Page Two May 15, 1979 of Americans a campaign in which Americans from all walks of life join together to condemn these atrocities, demand a halt to the persecution, and the release of those who want to leave the Soviet Union. This must be a campaign from the grassroots, and one that persists until those in Washington and Moscow understand that they dare not ignore the will of the people. But that means a difficult struggle, perhaps years of sacrifice given the inevitable resistance such a campaign is bound to provoke. We must begin now. Will you make a personal commitment to get involved and to speak with your family, your friends, your church and your community and ask that they get involved? Will you make it a point to communicate to those in Washington that, as the leader of the free world, we can and must do much, much more to stop this persecution of Christians and Jews? For all needed information on this subject, please write The Tolstoy Foundation 250 West 57th Street New York, New York 10019 Attn: Alla Ivask པས་ Your support and leadership are urgently needed. Please act now. With sincere gratitude, Betty T. Elliatt Bently. Elliott BTE/ase LOGOS JOURNAL is published bimoninly by Loges International Fellowship. Inc, a nonprofit menstry dedicated to communicating the Gospel of Jesus Chnst throughout the world by promoting renewal and reconciliation in the body of Chinst Copyright 1979 Logos International Fellowship In: Business and editonal or ces located at 201 Church St. Plantald, NJ 07060 (201) 754-0745 Second class postage pa-d at Planheld, NJ. and at additional mailing offices Single cep. $1 50 Subscnptron 36 62 or sasses $12 38 for twelve issues. $18 07 for eighteen issues US Please add $2 00 per year for other countnes to cover masing costs Member EPA Printed in the USA Bulk Quantibes Available: $100 each Advertising Sales Offices National Emile Nawrock 201 Church St Planfeld NJ 07060 Telephone (201) "54-0745 Midwest Ron Michal Associates, 1360 Lakeshore Drive Chicago 60610 Teene (312) 944-0927 Postmaster Send Form 3579 to Editorial Office 201 Church St Plainfield NJ 07060 LOGOS forum Russian Pentecostals Want Freedom to Emigrate by Edmund K. Gravely, Jr. Vens of thousands of Russian Pentecostals, Baptists and other Christians are desperately trying to emigrate from the Soviet Union. The remarkable thing about it is that all across the Soviet Union, from Europe to Siberia, from great cities to isolated and widely separated villages, as if by some unseen signal, they have joined together in their clamoring to leave. More than 20,000 Soviet Christians have gone so far as to put their names on long lists, formally declaring their desire to escape persecution by leaving the country. These lists. secretly passed by hand from region to region until they reach Moscow. have been submitted to Soviet authorities They include individuals. families, even whole communities of evangelicals who are pressing their faces against the windows of freedom, hoping those on the other side will help them. It is a daring move without precedent in Soviet history. None others ever dared to put their names on lists, since the Soviet government could use such information to round up Christians and put them in prison. One Soviet emigrant, a journalist who traveled widely in Russia and had met many of these Christians, reported that by restricting worship. education, housing and job opportunities, the government was "trying to make life about as difficult as it would be in a concentration camp" for Soviet Christians. Some of the believers, in their desperation, have gone so far as to renounce Russian citizenship in order to escape the jurisdiction of Soviet laws that weigh so heavily on them. Not all of the 20,000-a few of whom are Orthodox Christians and Seventh-Day Adventists-have been able to apply for exit visas. Most of them lack the required formal invitation, called a vyzov, from 64 Gregori Brodsky, his wife and nine children recently emigrated from USSR via lerael. He was granted permission to leave Russla because he was a Jew. Here he worships with his son in a Russian pentecostal church near his new home in Woodburn, Oregon. LOGOS receives most of them, simply puts them in a large envelope and sends them on to the foundation without a covering letter. What is new is the bold, nationwide movement of believers who are convinced that they must leave their homeland in order to survive physically and spiritually and to pass on their faith to subsequent generations Most of those trying to leave are "unregistered" Christians. That is, they do not belong to officially-recognized denominations in the Soviet Union (Registered religions in Russia include a government-approved Evangelical Christian Baptist Church, the Russian Orthodox, Moslems, Jews, Buddhists and Lutherans.) In some cases, the government will not allow Christians to register. In other cases, the believers refuse to register because they reject certain government restrictions on their faith For instance, it is against the law for a Christian to teach his children about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Unregistered believers teach their children God's truth no matter what the cost, and the cost has been great They canno; have a church building They cannot meet in private homes; when they do, they are heavily fined Their children are denied education above grammar school level. In school, their children are mocked by teachers and other students; they are sometimes beaten up. They are given the jobs that pay the least and are denied promotions They sweep streets and pick up garbage. Their large families often have to jam together into one or two rooms. Families are often forced to move from town to town. This disrupts their churches by scattering their members and leaders Problems of Christians in Russia-and in other Communist countries--have been known for years through first-hand books and articles In the last three years, Christian groups have emphasized the need for compliance with the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 This guarantees human rights, including freedom of emigration. The Soviet Union was one of the MAY/JUNE 1979 Arkady Pollshchuk, former Ruselan jour nallat turned dissident, is now writing a book about the plight of Christians in Auesla. thirty-five signators. A presidential paper on human rights last December reported "Religious persecution in the Sov:e: Union, coupled with restrictive emigration policies, caused a large family of Pentecostalists to seek refuge ir. the American Embassy in Moscow They entered the consulate in June and have refused to leave until Soviet authorities grant them permission to emigrate Several thousand Pentecostalists have applied unsuccessfully to emigrate from the Soviet Union because of religious persecution Last summer, however, a wealth of firsthand information came forth in the person of a slender. silver-haired Jewish dissident named Arkady Polishchuk. Mr. Polishchuk. a 48-year-old former jounalist whose work was published Pravda and Izvestia, edited the magazine Asia and Africa Today before becoming an active dissident in 1973. His transformation from Party member to dissident, Communist and atheist to believer, came out of his experiences as a reporter. "During my career as a journalist. he explained. "I read many articles in various newspapers about Baptists and Pentecostals, that they were bad people, that they sacrificed their children i really believed the articles. I knew my magazine printec iies. but I thought it was just in this particular area and in this particular magazine perhaps because of bad management or because the people above us were bad. But when I started traveling. I realized this was the case all over the country. "The Pentecostals were the best people I had ever met." This revelation completely changed his life: "I remember a day when I actually felt I was no longer an atheist." This belief in God led to other things. First, he stopped writing for Pravda and Izvestia. Then he quit his job as a magazine writer. Finally, he joined the ranks of those he once despised-the dissidents Jews, Pentecostals. Baptists, Orthodox Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists. And he, too, applied for permission to leave the country. Mr. Polishchuk gained credentials as a dissident in October 1976, when he and several dozen other Jewish dissidents staged a sit-in for several days in an administrative building of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow to protest the delay in their emigration visas. Their boldness, he reported to Western journalists at that time, earned himself and about a dozen others eviction from the building and transportation to a forest outside Moscow, where they were beaten In the years Mr. Polishchuk was a dissident in Russia-1973 to 1978-world attention centered on the cause of Jewish emigration, and as a result tens of thousands of Russian Jews were allowed to leave. Mr. Polishchuk, however, spent most of his time traveling around the country, visiting different Christian communities. He helped these groups write their appeals to the government and to the free world. Many of the evangelicals appeals had been long, sermon-like discourses, in which important facts were hidden. He helped them understand that more people would listen if they included less theology and kept to facts. He monitored trials and took no:es (but hid them immediately so that when the police searched him they couldn't confiscate them), always preparing for the time when he would be allowed. once in freedom, to describe what he had 65 79-320 0 - 88 - 29 forum seen. Before he left Russia, evangelical believers asked him to be a kind of ambassador to the free world for them, to describe their plight and to marshall support for their emigration. He got to know many of those believers personally Sometimes he visited their homes for several weeks. "My hand was limp at the end of each day from writing all the time," he recalls. They came from all around to tell him what was happening to them. Stacks of letters written by children (like the one below) were smuggled out of Russia by Arkady Pollahchuk. One girl wrote that people "stuck pins in my sister because she is a believer." Blahoslov Hruby, (inset) editor of "Religion In Communist Dominated Areas." His apartment in Moscow became a clearing house for information about religious persecution in the Soviet Union. Precious lists of families, carefully passed from faithful courier to faithful courier, reached his hands there. He guarded and collected them until he had hundreds, and then he, or someone else, would make sure they got into the hands of Soviet authorities who had no choice but to receive them. In this way, he and others turned in more than 20,000 names of Russian Christians who are seeking to emigrate. Christians from all over Russia Bought him out. They would bring important information to him and describe the persecutions they faced X, voda. Tungarico, gryce Suurau. to 2 au acce, Mere. пионеры. Я я не с что пиону, тют учительницу. что я верующая. У к самыя, я папочка один на найма часто пла аль плохо в школе, а мачем. В школе нас хать к валь жин "You're only allowed to have prayer meetings in specially-designated buildings," Mr. Polishchuk explains. "But the believers have to gather in their own homes, because their buildings are being torn down. They are given 50-ruble fines for conducting 'secret religious meetings." "These people work very hard. They are given the smallest amount of pay-about 60 rubles a month-and then they are fined. I can give you names of people who got very many fines very quickly. What can they do? "They are fined for participating in funerals, for participating in weddings. The bridegroom can actually be put in jail for about 15 days for getting married in a religious ceremony." he reports. "When a person is born to a Pentecostal family, he's already classified as a dissident because he's born to a Christian family." From his briefcase Polishchuk pulled a stack of hand-written letters from the children of Pentecostals-also part of the cargo he secreted out of the Soviet Union. These are all neatly penned. most of them carrying the picture of a sober-faced young girl or boy. "Eight, nine, 15-year-old children wrote them in their own handwriting. One girl writes that people stick pins in her sister in school because she is a believer. Her teacher tells other people that Pentecostals sacrifice their children," he relates. Another letter reads, "In the U.S.S.R., now and before, very many believers are imprisoned. And this means that the same thing is awaiting US." "Why do I call these children dissidents? A child like this comes to school and refuses to memorize poems about Lenin. They refuse to join the Communist youth organizations because they are atheistic organizations," Mr. Polishchuk said. "They are beaten in school. Rocks are thrown at them. The child of the minister, Nicholas Goretoi, the head of the Pentecostal After the child of an unregistered |