-2

On March 4, 1979, we renounced our right to vote in the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. We issued a written statement concerning our refusal, with reference to our unbearable living conditions, took it to the polling place, and mailed a copy to the Administrative Council of the Dzerzhinsky District. After this radical step six propaganda agents visited us immediately in our home, and Mr. A. Gornichev, head of the housing allocation and registration, spent half an hour in our place. He brought a file with various plans and offered us an apartment, explaining that we had not been forgotten, but that they were simply waiting for some more suitable housing for us.

All they wanted was our promise that we would cast our vote for our Representative, A. N. Kosygin. Two days later, in Gornichev's office, my husband was given at last the address of our future apartment. However, it was not until the end of October, after a tormenting waiting period, that we could at last move to the new apartment.

As for the other problems in our life, nothing has changed thus far.

[Translated by Olga S. Hruby, RCDA]

N. Zherdeva

*) Translator's note:

Mr. & Mrs. Stanislav Zherdev are Pentecostal Christians. Their current address:

Another baby was born recently to the Zherdevs, so there are seven children in the family.

We have heard on the radio that there is a committee in your country concerned with children living in very difficult circumstances.

I am 14 years old, and I wish to share with you some of the conditions in which I and my little sisters live. They are not able to understand why our Mother and Father cry so much, why they do not get any toys, why Mommy never brings them any candy or nice clothes from the store, but keeps saying that perhaps God will help us, and that we must pray to Him. Daddy's wages are so meager that he cannot buy us anything because we need bread.

There are 13 of us in our family, and my Dad makes 100 rubles [a month]. My younger sisters keep asking Mother why are we so poor, and Mother says that it is because we are believers; as such, we are despised in this country and have to take the lowest paying jobs. We do not live, we just subsist. Why have we been living like this for many years? Because we are believers and we have a large family.

My parents, Mother and Father, want to emigrate to live with our relatives in Canada, Australia, the USA or other country. Our relatives have sent us the ninth official invitation, but all those invitations were rejected. for one month

My Father came for a visit with his relatives in the USSR/in 1955 upon his cousin's invitation, but was not permitted to leave, and for some reasons, he cannot leave to this day. Please inquire and check any one of the nine affidavits in the Soviet OVIR [Office of Visa and Registration], and you will see that we were supposed to live with our relatives in Daddy's country, not in the USSR.

Please help us any way you can. My little sisters beg you to help. They are sitting at my side at this moment, as I write in hope that you will help us, because we all are waiting for someone who would understand our situation.

Best regards:

Nadia, with her Brothers and Sisters

[Translator's note:

Nadia's father, Vasily Ivanovich Gorelkin and his family, including 10 children 3 to 20 years old, emigrated to Canada late in 1979.]

[Translated by Olga S. Hruby, RCDA]

66-222 0-80--12

Thank you very much for your letter of May 30th, 1980 and the opportunity you have given us to report on recent developments in regard to Human Rights in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

As we feel the situation of the un-registered Baptists in the U.S.S.R. would probably be very well covered by Pastor Georgi Vins and others (we assume that he has been asked for a similar report) we would like to concentrate our efforts on one of the most persecuted groups of believers in the Soviet Union the Pentecostals, and in particular, those who feel they have no future in the Soviet Union and have applied to emigrate.

Their situation is desperate. They are hounded continuously and mercilessly by the Soviet authorities (KGB). Your office has the originals or copies of all of their appeals and testimonies. The information contained therein could fill volumes, not pages, however we have tried to condense it down into 10 pages as you have requested, with the knowledge and hope that you will understand that this kind of persecution is launched today at thousands of Pentecostal families who want to emigrate and not only at the representative few mentioned in this report.

Because of the intolerable harrassment they have been forced to endure all of their lives, more than 30,000 Pentecostals appealed to the Supreme Soviet in 1977 for permission to emigrate to the West. For more than 18 months they received no answer to their appeals except increased persecution by local authorities. As a gesture of protest, and to draw world attention to their desperate situation, hundreds of families renounced their Soviet citizenship in August of 1978, refused to be counted in the Census in early 1979 and to vote in the general elections in March, 1979. This only resulted in more pressure from the authorities to force them to renounce their decision to emigrate.

..page 2.

FOUNDER, REV HARALAN POPOV

Rx33, ALCAS? EA (2.3) 247 5.496 BUX 65899 VANCOUVER BC V5N 5L3 CANADA

page 2.

We have started the report from mid 1977 as we feel perhaps you would not have received some of this information in time for the last Conference in Belgrade. All facts mentioned in the report are taken directly from documents received from the Soviet Union.

Additionally, members of our staff were able to visit the two Pentecostal families presently in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and obtain first-hand reports from them about the persecution of their families and other Christians in Chernogorsk, Siberia.

Another staff member, Arkady Polishchuk, a well-known Soviet journalist who was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1976, was part of the Helsinki Monitoring Group in Moscow and personally visited many of the families mentioned in this report (in the Krasnodarski Krai region) and in particular, Pastor Nikolai Goretoi and Fyodor Sidenko, both currently in prison.

Several Pentecostal families who have been allowed to emigrate to the West, can verify the accuracy of the details mentioned in the report. They have all personally experienced persecution from State authorities for their beliefs. They are: Vasili Gorelkin & family, now living in Canada; the Bagrin family, also living in Canada (the Gorelkin family come from Estonia, and the Bagrin family from Nakhodka); Eugene Bresenden & family, and Nikolai Plotnikov & family both from Nakhodka and living in Los Angeles, and the Vasilev family from Vilnius, Lithuania - also living in Los Angeles.

We pray that the Conference in Madrid will be successful in bringing to light the difficulties and gross infringement of Human Rights faced by Pentecostals in the Soviet Union and that the CSCE will be instrumental in helping find a solution of their present hopeless situation.

The second section of our report deals with the current position of protestant churches in Bulgaria, with particular reference to the trial of five Pentecostals held last year at which they were unjustly accused of foreign currency dealings.

One of our main ministries, as a mission, is to the Bulgarian people and we are very well acquainted with the present situation of Christians there. Our founder, Rev. Haralan Popov, was born in Bulgaria and ministered there until his arrest and imprisonment in 1948. He was released after 13 years and 2 months in prison for his faith and later re-united with his family in the free world in 1963.

I, personally, had a unique opportunity to meet the treasurer of the Pentecostal Union, Pastor Georgi Todorov, just before the trial last year, as well as Dimiter Dimitrov who managed to escape to the West. It is obvious that the hardened attitude towards Christians is not only prevalent in the Soviet Union but also in Bulgaria, Romania and other communist countries countries that proclaim loudly that they are better democracies than Western nations and, on paper, promise Christians freedom to express their Christian beliefs.

REPORT ON Religious LibeRTY IN THE SOVIET UNION SUBMITTED BY MR. ALAN SCARFE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION UNDER COMMUNISM This paper is intended to supplement testimony given at the Commission Hearings on 21 May 1980. Material is provided by Keston College, England and is prepared by the Society for the Study of Religion under Communism, Keston's U.S. Associate. Remarks will be confined to Christianity and particularly to the Soviet Union, Czechosloviaka, Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland.

THE SOVIET UNION

Present day policy of the Soviet authorities towards religion is to concede to official groups (those that tow the Soviet political line) and to persecute the rest. Over the last nine months we have witnessed the worst anti-religious campaign in the Soviet Union since the days of Khruschev. It is a nationwide campaign orchestrated to coincide with the pre-Olympic clean up of dissidents which has had wide coverage in the media. It also reflects Soviet hardline attitude to Western concern expressed at the treatment of individual rights activists.

În 1979 there were 180 known religious prisoners in Soviet prisons and camps. By May 5, 1980 this number had increased to 264. Present totals are as follows:

The totals included 119 new cases and have been adapted to show the 35 released during the nine months. At least 37 recent arrests are men with previous sentences. The situation changes on a daily basis. The trends suffice to show the present policy of the Soviet Government. We know only a small percentage of actual arrests on religious grounds.

While the Soviets at the moment are taking pains to demonstrate their lack of concern at Western protest of their actions, they are using every means possible to neutralise the impact of information on the persecution. Över the past few months