Christian (publisher)

Attempts by Soviet Protestants to compensate for the shortage of Bibles and other religious literature with the help of illegal samizdat took place throughout almost the entire Soviet era, but the 1960-1980s became the heyday of this phenomenon ^[3] . This was facilitated by some softening of the Soviet political regime and the growth of the educational level of believers ^[3] .

The “initiative movement” of evangelical Christian Baptists arose during the Khrushchev’s anti-religious campaign in the early 1960s. From the very beginning, “initiative” Baptists illegally printed spiritual literature. They quickly mastered the artisanal method of printing “blue” ( hectograph ). Other primitive methods were used: typewriting, stencil, steklograf, photo. Part of the literature was replicated in a manuscript way, for which children of believers were often attracted ^[4] .

Over the 10 years, the experience of the “proponents” has evolved from spontaneous samizdat to an underground publishing house ^[5] . Actually the publishing house "Christian" was created in 1971. In June of the same year, the publishing house turned to the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Alexei Kosygin, with a notification about the beginning of the publishing house. The document read: “Christian Publishing House is a voluntary association of ECB believers united to publish and disseminate religious literature. The publishing house is kept on the voluntary donations of believers, and therefore distributes literature free of charge ” ^[6] .

Over time, believers, according to their own drawings, assembled the first printing press, which made it possible to produce literature at a relatively high printing level. The machine had a small motor, which did not arouse suspicion of significant energy consumption. It could be assembled from improvised materials: two squeeze rollers from a washing machine, a bicycle chain and pedals, etc., and when disassembled, it was placed in several small suitcases that did not attract attention. Printing ink was made from the bark of trees, burnt rubber and metal sawdust. Printing workers often went completely into an illegal position. Since in the USSR one person could not go unnoticed to buy a lot of paper, hundreds of people were engaged in its purchase and transportation ^[7] .

Believers have gradually improved technology. In March 1974, the publishing house mastered the raster technique of reproducing photographs and other illustrations ^[8] . By the 1980s, offset printing presses prevailed in clandestine printing houses, which made it possible to publish literature in print runs of many thousands ^[9] .

Since the beginning of the 1960s, believers have been publishing various appeals and leaflets. In 1962, the first Gospel Appeal magazine printed on hectographs was published on 70 pages ^[9] . Later, the church journal “Brotherly Leaflet” was published, named after the magazine published at the beginning of the 20th century. Books of Protestant authors, biblical textbooks, loose-leaf calendars, songbooks, music books, as well as booklets and evangelistic leaflets were printed ^[10] .

In 1963, the first issue of the journal Herald of Salvation was published, prepared by a 22-year-old girl from Prokopyevsk, Lyubov Bogdanova ^[11] . The first circulation of the magazine amounted to only 60 copies, but it was so successful that one of the leaders of the “initiative”, Gennady Kryuchkov, proposed making it common to the entire movement. Bogdanova became its chief editor, moving to an illegal position. Three years later, another young Christian, Svetlana Beletskaya, joined her. They published a magazine with a frequency of 4-6 times a year. In 1976, the Herald of Salvation was renamed the Herald of Truth ^[4] .

Another periodical of the Christian is the Bulletin of the Council of Relatives of the ECB Prisoners of War. He left on behalf of a public organization at the ECB SC - the Council of Relatives of the ECB Prisoners, headed by L. M. Vins , the mother of George Vince . The newsletter published reports of recent arrests of evangelical Baptist Christians, lists and photographs of all prisoners, as well as the addresses of their families for assistance ^[4] .

The publisher has published several books, including The Pilgrim 's Journey , The New Testament , Anthem, and Charles Spurgeon . In 1968, the first edition of the Gospel of John was printed; each community received fifteen copies. In 1973, the publishing house issued in a print run of 5 thousand copies the Gospel of Mark in a small format - a little more than a matchbox. It was intended for Christians in prison - due to its size it can be easier to hide during a search ^[12] . In 1974, the entire Bible was supposed to be released, but when George Vince was arrested on March 31, 1974, a film with text for offset printing was seized from him and the publication had to be postponed ^[8] . The first edition of the Bible was published in the spring of 1978 ^[7] . By 1983, clandestine printing houses printed about half a million copies of the Gospels and collections of church hymns ^[10] .

The local communities, members of the All-Russian Higher School of Economics , often supported the activities of the publishing house and secretly participated in the distribution of literature ^[7] . Christian Publishing House was forced to hide the names of its employees and the location of printing houses. Although there were few illegal immigrants - printing workers, in general, hundreds of people were involved in the activities of the publishing house — those who provided premises, mined paper and supplies, were involved in the transportation of materials and finished products ^[13] .

During the existence of the KGB publishing house and the police, several times it was possible to detect illegal print spots. In these cases, machines were confiscated, believers were arrested and sent to prisons. In October 1974, a printing house was discovered at the Latvian Ligukalne farm (near Cesis ). Seven printing workers were arrested, and a printing press, about nine tons of paper and 15 thousand already printed copies of the New Testament, were confiscated. According to the recollections of one of the employees of the Christian, the location of the printing house was given out by a traitor - the son of a presbyter, introduced by the KGB to the publishing house ^[14] .

Later, the same printing houses were opened: in 1977 in Ivangorod of the Leningrad Region, in January 1980 in the village of Stari Kodaki in Ukraine, in June 1980 in the village of Glivenko of the Krasnodar Territory, and in 1982 in Tokmak (Kyrgyzstan) ^{[10 ]} .

When an underground printing spot was discovered in Ivangorod in the Leningrad Region, three printing workers, Ivan Levin, Lyudmila and Larisa Zaitseva, were arrested in the house of driver David Koop. All three at different times moved to an illegal position. They secretly lived in a printing house disguised in the attic. There was also a separate toilet, three beds, printing equipment, and a supply of food. The power cable to the secret rooms was disguised, and the owner installed a call to communicate with the printing house employees in the closet. By the time it was discovered, the printing house had already managed to print several issues of the Bulletin of Truth and Brotherly Leaflet magazines, a songbook, the books The Secret of Happiness by Billy Graham and The Spiritual War by John Bunyan . As a result, the owner and three employees of the printing house were sentenced to between 3.5 and 5 years in prison ^[15] .

One of the former leaders of the ECB SC Evgeny Rodoslavov recalled that, despite the “hunting” of the KGB, dozens of “brigades” of believers continued to work in various regions of the USSR (the Baltic states, Central Russia, Siberia, Central Asia, Ukraine and Moldova). “The KGB constantly breathed in the back of our heads,” Rodoslavov noted. - Once in the Bolgradsky district of Odessa region, about 100 searches were carried out. The ministerial brothers did not know the reason for such a zeal for the authorities, and we knew that they were looking for us because we had made a mistake, and the KGB immediately followed the trail. ” ^[ten]

According to the memoirs of Rodoslavov, believers mastered the rules of conspiracy, which allowed them to avoid arrest for a long time. “Maybe it’s funny to hear that the KGB caught us and couldn’t catch us, but the fact remains the fact ,” he argued. “ Our printers (the South Ukrainian department) processed three tons of products per month and transported them throughout the USSR - from Moldova to Siberia, and this was steadily carried out under Brezhnev, Andropov and Gorbachev, until the perestroika and legalization of the Christian publishing house . ^[10]

According to the official data of the modern MSC ECB ^[a] , the publishing house was led by G. K. Kryuchkov, Yu. K. Kryuchkov, V. I. Pidchenko, M. S. Krivko, I. P. Plett ^[16] . According to a number of other sources, in the early 1970s the work of the publishing house was organized by G.P. Vins ^{[17] [7]} . Moreover, on March 31, 1974, Vince was arrested (repeatedly) in Novosibirsk just when he delivered the printing ink, photographic films with the Bible for a printing press, and various manuscripts — personal and alien ^{[18] [b]} .

In the 1970s, believers established close contacts with the Soviet dissident movement , thanks to which periodicals of the Christian began to go to the West, their materials were voiced in foreign media, including on radio stations broadcasting through the Iron Curtain to the territory of the Soviet Union . After the arrest of George Vince, in his defense, as well as in defense of other prisoners of conscience , an initiative group for the protection of human rights in the USSR and academician Andrei Sakharov came forward. Vince was sentenced to 5 years in the camp and 5 to exile. In 1979, after serving a 5-year term, he was deprived of Soviet citizenship and, together with four political dissidents (including Alexander Ginzburg and Eduard Kuznetsov ), were exchanged for two Soviet intelligence officers sentenced to 50 years in the US ^[4] .

The publishing house not only supplied believers with spiritual literature, it helped to form an understanding of the unity of evangelical Christian Baptists throughout the USSR. Reading the regular editions of ecclesiastical magazines, believers, say, from Kazakhstan, knew that their co-religionists exist in both Khabarovsk and Moldova. The historian Nadezhda Belyakova ^[c] described the ECB's community activities in the printing, transportation, and distribution of Christian literature as “religious practice in the broader sense of the word” ^[19] . According to Belyakova, such practices in the Protestant milieu of the Soviet period played a significant, if not key, role in shaping the identity of the believer ^[20] .

• Belyakova Nadezhda. (date of treatment: 08.19.2019) Collective practices of a typical community of evangelical Christian Baptists in the late USSR // Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation State, religion, church in Russia and abroad: a scientific journal. - Moscow: RAGS , 2012. - No. 3-4 (30) . - S. 284-314 . - ISSN 2073-7203 .
• Velichko N.K. The path leading to life is narrow. 1961-2011 . - Kiev, 2011 .-- 360 s.
• Vince G.P. The Gospel in Ties . - Kiev: Compass, 1994 .-- 254 p.
• Zavatsky V. Evangelical movement in the USSR after the Second World War. - M. , 1995. - ISBN 0-8361-1238-5 -RUS.
• Statement to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR A.N. Kosygin from the publishing house "Christian" (June 5, 1971) // Archive of the RSEB .
• How the Soviet pastor was changed to American spies // Russian service of the BBC: article. - 2018 .-- April 27. Archived on April 27, 2018.
• MSC ECB . Independence is the spiritual heritage of an awakened church . - Booklet for the 50th anniversary of the MSC ECB. - Christian, 2011.
• Nikolskaya T. K. Features of the development of Protestant samizdat in the USSR (1960s - 1980s) // Euro-Asian Accreditation Association Theological Reflections: Journal. - 2016. - No. 17 . - S. 131-140 . - ISSN 2415-783X . Archived March 24, 2018.
• Nikolskaya T.K. Russian Protestantism and State Power in 1905-1991. - SPb. : Publishing House of the European University in St. Petersburg, 2009. - (Territories of History; Issue 2). - ISBN 978-5-94380-081-8 .
• Nikonchuk-Klimenko N.V. Interview with N.K. Velichko // Donetsk Christian University Research project "Oral history of the ECB in the CIS." Archived March 5, 2018.
• Patz A. 1961-2011: The Initiative Movement - 50th Anniversary // International Christian Newspaper. - 2011. - August 11. Archived March 5, 2018.