18

Seeking Answers in the USSR

I had never visited a communist country or a former-communist country. I had no idea what to expect in Russia. For the past fifteen years, I had lived in a culture where, simply because of my skin color, I was automatically identified as “an outsider.” Oddly, I felt as conspicuous in Moscow as I had felt in Nairobi or Mogadishu.

My differentness struck me in Russia the moment I exited the plane. The Moscow airport was no larger and only slightly more “modern” than some major African airports that I had seen, but the feel of the place was coldly impersonal, institutional, and lacking in what I had come to know as African hospitality.

The calendar indicated that it was July, but the weather was gray and cold, just like the airport. The downtown tourist hotel felt no different. I felt even more unsettled when I left the hotel and walked through the city’s central business and government district, past the Kremlin and through Red Square. I was unable to make eye contact with a single person; no one would look me in the eye. I realized that what made me different was not the color of my skin, but the colors covering my skin! My clothing was ordinary and plain, but it stood out in contrast to the browns and grays that everyone else wore.

It seemed that everyone was aware of me. Rather than staring openly, however, they glanced at me furtively out of the corner of their eyes. The instinctive wariness of the people seemed to me more symptomatic of a worn and weary sadness of soul than any real hostility. However, that first exposure to the psyche of the Russian public made me wonder what, if anything, I would learn from my interviews which were scheduled for the following day.

Because I was unfamiliar with both subways and Russian signs, my cross-town journey the next morning was an adventure. Somehow, I managed to find my way to my appointment at the national church headquarters for one of Russia’s largest protestant denominations. The western worker who had been my contact had arranged for me to meet with several Russian believers. He had also promised to be my translator. At the last minute, I was told that, due to a medical emergency, there had been a change in plans. I was entrusted to the capable care and translation assistance of Viktor, an older Russian pastor who had been a national leader in this same denomination prior to his retirement.

Viktor introduced me to several denominational leaders who briefly greeted and welcomed me. Then he and I began to interview two believers who had been invited there. I was interested in their personal lives and wanted to learn how decades of communist rule had affected their lives as followers of Jesus.

In an effort to establish rapport, I shared some of my own faith journey. I briefly talked about my sense of God’s call. I shared about making a commitment to serve in Africa, and briefly described my time in Malawi, South Africa, and Somalia. I explained how the persecution in Somalia had been so severe that an entire generation of believers had been killed or forced from the country. I sadly noted that we had no idea how to help believers grow in that kind of environment. And, then, I concluded my story by telling them that we had seen many believers die because of their faith. I confessed our discouragement and sadness about returning to America.

“So,” I explained, “I have come to Russia to learn from believers who have served Christ in difficult circumstances. I want to learn spiritual lessons from you. I want to know how you have survived and grown and shared your faith. I want to learn from your experience and wisdom.”

At that point, the two men began to talk. These first two interviews lasted the entire day. The men talked about the systemic persecution that the communist government and Russian society had inflicted on believers for almost eight decades of the twentieth century. The men recounted their own experiences and they told the stories of other believers and family members.

Both men had grown up in families where the grandparents had been active and committed church people before the revolution. With official sanction, the communist youth organizations and the educational system worked to alienate children from their believing parents and grandparents. In school, the men explained, teachers would hold up a Bible and ask kindergarten students if they had ever seen a book like this one in their homes. If the children said that they had, a local party official would pay a visit to the home before the children even finished school that day.

The men talked about pastors and lay people who were imprisoned—and family members who disappeared in the Soviet Gulag never to be heard from again. When I asked what had enabled them to maintain their faith through years of hardship and persecution, I heard stories of family members whose examples had inspired the community of faith. I heard other sad tales of people who had compromised and recanted their beliefs.

The government required pastors to show up once a week for an appointment with a designated party official (or “minder”) who would ask for information on visitors and anything else of note that might have happened the previous week. Sermon topics had to be approved, and eventually officials would offer “suggestions” about all manner of church activities. Church leaders who were willing to make compromises—small ones at first, but bigger and bigger concessions over time—were sometimes allowed to keep their positions, continue their weekly services, and stay in the government’s good graces. Those who weren’t so “cooperative” were typically replaced by a more compliant clergyman of the party’s choosing. Sometimes churches were simply shut down and the leaders disappeared.

It was a productive and informative first day. All of my questions had been answered. Beyond my questions, I heard words that were even more helpful when I stopped asking questions and simply asked the men to tell me about their families, their lives, and their own personal spiritual journeys. Viktor and I both were already looking forward to coming back the following morning for another round of interviews.

When we arrived the next day, we were asked to take a seat in the lobby of the building. There, we waited. For a long time, we waited. No one invited us into the office. No one brought us tea. Viktor, at first, apologized for the delay. The longer we sat there, however, the more agitated he became. “I don’t know what is happening!” he told me.

I had a sneaking suspicion that I did.

Finally a receptionist came into the lobby to inform us that I would not be allowed to complete any more interviews. I was told that I was no longer welcome in their headquarters and that we needed to leave the building immediately.

As word went around the denominational headquarters that we had been ordered to leave the building, the people who had been scheduled to talk with us that day became so upset that they called Viktor and offered to meet with me outside the office, in secret, despite their superiors’ orders. Even some who had been reluctant to meet with us before suddenly wanted to meet now. The next morning, before dawn, we found ourselves in an apartment. The man wanted to have his interview before leaving for work in the morning. We were interviewing other people long after mid-night. My original trickle of pre-arranged interviews became a flood.

The reason that our welcome in the denominational headquarters had been rescinded became quickly clear. I had made no secret of my motives and intentions: I wanted to discover if, and how, faith was affected by persecution. Those first two interviews had taken place in offices with the doors open. People walked freely in the hallway while we talked. If they had wanted to stop and listen, they could have. Evidently, when some of the leaders heard both my questions and the answers that were being offered, they had serious reservations about what we were doing.

According to my first secret interview (and this was later confirmed by Viktor and other interviews), several of the denominational leaders were currently engaged in negotiations with the new, post-communist Russian government for the return of church buildings and property that the old communist regime had confiscated. They were also pressing their case for financial restitution, as well as the same kind of annual support from the government that the Russian Orthodox Church received.

Because some of the new government officials had also been part of the old communist system, the church leaders evidently didn’t want to do anything that might negatively affect their bargaining position. Even after the fall of communism, it was evidently not safe to talk openly about faith and religious persecution.

A sense of righteous anger began to surface in the interviews that followed: “For decades,” several people said, “our government tried to prevent us from practicing our faith. Now our own church leaders want us to keep quiet! At least with the communists, the motive was clearly spiritual oppression. This issue now is all about money and finances. If we let that silence us, we should be truly ashamed.”

I don’t know the exact reason, but those “secret” interviews felt freer, and were much more informative, than the ones that we had been permitted to do at the denominational headquarters. The subjects opened up and talked about how they, and many other known believers, were automatically suspected of disloyalty. They claimed that, especially during the years of President Jimmy Carter’s administration, Russian believers, and particularly Baptists, were assumed to be spies for the American president whom the whole world knew was a born-again Baptist. Believers in the Soviet military found it hard, if not impossible, to earn promotions. And Russian Baptists, during the Carter years, were given only the lowliest, most mundane military tasks.

Pastors and church lay leaders were arrested and imprisoned. Their wives were pressured to divorce them; children were discouraged from writing to their imprisoned fathers. The sons and daughters of known believers would be kept after school to be questioned and badgered by a panel of teachers who denigrated the family’s faith. Sometimes children were called up in front of school-wide assemblies and publicly ridiculed by both school officials and classmates for their family’s “backward, traitorous and anti-communist beliefs.” Unless they denounced their parents’ religion, most young people from believing homes were not admitted to the university and were allowed to pursue only the most menial jobs or careers. The strategy of the government was clear: it would do anything to keep faith in Jesus from continuing beyond the current generation. Their biggest concern was the genealogy of faith.

By the time we finished several fourteen-hour-days of interviews, I was amazed that any believers had maintained their faith in the former USSR. The opposition was relentless. The fact that so many had both survived and remained strong and faithful moved me deeply.

Viktor began to embrace my mission as his own. He said, “Other people from the headquarters want to talk with you, but I think tomorrow there is someone I want you to meet. I don’t know him well myself, but I know something of his testimony. He suffered much for his faith. And I think you need to hear his story!” Intrigued, I quickly agreed to be ready at five o’clock the next morning to meet Viktor and a friend of his with a car, “because this brother,” he said, “lives many kilometers from Moscow.”

Before we parted for the evening, I told Viktor that I had seen evidence that someone had been in my hotel room while I was gone the day before. I felt certain that someone had searched my room.

Victor looked at me, glanced around to see that no one was listening, and then nodded. “No doubt that happens with most foreigners,” he said softly. “And that is one reason why we will never do any of these interviews here at the hotel.”

Early the next morning, Viktor and his friend picked me up. We began a four-hour drive through the countryside north of Moscow. On the way, Viktor told me what he knew about Dmitri, this fellow believer who had suffered much for the faith. For the rest of the trip I listened to Viktor and his friend recount their faith journeys and life stories.

We finally arrived at a small Russian village and stopped in front of a tiny dwelling. Dmitri opened the door and graciously welcomed us into his tiny home. “I want you to sit here,” he instructed me. “This was where I was sitting when the authorities came to arrest me and send me to prison for seventeen years.”

I settled in and listened with rapt attention as Dmitri related his unforgettable personal story over the next few hours.

Dmitri told me that he had been born and raised in a believing family; his parents had taken him to church as a child. Over the decades, he explained, communism slowly destroyed most of the churches and places of worship. Many pastors were imprisoned or killed.

By the time he was grown, Dmitri told me, the nearest remaining church building was a three-day-walk away. It was impossible for his family to attend church more than once or twice a year.

“One day,” Dmitri told me, “I said to my wife: ‘You’ll probably think that I am insane . . . I know that I have no religious training whatsoever, but I am concerned that our sons are growing up without learning about Jesus. This may sound like a crazy idea . . . but what would you think if just one night a week we gathered the boys together so I could read them a Bible story and try to give them a little of the training they are missing because we no longer have a real church.’”

What Dmitri didn’t know was that his wife had been praying for years that her husband would do something like that. She readily embraced his idea. He started teaching his family one night a week. Dmitri would read from the old family Bible. Then he would try to explain what he had just read so that his children could understand.

As he relearned and retold the Bible stories, his sons soon began helping with the task. Eventually, the boys and Dmitri and his wife were telling the familiar stories back and forth to each other. The more they learned, the more the children seemed to enjoy their family worship time.

Eventually the boys started asking for more: “Papa, can we sing those songs that they sing when we go to the real church?” So Dmitri and his wife taught them the traditional songs of their faith.

It seemed a natural progression for the family not only to read the Bible and sing, but also to take time together to pray. And they began to do that.

Nothing could be hidden for long in small villages. Houses were close together and windows were often open. Neighbors began noticing what was going on with Dmitri’s family. Some of them asked if they could come and listen to the Bible stories and sing the familiar songs.

Dmitri protested that he was not trained to do this; he wasn’t a minister. His excuse didn’t seem to dissuade his neighbors, and a small group began gathering to share in the reading and telling and discussing of Bible stories and to sing and pray together.

By the time the little group grew to twenty-five people, the authorities had noticed. Local party officials came to see Dmitri. They threatened him physically, which was to be expected. What upset Dmitri much more was their accusation: “You have started an illegal church!”

“How can you say that?” he argued. “I have no religious training. I am not a pastor. This is not a church building. We are just a group of family and friends getting together. All we are doing is reading and talking about the Bible, singing, praying, and sometimes sharing what money we have to help out a poor neighbor. How can you call that a church?”

(I almost laughed at the irony of his claim. But this was early in my pilgrimage. I could not easily appreciate the truth that he was sharing. Looking back now, I understand that one of the most accurate ways to detect and measure the activity of God is to note the amount of opposition that is present. The stronger the persecution, the more significant the spiritual vitality of the believers. Surprisingly, all too often, persecutors sense the activity of God before the believing participants even realize the significance of what is happening! In the case of Dmitri, the officials could sense the threat of what he was doing long before it even crossed his mind.)

The communist official told Dmitri: “We don’t care what you call it, but this looks like church to us. And if you don’t stop it, bad things are going to happen.”

When the group grew to fifty people, the authorities made good on their threats. “I got fired from my factory job,” Dmitri recounted. “My wife lost her teaching position. My boys were expelled from school.”

“And,” he added, “little things like that.”

When the number of people grew to seventy-five, there was no place for everyone to sit. Villagers stood shoulder-to-shoulder, cheek-to-cheek inside the house. They pressed close-in around the windows on the outside so they could listen as this man of God led the people of God in worship. Then one night as Dmitri spoke (sitting in the chair where I was now seated), the door to his house suddenly, violently burst open. An officer and soldiers pushed through the crowd. The officer grabbed Dmitri by the shirt, slapped him rhythmically back and forth across the face, slammed him against the wall, and said in a cold voice: “We have warned you, and warned you, and warned you. I will not warn you again! If you do not stop this nonsense, this is the least that is going to happen to you.”

As the officer pushed his way back toward the door, a small grandmother took her life in her hands, stepped out of the anonymity of that worshiping community, and waved a finger in the officer’s face. Sounding like an Old Testament prophet, she declared, “You have laid hands on a man of God and you will NOT survive!”

That happened on a Tuesday evening—and on Thursday night the officer dropped dead of a heart attack. The fear of God swept through the community. At the next house-church service, more than one hundred and fifty people showed up. The authorities couldn’t let this continue, so Dmitri went to jail for seventeen years.

I knew, because Dmitri was sitting right in front of me in his own home, that this particular persecution story was ultimately a story of survival and victory. This story would obviously have a happy ending. But that didn’t mean that the story was going to be “nice” or easy to hear.

Indeed, it was a painful story. Dmitri spoke quietly of long, heart-wrenching separation. He spoke of sweat, blood, and tears. He talked about sons growing up without their father in the house. He described a poor, struggling family enduring great hardship. This was not the kind of inspirational testimony that we love to celebrate; this was raw, biblical faith. This was the story of one man who refused to let go of Jesus and refused to stop telling the Good News to his family and neighbors.

As if that was not enough, the rest of Dmitri’s story would be one of the most remarkable and life-changing testimonies I have ever heard . . .