided into 19 sections, describing various aspects of Baptist life in the USSR. Some sections have headings: ‘Discrimination against mothers with many children’, ‘Discrimination against believers over the right to work’, ‘Creating conditions to facilitate destruction’, ‘The position of the families of ECB prisoners sentenced for the word of God under various pretexts’, ‘Fines’, ‘Placing of healthy children in special schools for the subnormal’, ‘The position of the Council of Churches, the spiritual centre of the Evangelical Christians and Baptists in the USSR”.

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CECB Bulletin 31

Issue 31 of the Bulletin includes a list of Baptists arrested or sentenced under ‘religious Articles’, according to information available on 1 February 1976. There are 102 persons on the list. The majority were sentenced according to ‘religious Articles’; 11 persons were sentenced for refusing to serve in the army (Article 249, RSFSR Criminal Code) and 33 persons under Article 190-1 …

There are four women in the list, who remain in detention despite the amnesty of 1975 linked with International Women’s Year. Most of the space in the Bulletins is devoted to letters and statements about the persecution of Evangelical Christians and Baptists [2].

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VICTOR MONTIK

On 18 March 1975 the Ivanovo Regional court sentenced Viktor Montik to three years’ imprisonment under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code). To this sentence the court added 11 months and one day, which he still had to serve from his previous sentence.

Montik received this new 3-year sentence while in a camp. He was first sentenced in 1971 for refusing to do his military service (Article 249, RSFSR Criminal Code: sentence, 5 years). In the camp Montik wrote repeated complaints.

In January 1975 a new criminal case was brought against Montik. In the indictment Senior Investigator E. N. Pavlychev wrote:

“In his letters and among his acquaintances, Montik disseminates false fabrications alleging that in the USSR the Constitution is violated, and that people who believe in God are persecuted, shut up in prison and subjected to harassment …”

Bulletin 30 published a letter from Montik’s parents, in which they quote such statements by the investigator and the judge:

‘Comrade Montik, both you and your son should know for certain that our country, a country of dominant, widespread atheism, is following a consistent path to communism, and that people such as your Viktor, and others like him, are little stones on the road to communism. And our State is a machine which clears away those stones’ (Investigator Pavlychev).

‘I am speaking to you, the father of the accused. Your son has a great deal of influence on those around him, and if he doesn’t change his views, you should know that even this sentence could be elastic, he will extend it even further‘ (Judge Makarychev).

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ZIMENS

On 2 May Pyotr Zimens (CCE 37.8) was arrested. On 9 October he was sentenced to three years in ordinary-regime camps under Articles 130, pt. 2 and 170-1 (Kazakh SSR Criminal Code = Articles 142 & 190-1, RSFSR Code), by an assizes session of the Kokchetav Regional court; the presiding judge was Katayeva.

A letter from 78 Baptists describes the circumstances of Zimens’s arrest and trial. Zimens was charged with the fact that there were minors among the fellow-believers who gathered at his home on 1 May. During a search, religious literature was confiscated, whose contents, in the opinion of the investigators, were libellous and anti-Soviet. (An expert witness discovered anti-Soviet expressions in the Bible, for example.) Not one witness agreed that Zimens was guilty: In the words of the letter’s authors, the guilt of Zimens is the guilt of any believer.

Zimens is not allowed a Bible in his camp, penal institution OK-160/1, Granitny settlement (Kokchetav Region). During a visit by Zimens’s parents the administration forbade them to talk to their son in German. In 1976 he was deprived of visits for six months (Bulletins 30, 33).

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On 28 December 1975 a prayer-meeting in Voroshilovgrad was dispersed by force.

This was organized by Major L. G. Klochan, deputy police-chief of the city’s Kamenobrodsk district, and Captain Zarubei. A letter signed by 56 Baptists (Bulletin 30) states:

“The Major was reminded that an agreement had been signed in Helsinki, guaranteeing us freedom of religious assembly and binding the representatives of authority to respect our rights and ensure their observance.

“Klochan asked, “And who signed this agreement? Who read this agreement? Were you there?” He received the reply,

“The Helsinki Agreement was signed by Brezhnev. We read it in the newspaper. “This is all rubbish!” retorted student of law Major Klochan. “Rubbish? The agreement is rubbish? Brezhnev’s signature, rubbish?”, the believers were angry. “Yes, rubbish!” Klochan affirmed.“

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Anna Nikiforovna SKLYAR (Gogolevo settlement, near Mirgorod in Ukraine) was working as a watchwoman when she was told by the authorities: “Go to the Party district committee and say you’ll stop going to prayer-meetings, or we’ll sack you.” She refused and was sacked (Bulletin 29).

The agronomist Semyon Georgievich APOSTU (Trusheny village, Strashensky district, Moldavian SSR) was sacked after being told: “We don’t need any religious agronomists” (Bulletin 29).

A complaint from first-class driver A. N. Shchubinin (Izhevsk city, Udmurtia) describes how the administrative authorities tried to bring about his dismissal ‘at his own request’ and how, when they did not obtain his resignation, they sacked him anyway, in October 1975.

“During the whole of this time KGB officials Colonel N. F. Shklyayev and Captain L. P. Lukin would not leave me alone; they tried in every way to persuade me to co-operate with them, promising me an annual holiday in a rest-home. But when I refused to work for them, they began to threaten me, and I have to put up with this to this day” (Bulletin 30).

Lena Savchenko from Omsk tried unsuccessfully to apply for a course in accountancy, and was turned down because of her faith. She handed in an application for a training course as a cook, but as soon as it was discovered that she was a believer, her application was returned to her (Bulletin 29).

Ulyana Sergeyevna GERMANYUK (Lysychansk, Voroshilovgrad Region), a qualified doctor, was forced to work as a cleaning-woman and watchwoman; she was also sacked from her job as a watchwoman (Bulletin 29).

Zinaida Kozakova (city of Nikolayev, Ukrainian SSR) was sacked from a factory. She went to a lawyer and received this advice: ‘You have only one choice, to renounce God’ (Bulletin 29).

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A large part of Bulletin 32 consists of rebuttals of the article written by V. A. Kuroyedov, Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs (USSR Council of Ministers), on “Soviet law and freedom of conscience” (Izvestiya, 31 January 1976) [3].

This section includes ten letters, carrying in all 1,234 signatures. The authors of an Open Letter from the settlement of Budy in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region (signed by 683 people) disprove Kuroyedov’s assertions with many examples. In answer to his words “In the USSR there are no lists or population statistics indicating religious affiliation”, they quote extracts from a Directive by secretary Kashin of the executive committee of the Oktyabrsky district soviet in Kharkov. Kashin wrote to the chairman of a Local Factory Trade Union Committee:

“In order to check up on the observance of the law on religious cults, we request you to draw up lists of religious believers working in your enterprise …”

All the letters reject Kuroyedov’s allegations about G. P. Vins.

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NOTES

  1. See M. Bourdeaux, Religious Ferment in Russia: Protestant Opposition to Soviet Religious Policy, London, 1968, chapter 5.
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  2. The full texts of these and other issues of the Bulletin are on file at the Keston Center archive (Baylor University, USA).
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  3. Kuroyedov’s article in Izvestiya (//January 1976) was translated into English and published in Religion in Communist Lands, 1976, No. 2.

    Vladimir Kuroyedov (1906-1994) served as Chairman of the Council of Religious Affairs from 1960 to 1984.
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