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Religious Ferment in Russia by the Same Author 1II11I111 aa4a4~a This book is to be returned on or before the last date stamped below. ·14. JM 81 f8, f9 91 x w a: ID :J i . I c" ! Religious Ferment in Russia By the same author OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE: THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION IN THE USSR Religious Ferment In Russia Protestant Opposition to Soviet Religious Policy Michael Bourdeaux MACMILLAN . London· Melbourne· Toronto ST MARTIN'S PRESS· New York 1968 \\.~ 1>(1<' © Michad Bourdeaux 1968 4v~\ ~ \ Published by MACMILLAN & co LTD Little Essex Street London wc 2 /' ! and also at Bombay Calcutta and Madras Macmillan South Africa (Publishers) Pty Ltd Johannesburg The Macmillan Company of Australia Pty Ltd Melbourne The Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd Toronto St Martin's Press Inc New York Library of Congress catalog card no. 68-15656 Printed in Great Britain by R. & R. CLARK, LTD. Edinburgh To my parents and many friends in Cornwall Contents Abbreviations and Russian terms viii Preface IX 1 Introduction 1 The Growth of the Sects I Registration 3 The All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists 6 The Khrushchev Campaign 12 Drama at the American Embassy in Moscow 16 2 The Baptist Initiative 20 3 Towards a Congress 39 4 The 1963 Congress and After 66 5 The Reformers' Challenge to the State 95 6 The Reform Movement as seen in the Soviet Press 125 7 Church, State and the Future 154 Ambiguities in the CCECB's Relations with the State 154 New legislation of 1966 158 Administrative Measures 164 The AUCECB Congress, 4-8 October 1966 172 Epilogue 183 Appendix 1 190 Appendix 11 211 Notes 23 1 Index 249 vii Abbreviations and Russian terms AUCECB All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists. CCECB Council of Churches of the Evangelical Christians and Baptists. CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union. dvadsatka 'Council of Twenty' (group governing individual local Orthodox churches). ECB Evangelical Christians and Baptists. GPU Secret police. KGB Secret police. MVD Ministry of Internal Affairs, i.e. Secret police. NKVD Secret police. RSFSR Russian Republic.' soviet Policy-making and administrative council under the Communist Party. SSR Soviet Socialist Republic. Preface In recent years there has been increasing evidence of stirrings in Soviet society to gain freedom from restrictive state control. Sometimes these have been instigated by an individual; more often they seem to have had a broad democratic base within a certain sector of society. The best known example of this is the urge for greater ideological latitude among younger writers during the early 1960'S which, since the trial of the writers Sinyavsky and Daniel in February 1966, has become a ferment. The primary purpose of this study is to demonstrate that a move­ ment demanding similar freedoms has arisen within the Christian Church. Compared with developments in the literary world it is an almost unknown subject: yet when a fmal reckoning can be made on the growth of the democratic tradition in the USSR the religious 'front' may be found to have its place. A second aim of this book is to illustrate what is being said about Christianity in the Soviet Union by people who live there (both believers and atheists). It is, first and foremost, a collation of documents which speak for themselves so strongly that com­ mentary is necessary principally to link rather than to interpret them. Ecumenical contacts with the Eastern European Churches have been growing for some time, but, generally speaking, churchmen in the West have lacked background information on the lives of those churches with which they are entering into closer relations. It was not considered either desirable or necessary to write a history of the Baptist movement in Russia - not desir­ able because it would have destroyed the unity of this book which concentrates on a particular reform movement that evolved in 1961 as a result of a change in Soviet anti-religious policy; not necessary because, by a happy circumstance, the publishers of the present work also brought out Religion in the Soviet Union by Waiter Kolarz, Chapter IX of which contains a first-class history of the Russian Baptist movement. His work ends in the year this begins and is therefore essential background reading for this book. In taking up at the point at which he ix x Religious Ferment in Russia ended, I pay a conscious and humble tribute to a fme man and a magnificent scholar. By confming myself rigidly to one narrow aspect of religious life in Russia today, I have tried to provide information in depth which may be of some small service to the Ecumenical Movement in promoting a growing understanding between East and West. A third aim is to honour Evangelical Christianity in the Soviet Union in its centenary year. The first Russian convert to the Baptist faith was N. I. Voronin (I840-I905), who was baptized in the river Kura, near Tbilisi, on I September I867. It is par­ ticularly appropriate to examine the progress of the movement fifty years after the I9I7 Revolution, and this study reveals grounds for both disquiet and hope. It is a matter for regret that my researches on the period under review have not uncovered more positive reactions from the official leadership of the Evan­ gelical Christian and Baptist Church and that the documents present more cogently the point of view of the reformers (because they wrote them). Official replies in the pages of Bratsky Vestnik are bound to be muted by comparison, and one hopes that soon a sympathizer with the official leadership will write up its case with full frankness. Until this happens, one must remain content with the knowledge of the achievements of the official Baptist Church before the reform movement began. Some of the material used here has appeared only in Russian emigre journals or is as yet unpublished. A careful studsy of the documents, however, has convinced me of their genuineness, and the authenticity of no single one has, as far as I know, ever been challenged by the Soviet authorities. Where, in the very nature of the case, it is impossible to track down the full story from official public sources it would be unscholarly to omit any evi­ dence relevant to the subject. Since it became known that I was engaged on the present work, I have been sent material by a number of people. There are too many for me to list them all, so I will mention none by name, but express my thanks here to the many friends who have helped me. At all stages of the work Peter Reddaway has been my friend and adviser, and his encouragement has Preface Xl been of more value than I can easily express. I am grateful, . also, to Miss Xenia Howard-Johnston for her help in preparing the manuscript. My thanks are due to the following for permission to reproduce documentary material: U.S. GovemmentPrinting Office, B.B.C. Central Research Unit, Le Messager Orthodoxe, Nashi Dni, News­ week, Novosti, Posev, Religion in Communist Dominated Areas, St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly, The Baptist World, The Reporter, The Times, The Watchman Examiner. Where Russian originals of the documents used were available, I have made my own translations. However, despite strenuous efforts I have not been able to obtain these originals in every instance. The major passages of which I am not able to guarantee the verbal accuracy are on: pp. 20, 28, 32-37, 42-46, 53-63, 64- 65, 78-83, 83-93 and the major part of 191-229. Translations from Ukrainian are by Olga Hruby. Unfortunately, the only book on the reform Baptists so far published, Na iskhode nochi ('The Passing of Night') (Alma-Ata, 1966) by A. Sulatskov, has not become available in the West, but two remarkable and similar descriptions of the movement have just reached me as this book goes to press. L. N. Mitrokhin has written Baptizm (Moscow, Politizdat, 1966) (see pp. 79-89 and 248-250). Mitrokhin and A. 1. Klibanov collaborate in a more detailed essay, 'Schism in the Baptist Church today', in Voprosy Nauchnovo Ateizma, vol. 3 (Moscow, Mysl, 1967, pp. 84-110). The latter is the first Soviet attempt I have seen to set out objec­ tively what the reform movement is about. Many lengthy ex­ tracts from its documents are given, confirming and expanding what is printed here. My passage on the 1960 Letter of Instruc­ tions is verbally substantiated. As the reformers are now simply known as 'young Baptists' in some areas (p. 105), my use of the word 'ferment' in the title is more than ever justified. Chislehurst, April 1967 MICHAEL BOURDEAUX I Introduction THE GROWTH OF THE SECTS The persistence and growth of sectarian groups is one of the most interesting features of the Soviet scene today. A book was recently published by F. FedorenkoI which, as a Soviet reviewer rightly says, treats ' more than 400 religious sects' . 2. Even since the writing of that book another new sect has appeared upon the scene, a group known as the Pokutniki (' Penitents' in Ukrainian) who seem to be descended from the suppressed Uniates (Eastern Rite Catholics).3 The difficulty of organizing church life on a national scale has contributed to the appearance of local sub-variations of some denominations and where a sect has been declared completely illegal (as in the case of the Uniates) this tendency has become even more apparent. It would not be too strong to talk of the 'hydra' principle here - cut off one head and many others grow in its place. There also seems to be an element of social protest against communism to be discerned in this growth of sectarianism.
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