Savinsky, Sergey Nikitovich

S. N. Savinsky was born in 1924 ^[1] . The year before, his father left Orthodoxy and became a Baptist . Then he met the future mother of a boy who was a singer in the Saratov Baptist community (her parents switched to Baptism from Molokanism ). Having married, they settled on the Savinsky farm, which was founded by the grandfather of S. N. Savinsky. Parents were engaged in peasant labor and evangelism. By 1929, a local Baptist community of 36 was formed in the area.

Shortly after the birth of Sergey, his father was convicted of refusing military service due to Christian pacifism and sentenced to one and a half years in correctional camps, but due to his education, he was sent to work as a machine operator in one of the state farms of the Saratov region.

In 1931, the entire Savinsky family was dispossessed and exiled to Kazakhstan , to the Dzhambul region , to the village of Burno-Oktyabrsky . Already in school years, the child had to endure a lot of oppression because of his faith.

In 1942, upon reaching the age of 18, S. N. Savinsky was drafted into the army. At the end of the regimental school of junior commanders, he fell into the location of the Steppe Front , which was preparing for the battle on the Kursk Bulge . In the first battle, without firing a single shot, he was wounded in the shoulder and after treatment in the hospital was sent to the non-combat unit.

Then at the hospital (in Ostrogozhsk , Voronezh region ) S. N. Savinsky met his future wife Lyudmila. Lyudmila grew up in a family of evangelical Christians, her father was arrested in the early 1930s during the Stalinist repressions and the family did not see him again.

In 1944, S. N. Savinsky was demobilized and sent as a mechanic to restore the Voroshilovgrad steam locomotive plant . In 1946, in Ostrogozhsk, he married Lyudmila, after which they left for Kazakhstan, to the parents of S. N. Savinsky. By this time, the ECB community of several dozen believers had already arisen around them.

In 1950, having completed his secondary education interrupted by the war, S. N. Savinsky entered the geologist at the All-Union Correspondence Polytechnic Institute . By his own admission, part-time education was the only opportunity for a Baptist believer, who was also not a member of the Komsomol, to receive a diploma of higher education.

At the end of VZPI worked in a specialty in Tashkent . In 1964, during the Khrushchev’s anti-religious campaign , he was fired simply because he was a believer (moreover, a “sectarian”!), Which forced him to move to the North Caucasus, to Essentuki , where he continued to work in his specialty.

In 1979 he retired.

In 1983-1993, he and his wife carried out missionary service in the village of Podgorny, Stavropol Territory . Here in 1985 S.N. Savinsky was ordained deacon .

From the time of retirement, at the proposal of the General Secretary of the All-Union Agricultural Trade Union, A.M. Bychkov, he began compiling the history of the ECB in the USSR. According to S. N. Savinsky, this work turned out to be his vocation. He later recalled:

“When it came time to retire, A.M. Bychkov , who was then the general secretary of our brotherhood, approached me. He asked me: “Sergey Nikitovich, and what will you do in retirement?” I say: “I don’t know, I haven’t thought yet”. Then he told me: “And you know, we have a good job for you. Necessary work. We have in the program to collect materials and write the history of our fraternity. There are many collected materials of Kovalkov, Motorin ... Karev collected something and even wrote one essay on the centenary of the brotherhood. Grachev Yuri Sergeyevich worked on history, but all this is fragmented and lies a dead weight. We need to get the materials. I believe that you have a penchant for research, you wrote more than one scientific report as a geologist ... Grasp. "

I thought and agreed. And since 1979, when I retired, I started this work. To do this, it was necessary to go to the central libraries, penetrate the archives, find private archives ... And somewhere in 1983, a story was written in a draft, but only of the Russian-Ukrainian fraternity. For other fraternities, other brothers were engaged. N. Sizov studied in Kyrgyzstan, Sedletsky wrote in Moldova, Dick Ivan Petrovich wrote in the German Mennonite brotherhood, etc. And only by 1989 did the book “History of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of the USSR” be published. This is a big red book. Half of it in volume is my part. This was the “first swallow” ” ^[2] .

Later, he wrote a two-volume book “The History of Evangelical Christians-Baptists of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus (1867-1917; 1917-1967)”, which is more complete, especially in terms of repressions, than the first book, as well as a number of other works.

S.N.Savinsky also taught the history of the ECB at various Baptist seminaries in the former Soviet Union.

In the mid-1990s, he moved to the United States. Since 1996 he lived in Salt Lake City ( Utah ), then in Spokane ( Washington ) ^[3] .

Permanent author of the Russian-language Christian magazine Voice of Truth, published in the United States.

• Team of authors. The history of the ECB in the USSR . - M .: VSEKhB publishing house, 1989 .-- S. 624.
• Savinsky S. N. The History of Russian-Ukrainian Baptism: a Textbook. - Odessa: Odessa Theological Seminary, Publishing House of Thought, 1995. - 128 p.
• Savinsky S.N. History of Evangelical Christians Baptists of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus (1867 - 1917). - SPb. : The Bible for All, 1999. - ISBN 5-7454-0376-4 .
• Savinsky S. N. The History of Evangelical Christians of the Baptists of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus. II (1917 - 1967). - SPb. : The Bible for All, 2001 .-- 10,000 copies. - ISBN 5-7454-0594-5 .