Articles Of Faith

On March 14, 1978, Soviet police finally caught up with Vladimir Shelkov, the head of the All-Union Church of True and Free Seventh-Day Adventists. Shelkov had lived in hiding for 10 years until he was arrested at his daughter's home in Tashkent. The police also searched the house and adjoining grounds.

For four days, 12 hours at a time, 20 policemen equipped with guns, walkie-talkies, mine detectors, powerful torches, cameras, axes, crowbars, and spades took the house apart. Floors were split open, doors broken down, walls and ceilings smashed. The police dug six-foot-deep trenches in the yard and under the house and examined the cesspool with the help of magnetic lifting gear and probes.

They found two hiding places in the house and two large holes in the ground, each about six feet high and lined on the inside with plywood. As a result of the search, the police confiscated Bibles, psalm books, tape recordings of psalms, sermons, and broadcasts by the BBC and Voice of America, documents about prisoners, as well as manuscripts, letters, postcards, and photographs.

Before his arrest, Vladimir Shelkov had been constantly persecuted. He had spent 23 years in prison during earlier terms. In 1945 he was sentenced to be shot, but his execution was commuted to 10 years in the camps. He went into hiding in 1969, and until he was taken from his daughter's home in 1978, he managed to live secretly within the Adventist community. At the time of his arrest, Vladimir Shelkov was 83 years old. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to five years of hard labor.

He did not survive for long. At the end of January, 1980, his wife received a telegram from Tabaga camp, near Yakutsk, informing her of his death.

Article 52 of the Soviet Constitution (1977) states that "citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of conscience, that is, the right to profess or not to profess any religion, and to conduct religious worship or atheistic propaganda."

In an obvious manner, this constitutional provision excludes the right to conduct "religious propaganda" or what believers would regard as preaching and teaching religious beliefs, a central requirement of many religions and a form of exercise of religious freedom. Other Soviet laws also restrict observance. The decree "On Religious Associations" merits close attention:

Article 2 of the decree requires that all religious congregations register with the Council for Religious Affairs, a state agency attached to the USSR Council of Ministers.

Article 4 stipulates that no congregation may begin its activity until the Council for Religious Affairs has accepted the congregation for registration.

Article 16 adds that congregations are forbidden:

...to organize special gatherings of children, young people or women for prayer or other purposes, to organize Bible meetings, literature meetings, handicrafts meetings, work meetings or meetings for religious study, to organize groups, circles or departments, to organize excursions or children's facilities, to open libraries or reading rooms or to organize sanatoria or medical assistance.

Within many religious communities a schism exists between those members who are prepared to accept these official restrictions and those who are not. Many Baptist prisoners of conscience, as well as Pentecostals and Seventh-Day Adventists, are members of congregations which have refused to register under the conditions laid down by the decree.

Members of these unregistered congregations find themselves in an "illegal" position. They do not have the right to exist. They have no right to buy or rent prayer houses. Many congregations have built prayer houses with their own funds and labor, and in hundreds of known cases these have been demolished or confiscated by the authorities, often amid scenes of brutal violence. Unregistered congregations frequently hold prayer meetings in open places (particularly forests) or in private houses. Such meetings are constantly disrupted by the regime.

The following account of what happened to a Pentecostal wedding comes from the unofficial human rights journal A Chronicle of Current Events, Number 53 (August, 1979):

On May 6 in the village of Novaya Greblya, Rogatin District, Ivano-Frankovsk Region, the wedding of O. Stefanishina and R. Shkavritko was broken up. On the day before the wedding the bride's father was summoned to the District Soviet and warned by the local commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs that religious wedding ceremonies are forbidden.

On the night of May 5, about 20 policemen and vigilantes broke into the Stefanishin's yard and demolished the wedding tent and the prepared tables. On May 6 the village was surrounded by police, troops, and vigilantes. All the roads were cut off and a quarantine on account of "Siberian plague" was declared. The bridegroom and his guests (about 200 people) could not get into the village to see his bride, and the bride was not allowed out to see him. About 100 believers went to protest to the Rogatin District Party Committee. The party official on duty wanted to call the police, but there were no policemen available--they were all involved in cordoning off the village.

The same issue of the Chronicle also reported on the breakup of a religious service in a registered Baptist church:

Odessa, May 2. A religious service in a registered prayer house was broken up. KGB men, police, and Gavrilov, local commissioner of the Council for Religious Affairs, warned that a service must be only two hours long. They constantly shouted through a megaphone how much time was left. As soon as the time was up; the officials broke up the service. A fire engine and fire pump were summoned to assist the police. Several people were arrested.

These humiliating attacks on religious services take place in a pervasive atmosphere of hostility and discrimination against religion in general. Many religious believers from all denominations have complained that the state publishing houses do not print enough Bibles and other spiritual literature to satisfy the religious population. The Baptist Larisa Zaitseva, while on trial for her unofficial printing activities cited the following statistics:

More than 7,000 different newspapers are published in the USSR but not one Christian newspaper. More than 500 magazines are printed here, but neither in the newspapers or magazines can believers express their views and make public what is necessary for their spiritual life.

In the face of sustained religious persecution, many religious believers still try to organize themselves in order to practice their faith and protect their rights. One of the most highly organized groups is the "dissenting" Baptist church. The dissenting Baptists broke away from the officially endorsed All-Union Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians and Baptists at the beginning of the 1960s. They do not accept any of the government's restrictions on religious activity, particularly the ban on the teaching of religion to children, state control of the content of sermons, and the prohibition on religious propaganda.

These dissenting Baptists are led by the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians and Baptists. This body, which was set up in the mid-1960s, is not officially recognized; many of its leaders have been imprisoned. The chairman of this unofficial council of churches, Gennady Kryuchkov, has been living in hiding from the Soviet authorities since 1970.

A former secretary of the council, Georgy Vins, was arrested in 1974 after a period of hiding. He was sentenced in 1975 to five years' imprisonment, plus five years in internal exile for "violating the laws on separation of church and state and of school and church, infringement of person and rights of citizens under appearance of performing religious ceremonies, and anti-Soviet slander." Vins served his term in the camps, but in 1979 he was exchanged along with four other prisoners for two convicted Soviet spies and was allowed to come to the United States.

In spite of this persecution, the Council of Churches provides ongoing support to its followers. There are an estimated 2,000 congregations of dissenting Baptists in the USSR. Members of the council, who are all pastors, serve as a link among these congregations. Mikhail Khorev, for example, a pastor from the Moldavian capital of Kishinev, was arrested in Leningrad, 2,000 kilometers from his home. At his trial in May, 1980, one of the accusations against him was that he had conducted a wedding service in a forest without official permission.

The council also tries to provide religious literature. In June, 1971, the Council of Churches wrote an open letter to Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin, announcing the establishment of a private publishing house called "Khristyanin," or "The Christian." The literature produced by Khristyanin is printed in Russian, Moldavian, Ukrainian, and German on secret presses operating in various parts of the country. The presses are built from old domestic appliances, and even the ink is homemade. They are said to be easily dismantled and transportable.

For over a decade the Khristyanin publishing house has produced Bibles and prayer books, as well as two journals put out by the council. It also publishes a bulletin which documents the violation of Baptists' rights in the USSR. This bulletin is compiled by the Council of Prisoners' Relatives, an unofficial Baptist group which has monitored the imprisonment of dissenting Baptists since 1964.

The output of the Khristyanin publishing house has reportedly been enormous. According to Georgy Vins, 10 million items of religious literature produced by the press in 1972 and 1973 were confiscated by the authorities. When the Baptist prisoner Nikolai Kabysh was arrested in January, 1980, a cache of 16,000 religious texts and a ton of paper were confiscated.

Since 1974, much in the same way Vladimir Shelkov's home was ransacked, Soviet authorities have raided and closed down five printing presses belonging to the publishing house. We know of 26 unofficial printers who have been imprisoned since the publishing house was established. Numerous other Baptists have also been imprisoned for distributing literature put out by the press.

Because the dissenting Baptists have been well-organized, more has been known about their persecution than about the treatment of other unregistered churches in the USSR. But in recent years, dissidents in Moscow have developed increasing contact with communities of religious believers. In Lithuania, activists within the Catholic church, including many priests, have defended the integrity of the church and participated in nationalist activity as well. By 1979, 12 unofficial samizdat journals were circulating in Lithuania, all of them concerned about the church as well as the constraints on Lithuanian culture. The regime, at times, has reacted harshly to this defiance. In the last two years, three Catholic priests were killed under mysterious circumstances.

In all three cases, the priests were killed after articles denouncing them appeared in the official press. Leonas Sapoka was killed in October, 1980, and Leonas Mazeika died in August, 1981. Both men were attacked at home at night by unknown persons; they were beaten and stabbed to death. Both had signed petitions protesting government repression of the Catholic religion. The third victim was Bronius Laurinavicius. He was denounced in the press on November 21, 1981. Three days later authorities summoned him to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, where he was killed when a truck ran him down.

Pentecostal communities have also begun to protest their treatment. They are fundamentalist Christians who long abhorred any political activity, even contact with people like Moscow dissidents who would have tried to help them. But by 1976 they understood the need to publicize their situation, appeal to the West, and even apply to leave the country.

The Moscow Helsinki Watch Group, under the leadership of Professor Yuri Orlov, responded to their situation. In December, 1976, Lidia Voronina, a 29-year-old former student of philosophy, was sent by the Helsinki group to collect information about the Pentecostals. She spent two weeks among them in Starotitirovka, in the north Caucasus, and in Nakhodka, near Vladivostok, nearly 7,000 miles from Moscow.

The communities awaited her visit. Beginning at 6 a.m., people stood in line to speak with her. Each family had a tragic story. Under Stalin, the communities had fled by stages across the breadth of the country. They had first lived in Odessa where the sect was founded, then in central Asia and Siberia, before reaching the Far East. They faced persecution, even execution, in every city. One woman had seen her grandparents shot. Her parents escaped to a forest, where they and their children lived in caves.

The young men refused to bear arms. Though they agreed to serve in construction battalions, the regime insisted they take conventional oaths, which the boys refused to do. Many were sent to labor camps, often after military trials that were plainly illegal because the boys had never actually entered the armed forces.

The everyday life of the community was also difficult. The families were large because parents did not use artificial birth control methods or resort to abortions. Yet the mothers were not granted medals, or small cash subsidies, which by law they were entitled to receive for bearing many children. The government did not leave them undisturbed. Their prayer meetings were disrupted and the participants fined. During searches, Bibles and religious objects were confiscated.

The regime knew the Pentecostals were no longer passively accepting their fate. Voronina herself saw how they devotedly listened to Western radio broadcasts, a sure sign of social resistance. When she visited Nokhodka, the regime dispatched two "official" Pentecostal priests to caution the community. With Voronina in one house lecturing to the villagers about the Helsinki group, the priests were nearby, telling people to rely on God's help and shun contact with "left political forces."

There is a growing awareness among the religious communities that the regime will not reduce its hostility toward believers. The Pentecostals have begun demanding the right to leave in order to practice their religion without harassment. As yet, only a handful of the more than 30,000 who have applied have received permission.

One family, the Vashchenkos, along with two of their friends, have managed to generate enormous publicity. In June, 1978, three adults and four children slipped by Soviet guards and entered the American embassy in Moscow. They demanded exit visas. The Americans could not satisfy their demand, so the family, who had suffered repression in the past and feared reprisals if they left the embassy, took up residence in the lobby of the consular section. They have since been moved to a small basement apartment but are still holding out in the embassy.

The Jewish population has also faced severe restrictions under Communist rule. In the last 15 years, however, Jewish activists have organized an emigration movement which has generated highly visible support in the West. By 1982, almost 300,000 Jews were able to emigrate to Israel, Europe, and America.

As their testimonies have made clear, Jews face more than the conventional restrictions imposed on all organized religion. As Jews, they are a recognized Soviet nationality and carry the word "Jew" on their internal passports. Their treatment, in turn, extends beyond pressure to forsake religious practices or abandon the country's few remaining synagogues.

Whether or not they are believers, Jewish origins alone make them vulnerable to discrimination in education and employment. Today emigration has come to a virtual halt, leaving in doubt what kind of future remains for the vast majority of Soviet Jews who will never leave the country.

Joshua Rubenstein was New England co-ordinator of Amnesty International, USA, and the author of Soviet Dissidents, Their Struggle for Human Rights when this article appeared.