Orthodox Christians. Adventists. Pentecostalists. Jehovah’s Witnesses. Baptists
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1. Orthodox Christians.
On 12 September members of the Christian Committee (Gleb Yakunin. Victor Kapitanchuk, V. Fonchenkov, together with Lev Regelson) issued an appeal ‘To Russian Orthodox Christians in the Fatherland and in the Diaspora’.
The authors of the appeal welcome the decision of the Synodal Russian Orthodox Church in Exile to canonize the Russian martyrs and confessors who have suffered in the persecutions of the 20th century.
“We feel a deep sense of gratitude to the Synodal Church for its initiative, and we hope at the same time that the temptation of juridical isolationism will be abandoned and the Synodal Church will not remain alone in its great and holy task of preparing the canonization of the new Russian saints. We hope that in one way or another the Orthodox Christians of other jurisdictions will take part in this …
“We bear witness to the fact that prayerful veneration of the martyrs and confessors is becoming more and more widespread in the Russian Land and we express our deep conviction that the act of canonization will be greeted with genuine religious enthusiasm by the Russian clergy and the people of the church.“
The authors of the appeal also note that the question of canonization can be settled only by a new creative decision on the Church’s part, as the persecution of believers in 20th-century Russia has differed in essence from the persecution of the first Christian centuries — this time it has not been Christianity itself that has been subjected to persecution, but the Church.
“The Church was seen by the persecutors as a social organization inextricably linked with the ‘old world’ they intended to destroy. Church services, the defence of the Church’s interests, finally even active Church life, were regarded as political opposition which, in the opinion of the authorities, demanded repressive measures …
“This war against the Church in Russia was won by the anti-ecclesiastical forces. They got an obedient Church hierarchy. However, the outward victory could not destroy the inner, spiritual basis of Church life, expressed in the moral feat of the martyrs and confessors, not in the example set by perfidious compromises.“
The authors of the appeal then turn to the problem of canonizing the Emperor Nicholas II and his family. Pointing out that this is a debatable question, they express their own approval of such an act.
“The tragedy of the Imperial family has lain like a curse on the Russian Land and has become a symbol, like a prologue to the impending Way of the Cross to be trodden by Russia, of the death of tens of millions of her sons and daughters. The canonization of the Imperial martyrs will mean that the sin of killing her Tsar will be lifted from Russia and she will finally be freed from evil enchantment.“
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Tatyana Shchipkova (CCE 49.14-1, CCE 51.15), a member of the Christian Seminar [1], is threatened with arrest.
On 2 March a criminal case was made out against her on a charge of hooliganism. In March and April members of the Christian Seminar were questioned as witnesses in her case. She is accused of having hit a vigilante (CCE 52.11). Shchipkova has had to give a written undertaking not to leave Smolensk.
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UKRAINE
CHURCH BUILDING UNDER THREAT
The church in Znosychi village in Ukraine (Sarny district, Rovno Region), was built in 1910, and used to serve the needs of believers from a number of villages.
In spite of the fact that in recent years there had been no priest at the church, the parishioners met regularly for prayers and had redecorated and adorned the church themselves. A few years ago unknown persons vandalized the church at night, plundering and breaking the decorations and scraping the inside walls. The vandals were not found or punished by the authorities.
In 1977 the authorities tried to demolish the church. One night they began to tear down the church building with a powerful tractor. The believers, woken by the noise, ran up and drove the tractor-driver away. After that the parishioners set a twenty-four hour guard on the church.
In the spring of 1978 there was another attempt to demolish the church. One night a fire-engine drove up, the building was doused in fuel oil and there was an attempt to set it on fire. The parishioners surrounded the church, saying: ‘Burn us together with the church’. Those who had assembled were dragged away and dispersed, but others ran up in their stead.
In autumn of the same year the district authorities called together the management of the collective farm and announced their decision to turn the church into a farm storehouse, ‘as we have so few buildings that can be used as storehouses’. Grain was piled up in the church. In response to this the farm workers refused to go out to work and the children did not go to school. The grain was taken out of the church and it was once more left at the disposal of the believers.
On 25 April 1979, at Easter time, all the inhabitants of Znosychi were sent to work in another village. The children were shut in the school. Five buses full of policemen and two demolition trucks were driven up to the church building. The trucks, after ropes had been put around the church, began pulling the church down. The parishioners, hearing the roar of the motors, returned to Znosychi, gathered round the church and demanded that the demolition should stop. The police drove them away. Towards morning they burnt the ruins of the church. The operation was commanded by the Procurator of Sarny district.
Soon after, believers from the whole area began to gather for prayers in Znosychi, on the site of the demolished church. The news about the burning of the church had reached even the farthest villages. At times, 10-20 pilgrims were sleeping in almost all the houses in Znosychi.
On the orders of the district Procurator the local authorities constantly dispersed the worshippers. Travel to Znosychi was forbidden. Patrols were set up on the roads, stopping pedestrians and cars from getting through to the village; so people started to go to Znosychi through the woods.
The pilgrims decorated the pine-trees around the demolished church with embroidered towels and coloured ribbons. On the orders of the authorities the age-old pines were chopped down. People began to decorate the stumps that remained — bulldozers rooted out the stumps and covered them with earth. However, the believers continue to meet in Znosychi for prayers on the site where the church used to be.
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RE-OPENING A CHURCH
In the Ukrainian village of Balashovka (Berezno district, Rovno Region) the church was closed at the beginning of the 1960s. The authorities justified the closure of the church by saying it had few worshippers and no working priest. The icons and church plate were preserved.
Ten years later the members of the old church ‘committee of twenty’ appealed to the authorities, asking them to re-open the church, but without success. After the adoption of the new Constitution, the believers renewed their campaign. In spite of the fact that the Balashovka church had served four villages (only one of which has more than 100 inhabitants), while the district centre of Berezno is far away and there is no regular bus route there, the believers of Balashovka were advised by the Regional Soviet executive committee to worship in Berezno. The believers also made a number of attempts to build a church. Finally they were directed to the village soviet and told that some papers on their case had been sent there.
Khunduchko, secretary of the village soviet, threw them out of his office, calling them hooligans and followers of Bandera and threatening to send them to gaol. Among the petitioners was Yekaterina Zubchik, a deputy to the Village Soviet. Khunduchko said to her: ‘If we had known you were going to write declarations, we wouldn’t have chosen you as a deputy.’ One of the petitioners, Nikolai Sitnikov (an invalid) was fined 50 roubles for disorderly conduct. Sitnikov complained to the district Soviet executive committee and the Procuracy but didn’t get anywhere.
The believers sent complaints to Brezhnev, Kosygin and the Council for Religious Affairs. In reply they received notification that the letters had been sent to the Regional authorities, and from there to the district Soviet executive committee. Mikhailyukov, Chairman of the executive committee, told them he would not discuss anything with them.
In the autumn of 1978 a representative of the Council for Religious Affairs visited the village. He assured the Balashovka residents that ^everything has already been agreed’ and asked them to draw up another list of the ‘committee of twenty’ for the Party district Committee. After the representative’s departure, Khunduchko declared that the church could not be opened as it was in a dangerous condition.
He promised to summon a commission to calculate the repairs required.
Meanwhile Maria Prokopchuk, Ganna Prokopchuk and Adam Ivanov were fined 10 roubles each for cleaning up the church. The believers wrote a complaint to Kuroyedov, Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs.
Sometime later, the Chairman of the Village Soviet, Cheberaka, asked his fellow-villagers to sign a paper saying they would not allow their pigs out of their plots. Later it turned out that the signatures collected on this pretext were being used with a declaration stating that nobody in the village of Balashovka needed the church. A new declaration by the ‘committee of twenty’ asking for the return of the church is not being accepted by the district Soviet executive committee.
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BELORUSSIA
In the town of Rechitsa (Gomel Region) the Orthodox congregation used to meet for worship in an old and cramped building. On Sundays and feast-days it could not accommodate all the worshippers. The church committee received permission from the local authorities to redecorate it. The believers collected money and at the beginning of 1979 they began to redecorate. Before long the church redecoration was complete.
On 1 September the church building was seated up by a fire commission ‘for direct violation of the fire safety regulations’. The believers appealed to the local authorities for an explanation, but received none. Neither was the question solved by the Commissioner of the Belorussian Council for Religious Affairs in Minsk.
At the same time the local authorities are intimidating the members of the church committee. The police keep watch outside the church building. The authorities intend to make it into a storehouse. The believers assemble and pray outside the doors of the closed church.
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VLADIMIR
The philologist Vyacheslav Ulitin was working as a folklore expert in the Folk Art House in Vladimir. On 13 October he did not turn up for a voluntary Saturday work-day. One of his colleagues saw him that day, going to a service at the city’s Uspensky Cathedral.
Ulitin was summoned for an interview by the Director and received a dismissal notice, as his religious views did not correspond to the principles of a propagandistic institution.
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2. ADVENTISTS
Between 30 May to 28 June seven members of the All-Union Church of Seventh Day Adventists [2] were arrested in Ukraine:
- M. F. Kravchuk and M. E. Podkalyuk were detained in Kalinovka village, Vinnitsa Region (while distributing Open Letter No. 6 by the All-Union Church of SDAs: “Why are Believers being Tried in the USSR — for Crimes or for their Faith?”);
- L. G. Melenko and A. A. Gulya were detained while distributing Letter No. 6 in the town of Kivertsy, Volynskaya Region;
- V. P. Rudnitsky was detained while distributing Letter No. 6 in the town of Kazatin, Vinnitsa Region;
- D. D. Dimov was detained in Kherson while distributing the document “A Short Refutation of the Latest Press Slanders” by the All-Union Church of SDAs; and
- N. A. Ovcharenko was detained while she was distributing the “Short Refutation” in the town of Georgievka (Voroshilovgrad Region).
Searches were carried out at the homes of the people arrested.
During the same period, the homes of over 30 Adventists in Ukraine and South Russia’s Stavropol Region (Krai) were also searched. The following were confiscated; Bibles, Gospels, religious and human rights literature from the ‘True Witness’ publishing house, exercise books containing notes on religion, notebooks, greetings cards, letters, envelopes with addresses on them, any bits of paper on which anything was written, photographs of relations and acquaintances, used railway tickets, typing paper and carbons, cassette recordings, account-books, money savings.
Search records were not made out for all the searches.
When S. A. Gorchenko from Shilovtsy village in Ukraine (Khotin district, Chernovtsy Region) asked for a search record to be left, Petryuga, who had led the search, replied: ‘You don’t need one’. N. G. Rudaya from Shilovtsy, A. A. Florescul from Novaya Zhadova village (Storozhinets district, Chernovtsy Region), A. P. Savchuk from Nizhnye Stanovtsy village (Kitsman district, Chernovtsy Region), S. G. Fedorenko from the Ukrainian town of Razdelnaya (Odessa Region) and F. G. Vashchenko did not receive search records either.
I. I. Malyshko, who conducted the search in the home of N. G. Rudaya, insulted her daughter. He forcibly took from her a list of the names of those taking part in the search.
When L. G. Kopchuk, a Group I work invalid (from Banilov-Podgorny village, Storozhinets district, Chernovtsy Region), asked that witnesses be summoned from among her neighbours, she was told: ‘We’ve got our own witnesses’; when she asked for the return of her Bible, the reply was: ‘This is an American edition of the Bible’. Railyan, the man conducting the search, threatened her: ‘We’ll send you into exile for reading American Bibles’. When L. Kopchuk wanted to write on the search record her reasons for refusing to sign it, Railyan said: ‘Don’t mess up my search record’. After the owners of the house said they would complain about his arbitrary actions, he threatened them: ‘We’ll imprison you if you start complaining’.
During the search at the home of S. Dimova (wife of the arrested D. D. Dimov, see above), she was threatened with arrest and a prison term, and with loss of parental rights over her six-month-old son.
After the arrest of N. A. Ovcharenko (see above), M. M. Zinets-Ovcharenko, her adopted daughter, was also arrested. Both were charged under Article 187-1 (UkSSR Criminal Code = Article 190-1, RSFSR Code). They were accused of disseminating literature published by ‘True Witness’, ‘by leaving; it in post-boxes’ and also of making a list of addresses where the literature could be distributed. Ovcharenko and Zinets were sentenced to three years’ imprisonment each.
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In June the trial of Rikhard Spalin, Anatoly Ryskal and Yakov Dolgotyor (CCE 51.15) took place in Russia’s Stavropol Region (Krai). Spalin and Ryskal were printers of the ‘True Witness’ publishing house. They were charged under two Articles of the RSFSR Criminal Code: 190-1 and 162, pt. 2 (“Engaging in forbidden private enterprise”).
It is not known what Dolgotyor was charged with. Spalin and Ryskal were sentenced to four years’ imprisonment each; Dolgotyor to one year.
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3. PENTECOSTALISTS
On 6 March the Muscovite Anatoly Vlasov was visited for the third time by KGB official Yury Polyukh, who promised to return to him ‘next week’ the tape-recorder, cassettes and three Bibles confiscated during a search (CCE 51.15). His promise was not fulfilled.
During his visit Polyukh again tried to provoke Vlasov into discussing his ties with dissidents and demanded the surrender of a duplicating machine which arrested Pentecostalists from Sweden had mentioned in their testimony (CCE 47.4, CCE 49.14-2).
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Grigory Udovenko (from the town of Shostka, Sumy Region) has been sent to a psychiatric hospital. His relatives, on learning that he had become a believer, first began to beat up their son, and then collaborated in having him hospitalized.
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Representatives of a number of congregations in West Ukraine have appealed to international charitable organizations in an Open Letter describing the position of Pentecostal families with many children in the USSR.
They report that the children of Pentecostalists are not given the opportunity to learn peacefully at school and are subjected to all kinds of pressure to tear them away from their parents’ religion. ‘There is no room for religion,’ they write, ‘within socialism or communism.’ The letter mentions in particular the material difficulties suffered by families with many children; the families receive miserly wages and insignificant allowances. The authors of the letter ask the international charities for material aid. Attached to the letter is a list of those families with many children which are particularly in need of material assistance.
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4. JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES
Four Jehovah’s Witnesses from West Ukraine have been sentenced to three years in ordinary-regime camps for refusing to take the military oath. They are Alexei Polishchuk (whose sentence runs from 11 January 1979), Dmitry Prokop (29 May 1978), Mikhail Marich (22 September 1978) and Pyotr Bondar (7 August 1978).
Polishchuk and Prokop are serving their sentences in а Ukrainian penal institution US- 319/56, Perekrestovka village in Romny district (Sumy Region).
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5. BAPTISTS
Largely based on material from the Council of ECB Prisoners’ Relatives Bulletin (Nos. 67-70).
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On 16 June a group of Baptists sent a complaint to the USSR Supreme Soviet.
They point out that the appeal court — the Supreme Court of the Kazakh SSR — upheld the sentence passed by the Djambul Regional Court on Ya. G. Skornyakov, a pastor of the Council of Baptist & Evangelical Christian Churches (CCECB; CCE 53.4), although the court of first instance shamelessly violated a number of basic clauses of the Code of Criminal Procedure. This statement had been sent to the Supreme Court of the Kazakh SSR. Its Chairman Mynbayev replied:
“… Your reference to the violation of procedural norms is baseless, as the trial hearing in the case was carried out in accordance with legal requirements …“
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The Baptists are organizing summer camps for children of prisoners and of pastors living in hiding because of persecution. The children live in tents, looked after by a number of adults, who prepare meals, organize games and pastimes for them, study the Bible, teach psalms and Christian morality.
In the spring of 1979 the authorities organized raids on two of the camps, in Belorussia and West Ukraine.
In BELORUSSIA the camp was on the bank of the Pripyat River (in Khoiniki district, Gomel Region).
On 18 July, during the afternoon activities, the camp was surrounded by policemen, soldiers and ‘men in civilian clothes’. Some of them grabbed the children, others made for the tents. They took away Bibles and Gospels, beat those who resisted and twisted their arms. Some of the little girls tried to run away. They were chased on to a marshy bank and captured. The assailants rummaged through the beds and threw all the children’s things out of their suitcases and bags. A female investigator and her assistants walked over the children’s beds and belongings in their boots.
That night guard-posts were set up around the tents. In the morning, cars and buses were driven up to the camp, A helicopter circled above the camp. Local officials arrived. The children were told to give their names and places of residence. They refused. Those who had identity papers had them confiscated. The adults had their passports confiscated.
Then the health inspectors arrived. In a report on the sanitary condition of the camp they stated that the bedsheets had been trampled on, the children had no toothbrushes, soap or towels (the children had shown the inspectors that they had all these things), there were no vaccination certificates, the dishes were washed in cold water and the food cooked on a camp-fire. A girl who had mosquito bites was said to have ‘a bad case of eczema’.
The children and the camp were photographed. Then the beds and tents were taken to the nearest village and the children were sent down the river to Kiev on the boat ‘Rocket’.
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On 23 August Baptist children returning home after a holiday in the Trans-Carpathian Region changed trains in Lvov. In the square outside the station they were surrounded by police.
Pavel Timofeyevich RYTIKOV, a preacher of the Council of Churches, who was in charge of the children (in recent years he had been hiding from the authorities: CCE 51.15 refers to his wife Galina) was immediately arrested, together with his 20-year-old son Vladimir and Galina Vilchinskaya. The children scattered in all directions. The police picked them up all over town. The following were confiscated: a tape-recorder, a camera, a cine-camera, films, cassettes, religious literature and also money intended for the children (2,500 roubles).
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UKRAINE
On 29 July about 300 police officials and KGB agents tried to disperse Baptists who had assembled on the banks of the River Prut for a ceremony of baptism involving new members of the congregation.
On 31 July the police forcibly summoned and interrogated the Baptists P. V. Ursul, D. E. Gankevich, V. I. Kostenyuk and E. M. Bunkovsky from Chernovtsy. They were asked to write explanations concerning the baptism. A search was carried out at Kostenyuk’s flat in the owner’s absence.
On 1 August searches were carried out in the village of Bolshoi Kuchurov at the homes of M. Kushnir, I. Nastashchuk and L. Onchulenko. Religious literature was confiscated. On the same day Presbyter Ivan Grigoryevich Danilyuk was arrested in Chernovtsy. His case is being dealt with by the Town Procurator of Storozhinets in Chernovtsy Region. The arrest took place at Danilyuk’s flat after a search. The Deputy Procurator of Chernovtsy Region, M. K. Pashkovsky, in an official reply of 16 August to a complaint by believers, confirmed that Danilyuk was charged with violation of the laws on religious cults and would be brought to account for it.
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On 11 September F. V. Gordienko, Presbyter of the Gorlovka congregation (CE 53.24) in the east Ukrainian Donetsk Region was charged under two Articles of the UkSSR Criminal Code: 187-1 (= Article 190-1, RSFSR Code) and 187-3 (“Organization or active participation in group activities which violate public order”).
He was accused of having spoken about the violation of believers’ rights in the USSR at prayer-meetings and of “taking an active part in illegal meetings of Baptist schismatics who avoid registration”. Gordienko had not reacted to demands by the authorities that he should end these meetings and ‘by his defiant attitude also influenced other members of the sect’. In October Gordienko was arrested.
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On 31 October Mikhail Antonovich PRUTYANU (CCE 53.24) from Kishinyov was arrested.
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On 5 November N. G. Baturin, a member of the Council of Churches, was arrested in the small Ukrainian city of Smela (Cherkassy Region). Olga Pikalova was arrested at the same time.
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INFORMANTS
The Council of ECB Prisoners’ Relatives Bulletin No. 68 has published an ‘Open Letter’ from Sergei Popov (son of the prisoner N. F. Popov, see CCE 53.24 and CCE 54.24) and Yury Misin, both members of the Ryazan congregation.
S. Popov and Yu. Misin relate how, in the spring of 1977, they were engaged as informers by the KGB, for work within the congregation. The first interview with them, in the military enlistment office, was conducted by the official in charge, Senior Lieutenant Garynin. Later the recruited informers worked with KGB Lieutenant-Colonel Savushkin and Colonel Fedyashov, Deputy Chief of the Ryazan KGB. They met them at the railway station a few times a month. Both received a few hundred roubles for their services.
The KGB officials were interested in the composition of the church committee, the duties of its members, character sketches of the congregation’s leaders, the spiritual state of the church members, differences between members of the congregation, the reactions of believers to atheist articles in the papers and to house-searches. They asked about the household finances of believers’ families: where they got the building materials for redecoration and construction of private houses, whether their animal fodder had been obtained legally, and so on. They were particularly interested in visits paid to the congregation by members of the Council of Churches. Popov and Misin were asked to identify people from photographs or verbal descriptions.
Above all, Fedyashov and Savushkin were interested in the supply and distribution of literature produced by the Christian publishing house, the places where there were supposed to be printing-presses, and in links with Christians abroad.
For the long term Popov and Misin were supposed to gain authority among the young people in the congregation and then move into the leading circles among the brethren, until they could make direct contact with religious ‘centres’ abroad. In order to raise their prestige, it was planned to have one of them detained while transporting literature, Another plan was that Misin and Popov should found a new religious group among young people and become its leaders. The information Misin and Popov gave to the KGB was partly made use of in propagandist articles by the local press.
Misin and Popov write that they began to feel disgusted with themselves after the sentences passed on A. V. Nikitkov and N. F. Popov on 20 July and the publication of the article ‘Out of the Quagmire’ in Priokskaya Pravda on 4 August. They both repented publicly before their fellow-believers and asked believers who were working for the KGB to break their ties.
The date on the ‘Open Letter’ as printed in the Bulletin is 5 July (?)
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On 21 September Garynin came to see Sergei Popov at work. He demanded that Popov and Misin should stop revealing ‘official secrets’. He threatened that evidence formerly given by Popov would be used against leaders of the Ryazan congregation and Baptist church leaders, particularly the arrested Rytikov. He promised to play tape- recordings of Popov’s talks with KGB officials to his fellow-believers. Popov was also threatened with imprisonment.
Popov, in an open letter to Andropov, stated:
” … If in future anything should happen to me or to members of my family, the whole responsibility would rest with the officials of the Regional KGB subordinate to you.“
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RYAZAN
Until 1977 the Presbyter of the Ryazan Baptist congregation was Anatoly Sergeyevich REDIN. In 1977 he was chosen as a preacher by the Council of Churches.
In 1979 a criminal charge was brought against Redin (CCE 53.24). His case was separated from that of Nikitkov and Popov and individually investigated, because he was ‘hiding from the investigation’.
On 16 August 1979 the Presbyter’s son, S. A. Redin, was tried in Ryazan. He was charged under Article 199, pt. 2 (RSFSR Criminal Code), with ‘unwarranted construction of a residence’. The house was confiscated and Redin was sentenced to eight months’ corrective labour, with 15% confiscation of wages. Redin and his two children (one three years old, the other 11 months old), his pregnant wife and 90-year-old grandmother were left without a home.
In a declaration to the highest authorities, members of the congregation demanded that Redin’s confiscated house be returned or that he be given alternative accommodation.
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On 5 August a meeting of believers in the town of Dedovsk (Moscow Region) was broken up. The attack was led by the Secretary of the Dedovsk district Soviet executive committee and carried out by police and vigilantes, many of whom were drunk. They pushed the believers into a bus, twisting their arms, and took them to the police station. One of them, V. V. Smirnov, was fined 30 roubles.
On the same day, a prayer-meeting in the town of Zheleznodorozhny (Moscow Region), at the home of Pshenitsyn (CCE 51.15), was also broken up. Deputy police chief Savelev and Lieutenant Kharin brought a record typed out in advance. It stated that the believers had refused to obey when asked to disperse and had refused to sign the record. Pshenitsyn wrote a complaint against the police officials because of this.
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At the beginning of August Valery Nazaruk (CCE 46.8), a member of the Zdolbonov town congregation in Ukraine (Rovno Region) was released at the end of his sentence.
He had been imprisoned for refusing to take the military oath. The local authorities forbade him to attend a youth meeting fixed for 12 August, or to talk about his imprisonment. Valery said he would go to the service. The authorities promised to obstruct the meeting.
On 12 August workers from neighbouring factories, policemen in plain clothes and ‘members of the public’ surrounded the prayer-meeting, which was taking place in the woods. Without asking anyone to disperse, without any warning, they began to grab hold of the believers, twist their arms and take from them religious literature, musical instruments, tape-recorders and cameras.
The attack was led by Roshchenko, chairman of the town soviet, Netiksha, secretary of the district soviet executive committee, and police Major Makarenko. Some members of the congregation are being threatened with criminal charges.
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On 19 August (the Feast of the Transfiguration) a festive service held by the Stepanovka congregation in Ukraine (Voroshilovgrad Region) was broken up. The believers were led out of the house and driven to police stations in various parts of the town.
All were interrogated and had to give their names. Some visitors from Voroshilovgrad [Luhansk] were imprisoned: Balatsky, Kulishev and Sazhnyov for 10 days; Andryushchenko for 15 days; while the local residents Vinogradov and Tyagun got 10 days each. In one of the police stations young girls were subjected to a body-search. While the believers were being questioned at police stations, at the house where the service was held all religious literature and notebooks were confiscated.
The raid was conducted by Commissioner Babushkin of the Council of Religious Affairs, his deputy Mikhailovsky and Verevkin, secretary of the town soviet executive committee.
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On 3 August a prayer-meeting held by the Rostov-on-Don congregation was broken up. The believers Kolbantsev and Zakharov were sentenced to 15 days’ imprisonment, and Goncharov to 10 days’.
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On 5 and 7 October prayer-meetings in the town of Khartsyzsk (Donetsk Region) were broken up. On 5 October the believers were loaded into lorries and sent out of the town.
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On 21 October the authorities of Bryansk forbade believers to meet for a Harvest Festival.
Under the leadership of the Regional Procurator and Samotesov, Chairman of the district Soviet executive committee, a round-up was organized. Believers were seized in trams, railway stations and in their homes; then they were taken to police stations and detained for 15 days. Old people, invalids and children were not exempted. According to incomplete data, 125 people were detained.
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Reserve Major D. F. Sukharev flew jet aeroplanes for 16 years; he then became a history lecturer at the Vasilevka Higher College of Aviation-Technology in Ukraine.
Afterwards, when Sukharev’s wife became a Baptist, he was asked to change his subject — instead of lecturing on the history of the CPSU, he taught courses on military history.
At the beginning of 1979 Sukharev himself became a believer.
On 27 March he was sent to the psychiatric section of the local military hospital, but 17 days later he was released, because of his wife’s protests. On 2 June Sukharev was dismissed as being unsuitable for his job. On 11 September Sukharev completed 25 years of service on a high-grade salary. He was nevertheless refused a pension. Sukharev has five child dependants.
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After graduating from the Primalkino Middle School in the North Caucasus (Prokhladny district, Kabardino-Balkar ASSR), Lydia Gofman was given a report which stated that she regularly attended Baptist sectarian meetings and had not joined the Komsomol because of her religious convictions.
The report also mentioned her good results, her diligence, her conscientious attitude to socially useful work and her love of sport. Using this report, Lydia applied to Polytechnic College No. 102 in Kommunarsk, Voroshilovgrad Region. Her application was returned to her and she was told that the college had no need of believers as students.
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According to data supplied by the Council of ECB Prisoners’ Relatives, 39 Baptists (including five women) were in captivity in September 1979.
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NOTES
- On the Christian Seminar, see CCE 41.4, CCE 43.11 and CCE 46.8.
↩︎ - This section surely refers not to the officially approved All-Union Church of Seventh Day Adventists (AUCSDA), but to the dissenting All-Union Church of the True & Free Seventh Day Adventists (TFSDA).
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A Chronicle of Current Events 