Novosibirsk, Russia is a city of two million right in the middle of Russia, just to the north of Kazakhstan. It is there that I spend my linguist's year abroad 1995/6, and also met my wife, Oxana, who was a student there. Having got married in 1999, and after the birth of our eldest daughter, Sophia, in 2004, we moved and made our home there until 2019/20. This is the story of Novosibirsk Baptist Church.
The city of Novosibirsk was founded as a settlement for railway workers in 1893 with the name Alexandrovsky. Shortly thereafter it was recognised as a town in Tomsk gubernia, with the name Novonikolayevsk. Around that time, in 1903, a young man called Luka Frolov alighted the train in Novonikolayevsk, and the origins of Novosibirsk Evangelical Christian/Baptist Church go back to him. The core of the church which formed around him was former Molokans (an evangelical movement within Eastern Orthodoxy). By the end of 1930 there were 30 people in the church.
At this time, Russia was still ruled by the Tsars, and the state religion was Eastern Orthodoxy. While ethnic minorities were allowed their own religious communities, in the words of Dostoevsky "to be Russian means to be Orthodox". And from those early years Frolov's church in the city experienced pressure and persecution of various kinds. Within the first year of the church's existence there was already a martyr for the faith, the preacher Andre Perminov. However, from 1905 the church was allowed to meet legally. They purchased a plot of land on the edge of the town, and in 1924 built their own wooden house of prayer on Jurinskaia street just behind what was then the town cemetery.
Meanwhile there were other Protestant and Evangelical groups meeting in various locations around the town. The early period after the Bolshevik revolution was a time of growth for religious dissenters, while the Eastern Orthodox Church, tarred by their association with the Tsars, were more openly persecuted. However, it was clear that the new atheist regime would not tolerate religious faith for long. However, by 1928 the church had grown to 600 people.
1928/9 was a turning point. By government decree all church property was confiscated by the government with the exception of the house of prayer of the Evangelical Christians, meeting on Jurinskaia street. All other Protestant believers were directed to gather in the one place, and some did join the Evangelical Christians at that point. For the next decade the church was allowed to continue, albeit in a very hostile climate. 1937, the year of the Great Purge, was particularly severe for arrests and executionsm, such as Fyodor Kuksenko, secretary of the Siberian Union of Evangelical Christians in 1937. The Evangelical Christians were forced by the authorities to refuse Baptists use of their building. The latter, who met in residential flats around the town, were then tried for creating an illegal "anti-Soviet organisation". A former-atheist-turned-Christian-poetess called Polina Skakunova (blinded in a suicide attempt before her conversion), Vasily Kalmykov (whose son I knew personally), and several others were found guilty and executed in 1942. In 1940/1 the remaining church building was closed by the government - the last legally permitted evangelical/Baptist community in Siberia. However, in a bid to support the war effort, in 1942 some degree of religious freedom was allowed and the building reopened. In 1944 the Baptists and Evangelical Christians in Novosibirsk merged into a single body.
The church continued in the post-war period throughout the final years of Stalin (d.1953). One new dimension to the work was among German prisoners of war in Novosibirsk, housed in barracks on the left bank of the river Ob. Visits from the church on Jurinskaia led to the conversion of various Mennonites. And so, from 1956, the Russian-speaking church was joined by a German-speaking congregation of "Mennonite brothers", which met later on a Sunday. However, under Khruschev, the next Soviet leader, anti-religious campaigns restarted. In 1957 the church was again closed and the Baptists forced to rebuild their church outside the city limits, at "Solnechnaia", where a church continues to meet to this day. After a period of years when there was no central meeting place, the new church reopened in 1961. It was at this time that a split occurred in the Baptist church. Those willing to accept some government restrictions for the sake of continued existence remained at Solnechnaia, while others, the "non-registered Baptists" refused any state control and constituted an "underground church". A leading light in the "non-registered Baptist" movement, Georgy Vins, was arrested in Novosibirsk in 1974, and eventually expelled from the country. This division persists to this day.
Over time, the anti-religious campaigns under Khruschev petered out, and the church was allowed some measure of freedom. By 1984, the church had a membership of 1000, and was visited by evangelist Billy Graham. In 1988, under Gorbachev, freedom of conscience was proclaimed in the Soviet Union and the church was once again allowed to operate freely outside church walls. At Christmas 1988 a new church building within the city limits was opened and held its first service. It had been funded by German Mennonites, who were now free to emigrate to Germany but had to leave their money behind.
The next phase of the story is about church life after the Soviet Union...
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