Communist aggression and the Christian response
Paul H. Popov
I would like to thank the History Department of NBU and the Evangeli- cal Theological Institute for this invitation to speak here today. It is such an honour.
This is a special day in my life. It was on March 8, 1949, 70 years ago today, that the Bulgarian communist government sentenced my dad, Dr. Haralan Popov (1907–1988), to 15 years imprisonment. He was not alone
– 14 other Christian Protestant Pastors were also condemned with him as spies and traitors.1
Why did the communist authorities persecute the Christian community? Here briefly, we will look at events and prominent individuals that
shaped the history of socialist ideology and see how militant communism came to dominate half of the world’s population.
What methods did Western Christians use to help persecuted believers living behind the Iron Curtain?
The Western Christian’s response to communist aggression has not been academically documented and not widely studied; therefore, I think it is prudent for me to also share some of my first-hand knowledge from experiences in my life.
1 It took eight months of torture to bring Pastor Haralan I. Popov to confess that he was a traitor and spy. After father’s prison sentence, my mother, the wife of a „spy“, was not permit- ted to work and therefore had tremendous difficulty to feed and provide for her two young children. (Rhoda and me) Although my mother, Ruth, was a Swedish citizen, she was not allowed to leave Bulgaria until December 1951.
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A Brief Background of Historic Events Leading up
to Militant Communism
Christian Revival in Europe
During this time, as the European society experienced new secular
worldviews, Western industrial nations experienced many Christian reviv- als as several prominent evangelical preachers emerged: In England, John Wesley (1703–1791) and Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892); in Russia, Vasili Pashkov (1813–1902); in Sweden, Lars Levi Laestadius (1800–1861).2
These revivals began the much needed improvement of life among the socially and economically disadvantaged people in European society. Many at that time felt that the official Orthodox and Catholic Churches were closely aligned and part of the privileged ruling class that oppressed the poor.3
Christian Socialism
The first person to create the concept of „Christian socialism“, was the
German catholic theologian Franz von Baader (1765–1841). When Baader was in Scotland and England he was deeply moved by what he called the ‘property-less, wage earners’ of the industrial proletariat.4
In early 1800, Wilhelm Weitling, a German Christian, published three books. One best seller was the „Poor Sinner’s Gospel“, which portrayed Jesus Christ as a revolutionary.5
The head of the Socialist Movement in Germany was Ferdinand Las- salle (1825–1864). Although Lassalle, himself, was not a religious socialist, he promoted tolerance and respect for religious freedom. Under Lassalle’s leadership, there was none of the bitter hostility toward Christianity that later marked the Socialist Movement.
Lassalle had the intellectual capacity that matched the more radical communist leaning individuals, but he died young only 39 years old. Had he
2 Many do not realize that in the year 1800, Sweden was the poorest country in Europe. It is a common believe that the Christian revivals were a major contributor to the fact that Sweden had the highest standard of living of all countries in Europe in the 1950s.
3 Lester DeCoster. Communism & Christian Faith, W. E. Erdmans Publ., Grand Rapids, MI., USA, 1956, pp. 54–55.
4 John C. Cort. Christian Socialism. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, USA, American Federation of Labour, p. 184.
5 Ibid, p. 179, 190, 201.
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lived another 20–30 years, we can only speculate what would have happened to tolerance and religious freedom in the Socialist Movement.6
Another Christian socialist, Leonhard Ragaz (1868–1945), a Swiss preacher, was the first to organize a religious socialist party, which disagreed with the call for violence and revolution.7
Karl Marx (1818–1883)
Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany, where he grew up in a Jewish
home. When Karl was six years old, his parents became Christian and chose to be baptized. During his teenage years, Karl was a confessing Christian.
Marx’s high school graduation certificate states:
„His knowledge of Christian faith and morals is fairly clear and
well grounded. He knows also to some extent the history of the Christian Church.”8
However, at the age of 18, Marx became bitter and passionately antire-
ligious.
„I want to avenge myself against the One who rules above.”9
In his poem, Invocation of One in Despair, Marx wrote:
So a god has snatched from me my all
In the curse and rack of destiny.
All his worlds are gone beyond recall!
Nothing but revenge is left to me!
Marx wrote about ruining the world and spoke of humankind as „human trash“. In another poem, he wrote:
Then I will be able to walk triumphantly, LIKE A GOD,
through the ruins of their kingdom.
Every word of mine is fire and action.
My breast is equal to that of the Creator.10
Why did Marx want the power to destroy „their Kingdom?”
6 Ibid, p. 190.
7 Ibid, p. 201.
8 Richard Wurmbrand. Marx and Satan. Crossway Books, Westchester, IL, USA, 1986, p. 11.
9 Ibid, p. 12.
10 Ibid, p. 13.
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Maybe we can find an explanation in the drama, Oulanem, which Marx wrote during his student years.
The title, Oulanem, that Marx chose is an inversion of a holy name; it is an anagram of Emanuel, the Biblical name of Jesus in Hebrew, „God with us.”
Here Marx is referring to the Bible, which he knew well.
„The devil will be bound by an angel and cast into the bottomless pit.“
(Abyssos in Greek; Rev. 20:3)
In his dark drama, Oulanem, Marx reveals that his desire aligns with that
which the devil desires, to consign the entire human race to damnation. All of Marx’s aspirations became Satanic, corrupt and doomed.11
As a student, his friends called him „The Destroyer.”
In a letter to his father in 1837, Marx wrote:
„My holy of holies was rent asunder and new gods had to be installed.“
To which his father replied:
„Only if your heart remains pure and beats humanly, and if no demons
are able to alienate your heart…only then will I be happy.”
There was a reason why his father expressed the fear of demonic in-
fluence upon his son. Many of Karl Marx’s friends were active in satanic circles. How deeply he was involved in occult practices is not revealed in the documents so far; many documents have still not been made public from the archives at the Marx Engels Institute in Moscow.
We do, however, know many of his anti-God slogans:
„I hate all gods.“ „Communism starts…where atheism begins.“ etc.
Here, we may find an explanation of why socialism took a radical, sharp
turn from a gradual, peaceful movement to violent socialism of a different kind – militant socialism.
Marx’s view of dictatorship-violence
In his book, Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1852), Marx wrote:
„The working class will through revolt become the suffering saviour.“
„All action that propels the socialistic society foreword towards imple-
menting the classless society is ethical and moral.“
Marx believed that the goal of a future classless paradise was so impor-
tant that violence and dictatorship, however distasteful, is better than the capitalist oppressive alternative.
11 Ibid, pp. 18–19.
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Communist League
The militant socialists met secretly and in 1947 formed the first Com-
munist Party.
Marx, with his financial supporter, Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) drew
up, „The Communist Manifesto“ in 1948.
Maybe the reason why the militant version of socialism won over Chris-
tian socialism can be best understood in a quote by Bakunin, one of Marx’s most intimate colleagues:
„One has to worship Marx in order to be loved by him. One has to at least fear him in order to be tolerated by him. Marx is extremely proud, up to dirt and madness.”12
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924)
Upon entering Kazan University in August 1887, he joined Nikolai Fe-
doseev’s revolutionary circle, through which he discovered in Karl Marx’s 1867 book Capital (Das Kapital). This sparked his interest in Marxism, a socio-political theory that argued that society developed in stages, that this development resulted from class struggle, class struggle, and that capitalist society would ultimately give way to a socialist society and then a communist society – the „earthly paradise“.
Lenin took Marx theories and put them into practice. Lenin said that religion is „a bourgeoisie phenomenon. Communism will not be victorious until the myth about God has been erased from people’s mind.”
Persecution of Evangelical Believers in the East
When Lenin took power in 1917, many welcomed the new law on the
separation of the church and state, especially the Protestants who took ad- vantage of this time of religious freedom. Many missionaries from Europe and USA began ministry work in the Soviet Union. Bibles and Christian literature were printed and Bible schools were established which provided much needed theological and leadership training.13
Joseph Stalin (1878–1953)
Religious freedom, however, lasted only until 1929 when Stalin began
a militant campaign against all churches; Orthodox, Old Believers, Stundist, Baptist, Adventists, Mennonite, and Pentecostals.
12 Ibid, p. 13.
13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/vladimir_Lenin
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In a letter to Stalin, Maxim Gorky writes:
You won’t achieve much with the weapons of Marx and materialism… Materialism and religion are two different planes and they don’t coincide. If a fool speaks from the heavens and the sage from a factory–they won’t understand one another. The sage needs to hit the fool with his stick, with his weapon. For this reason, there should be courses set up at the Com- munist Academy, which would not only treat the history of religion, and mainly the history of the Christian church, i.e., the study of church history as politics. We need to know the “fathers of the church,” the apologists of Christianity…
Every quotation by a believer is easily countered with dozens of theological quotations, which contradict it. We cannot do without an edition of the “Bible” with critical commentaries from the Tubingen school and books on criticism of biblical texts, which could bring a very useful “confusion into the minds” of believers.14
To which Stalin responds (January 17, 1930):
You are quite right in saying that here, in our press, great confusion prevails on the subject of anti-religious propaganda. Extraordinary stupidities are sometimes committed, which bring grist to the mill of our enemies. There is a great deal of work before us in this field.15
Stalin realized that without force, communism could not be a reality. The living, vibrant church must be eliminated, as it was one of the main obstacles to the Marxist ideology.16
One of the more prominent Christians that Stalin killed was Ivan Yefimovitch Voronaev (1885–1937. Voronaev established more than 350 congregations in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Bulgaria. He was arrested and sentenced to death and executed by NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs).17
This horrible time of communist aggression against the Church lasted until 1940 when Stalin needed the support of all Christians to volunteer in the war effort.
14 https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/f2gorky.html
15 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive
16 William Taubman. Lecture at Wellesley College Russian Department, April 5, 2017.
17 https://en:wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Voronaev
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After the war, Stalin devised a different method to eliminate religion from Soviet society. Instead of systematic killings, he planned to destroy the church from within. Stalin’s new plan in 1944 was to permit the Orthodox and Evangelicals to form organizations with Church leaders handpicked by KGB at the top.18
It is in this light we have to see Stalins „show trials“ in the newly occu- pied Eastern European countries against church leaders who were, or could be, an obstacle for implementing the effort to destroy the church. My father, Pastor Haralan Popov, was arrested and tortured in Sofia, Bulgaria, from July 1948 until September 1961. Despite the brutality my father endured in 16 different prisons and the notorious Belene concentration camp, he did not become a collaborator with the communist regime, nor were they able to erase his faith in Christ.
Pravda wrote, „The scientific dialectical materialism cannot be neutral toward religion because it is not based on science.“ (Pravda, 11 Nov. 1954)
Stalin’s new subversive method was not successful; Church membership in the USSR grew in numbers until the end of the 1950s. Statistics provided by the leaders of the registered All Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists (AUCECB) suggest that 250 000 baptized members in 1946 rose to 540 000 by 1958.
Maybe because of this revival, the persecution of Christians continued. Many leaders and ordinary believers, men and women of different Protestant communities fell victims to the persecution by the Soviet communist regime, including „treatment“ in psychiatric hospitals, and imprisonment.19
Gennadi Konstantinovich Kryuchkov (1926–2007), the leader of The Council of Churches of Evangelical Christian’s and Baptists (CCECB), the also called unregistered church, along with Georgi Vins, the secretary, met with Anastas Mikoyan at the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in Moscow in 1961. After this meeting, they were imprisoned for a few years. When re- leased, Kryuchkov spent 19 years in hiding, where he continued organizing and leading the work of the unregistered Baptists. He reappeared in public at their Council’s Annual Congress at Rostov-on-Don in July 1989, in the wake of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika reforms. After speaking, he quickly made his escape before the waiting KGB could arrest him.20
18 Walter Sawatsky. Soviet Evangelicals. Herald Press, Kitchener, ON, Canada, 1981, pp. 59–64. 19 Christian Prisoners in the USSR. (Keston College), published by Door of Hope Int’l Press, Glendale, CA, USA, 1983, p. 13. Ibid, p. 22; Ibid, pp. 18–19, picture p. 32.
20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennadi_Kruychkov
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Another Christian who suffered greatly was Vladimir Shelkov (1895– 1980), the leader of the True and Free Seventh-day Adventist Movement in the Soviet Union. He spent almost his entire life after 1931 in prison. His last confinement began in 1949 when he was sentenced in Tashkent (then a delicate eighty-three-year-old-man) to five years of hard labour camps. He died in Tabaga labour camp in Yakutia, Siberia.
The leading dissident, Dr. Andrei Sakharov, estimated that at the begin- ning of the 1980s there were an estimated 10 000 prisoners of conscience, of whole 2000 were religious prisoners in the Siberian camps.21
After 50 years of government support and effort, atheism had failed. The Communist Party knew that something had to be done to combat religion in order for their „paradise on earth“ to become a reality.
In 1959, Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), decided to once again in- tensify the effort to extinguish the Church. Khrushchev created the faculty of atheism at the Moscow University and built the first ‘House of Atheism’.
In 1967, according to a Norwegian visitor to this ‘House of Atheism,’ Mr. Romanov, the Vice President, stated proudly that in the Moscow region alone, there are „500 offices and 15 000 employed propagandists for „sci- entific atheism“.22
Khrushchev’s anti-religious atheistic campaign resulted in mass closures of churches, reducing the numbers from 22 000 in 1959 to 7500 by 1966.23 Many of these beautiful churches became storage facilities, warehouses, industrial factories, movie theaters, or were demolished.
Lack of Academic Research in the West.
There are very few academic sources of information about how the
Church in the West responded to communist aggression. Most information about the Western Christian response originates from memoirs of individual authors such as my father’s books, I was a Communist Prisoner24, or Tor- tured for His Faith25. Very few academic studies exist. This is most likely due to the lack of scholarly interest in Western academic circles. It seems to come
21 Christian Prisoners in the USSR…, p. 22.
22 Billed-bladet Gulbrand Överbye, NÅ Nr. 15, Oslo, Norway, 1968.
23 Walter Sawatsky 1981, Soviet Evangelicals, Herald Press, Kitchener, ON, Canada, p. 137.
24 Dr. Haralan Popov. Bulgarska Golgotha. EV press Sofia Bulgaria.
25 Харалан Попов, Изтезаван заради вярата си. София: Фондация „Врата на надежда“, 2013; Tortured For His Faith, Dr. Haralan Popov, Door of Hope Int’l Press Glendale, CA USA.
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down to an implicit dismissal, or the lack of knowledge of the important roll Christian missionary organizations and churches in the East played in the effort to bring an end to the Cold War and bring down the Soviet Union and their inhuman aggressive militant socialist totalitarian agenda.
The atheistic communist system was so against human nature, it was doomed to fail already at the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolu- tion in 1917.
Western Christians Response
Before and immediately after the Second World War, most Western
churches, including the World Council of Churches (WCC), were united in their critical stance towards the communist regime in the Soviet Union.
My mother, Ruth Popov, was given the opportunity to address more than 10,000 participants at the international gathering of the World Pentecostal Conferences in London, 1952, as well as in Stockholm, 1955. As a young boy, missing my father very much, I stood on the platform by my mother’s side and could do nothing but cry.
Mom was permitted to share with the large international audience about her husband and the other imprisoned pastors in Bulgaria and pleaded for prayers and support. But in later years at international gatherings, where “official“church leaders from the East attended, the conference leadership no longer permitted her to do this. The reason was, they said, that this was a political anti-communist act.
Western Churches Divided
In the early 1960s, the unity that once existed in Western churches in
confronting the communist aggression ended. The denominational leaders became divided as they were bombarded and influenced by the emerging Soviet propaganda. The Baptist World Alliance, Mennonite, Lutheran and churches that belonged to the WCC, now promoted closer ties with Soviet and Eastern European communist appointed church leaders. Others like the Catholic Church and the more conservative Evangelical Churches were op- posed to having any ties with church officials appointed by the Communist Party. They understood that the communist’s agenda and the ultimate goal was to destroy the Church. They openly criticized the communist interfer- ence in church matters and pointed out the lack of religious liberties behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains.
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This division not only weakened the missionary effort but also gave power to the worldwide communist propaganda efforts.
Communist Propaganda Worked
In the 1960s, WCC was fully infiltrated by KGB and DS agents and the
leadership gradually became duped by the communist Orthodox Church of- ficials to no longer speak out about persecution in communist countries.26
At the 1968 WCC meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, my father and I pleaded with the organizing committee to bring the plight of the persecuted church on the agenda. The organizers of the WCC insisted that quiet diplomacy was the best way to tackle this issue. They feared that Rev. Michael Orlov, head of the International Department of the AUCECB, the “registered, official“church in the Soviet Union would leave the conference should this issue be placed on the agenda.
The frequent visits by religious officials from the Orthodox and the AUCECB to Peace Conferences and Denominational Conferences in the West had considerable impact.
Unlike the message received from the “underground“ church leaders, who were not permitted to travel abroad, these “registered“ church leaders spoke about the religious freedoms they had and that Bibles were available to those who needed them. Bible smuggling, they argued, was not only not necessary but also “unchristian“ and therefore, immoral.
These ambassadors for the communist propaganda also argued that criticizing communist governments and spreading negative information about the situation of the churches in their countries would only increase difficulties for the believers living there.
Many in the Western media, as well as some conservative evangelicals, chose to be silent. They even criticized mission organizations like ours,for publishing the content of the clandestinely printed Samizdat (Self Publica- tions) that the Council of Baptist Prisoners’ Relatives, (CPR) asked our couriers to smuggle out to the West. These Samizdat documents, compiled by a group of very brave women (wives and relatives of detained prisoners) contained details of who/where/why the Christian believers were impris- oned, as well as their families’ desperate situations.27
26 Momchil Metodiev. Between Faith and Compromise. Sofia: Ciela Publishers, 2010.
27 Christian Prisoners in the USSR, 1983 (Keston College), published by Door of Hope Int’l Press, Glendale, CA, USA, pp. 18–19, picture p. 32.
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COMMON METHODS USED BY WESTERN PROTESTANT MISSIONS WORKING IN COMMUNIST COUNTRIES
Smuggling Samizdat Documents “Bulletins“ to the West
Western couriers like myself „smuggled“ out Samizdat Bulletins, pictures
and Super-8 films from underground church meetings in an effort to docu- ment the real conditions of Christians living under communist oppression. This task was more dangerous than smuggling Bibles into countries behind the Iron Curtain. When these documents reached the West this material was shared with various research organizations such as Keston College, Amnesty International, Helsinki Monitoring Group and the United Nation’s Human Rights office in Geneva.
Mobilizing Christians Around the World to Pray
Exposing communist aggression and violations of Human Rights and
Religious Freedom in communist countries was important for the many missionary organizations.
Prominent Christian speakers such as Richard Wurmbrand, Brother Andrew, and my father, Haralan Popov, spoke in churches around the world and iinformed government officials about the situation in the East. They mobilized Christians to pray, to petition their government officials, and to raise their voices through peaceful demonstrations against the atrocities be- ing committed behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains…the so-called „closed countries for the Gospel.“ In Brother Andrew’s book, „God’s Smuggler“, he argued that there are no closed doors for God.
Book Publishing
Although there are many, many times more books published about the
Nazi holocaust than books about the „communist holocaust“, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Richard Wurmbrand, Brother Andrew, and Haralan Popov were popular authors with millions of copies of their books, distributed in many languages, exposing the falsehood of communist propaganda.
Documentary films
Despite the enormous cost, organizations made documentary films
exposing the atrocities committed. Door of Hope International (DOHI)
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produced Operation Jericho (1974) and Let My People Go (1977). Films such as these were shown in churches and on TV. Because the media had accepted the communist propaganda they didn’t accept these documentary films as news and accused the mission organizations of being anti-communist, right-wing organizations, therefore, the organizations had to „buy“ time to show these films over the TV network.
Bible smuggling: by cars, RV’s, dump-trucks, buses, trains, boats, barges, bicycles
One of the instruments of ideological repression utilized by the com- munist authorities was to limit the production and the availability of printed materials, especially Bibles. Thus, smuggling Bibles into communist coun- tries became a necessary and widespread activity that involved especially evangelical organizations. DOHI used an innovative technique of mailing unbound New Testaments, 36 pages at a time, mailed to addresses collected from telephone books. More than one million New Testaments were delivered into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe using this method.28
Supporting National Pastors
Registered Pastors, loyal to the communist government, were gener-
ously compensated, directly or indirectly. However, unregistered pastors ministering to, underground churches needed financial and other support. It was imperative to train, educate and provide them with tools for evangelism necessary for effective ministry.
Emigration Movement
Arkady Polishchuk, a journalist in the Soviet Union, was a former com-
munist party member who realized that communism was false and joined the Jewish Dissident Movement of Vladimir Buchovsky, Natan Sharansky, and Tatyana Velikanova. Polishchuk was exiled to the West where he worked hard for the rights of the 40,000 Pentecostals who refused their Soviet citizenship
28 DOHI began a Bible Courier program through which thousands of Bibles, New Testaments and Christian literature were „smuggled“ behind communist borders in specially prepared vehicles. For the 1980 Moscow Olympics, DOHI printed and secretly delivered 500 000 Russian New Testaments with the non-descript title of, Свет Миру (Light to the World), disguised by a cover depicting the Olympic Torch. Through a unique New Testament Letter Ministry, more than one million New Testaments were distributed into Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. – www.dohi.org, www.dohi.bg, www.doorofhope.ru
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and asked to be allowed to leave for Israel or the West. Arkady Polishchuk has recently published his autobiography, Dancing on Thin Ice.
The Most Prominent Western Christian Organizations
(of more than 700 that existed in 1990) that Focused Primarily
on the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe
Slavic Mission – Nils Fredrik Höijer (1857–1925) now called Ljus i
Öster.
Established in 1903 in Stockholm, Sweden, Slavic Mission is one of the oldest evangelical missions to Russia. It still exists today under the name Light in the East. Licht im Osten is the sister mission in Germany.
These missions sent between 1917 and 1929 many missionaries to all corners of Russia. The well-known missionary Johannes Svensson helped bring large quantities of Bibles and literature into the country. An unprec- edented revival swept the USSR.29
From 1930 to the mid 1950s, Slavic Mission, under the great, but humble, leadership of Director Elis Düring, Slavic Mission provided humanitarian aid to thousands imprisoned Russian soldiers and war refugees in North and Central Europe.
In 1963, a few months after my father arrived in Sweden, Elis Düring hired dad to be in charge of the Slavic Mission’s Russian Bible correspondence course, Bible printing projects and Radio Ministry in the Bulgarian language. After Elis Düring’s death, Ingemar Martinson became the new Director. Mar- tinson encouraged dad to write his autobiography. In 1963, father was the first to broadcast Gospel sermons over the radio into communist Bulgaria. It is at this time that the DS Bulgarian secret police made the documentary film „For a Silver Coin“ depicting the two brothers, Haralan and Ladin, as traitors undermining the Bulgarian society with anti-communist slander. This film was shown on Bulgarian TV and at the Berlin film festival in the early 1970s.
Earl S. Poysti (1920–2010), was a much-appreciated Russian radio broadcaster, supported by the Slavic Mission. Poysti was born in Siberia, Russia, to Finnish missionary parents ministering in Russia just after the Bolshevik Revolution. Like so many other missionaries, they had to leave Russia but continued their ministry to Russian refugees living in Harbin, Northern China.
29 Elis Düring. Ryska Röster (Russian Voices). Slaviska Missionens Förlags AB, Stockholm, Sweden, Med Flera 1953, p. 17.
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Russian and Eastern European Mission (REEM) – Paul B. Peterson, (later called Eastern European Mission) (EEM), Chicago, USA.
Gustav Herbert Schmidt, an ethnic German, born in Russia, asked the Assemblies of God-USA for permission and support to start a Russian lan- guage Bible School to serve the rapidly growing Pentecostal church in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic and Eastern Europe. Assemblies of God declined support for this project, so Schmidt, together with Peterson, opened the independent Mission REEM in the early 1920s.
Danzig Bible Institute
On March 2, 1930, the Danzig Bible Institute opened the first Russian
language Pentecostal Bible Institute in Eastern Europe in the free state of Danzig, (today Gdansk Poland). Young Christian leaders like my father, Hara- lan, uncle Ladin and many others, received their theological pastor’s training at this institute. EEM supported many pastors all over Eastern Europe. In the1930s a Christian woman in New York sponsored my father. Some of Dad’s reports to EEM are published in the magazine „Gospel Call“, now archived at the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, Springfield, MO, USA.30
Russian Gospel Association – Peter Deyneka Sr. (1914–1987), Chi- cago, USA, (now called Slavic Gospel Association) (SGA).
Rev. Peter Deyneka Sr., founded the Russian Gospel Association, in 1934, migrated to America in 1914 from Belarus. Deyneka travelled extensively to his homeland. While there, he established a relationship with the faithful churches of the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (AUECB), the official registered church.
SGA produced and broadcasted radio programs in the Russian language, distributed Bibles and Christian literature into the Soviet Union. They also ministered to Slavic Christians who had emigrated to the West from com- munist countries.
Underground Evangelism, (UE) – L. Joe Bass (1920–) Glendale, CA, USA, (now called Mission without Borders).
Founded in 1960 by L. Joe Bass the organization provided support to the unregistered underground church in the Soviet Union and Eastern European communist countries through Bible printing/distributing, pastor support and financial aid. They published monthly magazines providing
30 http://pmgermany.com/wpcontent/uploads/2010/08/germanethnic_pentecostals.pdf, p.17.
information about the on-going persecution of Christians. For a short time, they employed speakers such as Richard Wurmbrand (Romania), Haralan Popov (Bulgaria), Sergei Kurdakov (USSR), and Stefan Bankov (Bulgaria). UE sponsored short-wave Christian radio broadcasts into Bulgaria and other communist countries.
Jesus to Communist World, (JTCW) Richard Wurmbrand (1909– 2001), Glendale, CA, USA, (now called Voice of the Martyrs – (VOM).
Founded in the United States in 1967 by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, who was imprisoned in 1948 and tortured by communist authorities in his native, Romania. He was released in 1956 then rearrested in 1959–1964. They smuggled Bibles and literature into communist countries and established secret printing presses in at least six nations, as well as gospel broadcasts into several closed countries. The strength of the organization under Richard Wurmbrand and his son Mihai was in publicity activities and publishing of anti-communist books authored by Richard, his wife Sabina and son Mihai. Their books and newsletters were translated into 20 languages.
Evangelism to Communist Lands (ECL) – Haralan Popov (1907–1988) & Ruth Popov (1910–1985), Glendale, CA, USA, (now called Door of Hope International (DOHI).
In 1972, Haralan Popov founded Evangelism to Communist Lands (ECL). He became known as the „Voice of the Suffering Church“.
Haralan believed that the best method to combat militant communist aggression was to implement evangelistic outreaches through positive Chris- tian proactive projects:
DOHI secretly distributed 100 000 Bibles and over one million New Tes- taments behind the Iron Curtain. In the 1980’s they translated, typeset and printed a „first of its kind”, 2 000 page Study Bible in Russian and Romanian, as well as a red-letter New Testament with the extensive study material in the Bulgarian language.31
31 DOHI’S Study Bibles were known as the „Portable Bible School“ for pastors in communist countries. In addition to these StudyBibles, DOHI produced Children’s Bibles, Christian song books and Haley’s Handbook in Romanian (Bible dictionary). After Mao’s Cultural Revolu- tion, DOHI recorded and distributed the „Spoken Bible“. This audio Bible capitalized on the
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Harlan Popov’s favourite expression was:
„A Bible sent to communist lands… is like a bullet in the heart of
Satan.”
Other Prominent European Organizations
Open Doors (OD), Andrew Van der Bijl (Brother Andrew), Holland. „Brother Andrew“, a young Dutchman, began smuggling Bibles and Chris-
tian literature throughout Eastern Europe from 1955. He recruited people from all over the world to pray and support persecuted believers living under communism. After the fall of Mao and the Bamboo Curtain, he began minis- tering to China, sending a million New Testaments to their Ocean shores. He published his very popular autobiography, God’s Smuggler in 1967.
Open Doors is best known today for their „World Watch Monitor“, a research division that annually reports the top 100 countries of Christian persecution in the world.
Misjon bak Jernteppet (MBJ), Else-Marie Skard and Gulbrand Øver- bye (Oslo, Norway)
MBJ paid $10 000 dollar in Ransom to the Romanian government, for Richard Wurmbrand to be able to leave for the West.
Danish European Mission, Hans Kristian Neersko (1932–2017), Copenhagen, Denmark
Known for helping establish the International Sakharov Committee in
1975.
Suomen Evankelisluterilainen Kansanlähetys (Finnish Lutheran Mission),
Religion and Communism (now known as Keston College) Research, Dr. Michael Bourdeaux and Sir John Lawrence. The KGB considered Keston College as one of the most dangerous anti-Soviet organizations.
Additional Information About the Author’s Family
My father, Haralan Popov, was born on March 7, 1907, in the small Bul-
garian village of Krasno Gradishte. Although initially an atheist, he became a
interest of the young Chinese who were eager to learn English. Each Bible verse was first recorded in Mandarin, then in English.
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Christian as a teenager in the Ruse Baptist Church. In 1929, he was ordained as a pastor in the Ruse Pentecostal Church. Shortly after attending Russian language Bible school in Danzig and an English language Bible School in Hampstead, England, he married a Swedish missionary, Ruth Peterson, and together they started their ministry work in Burgas, Bulgaria.
It took more than three years after my father was arrested that my mom, Ruth, was finally able to return to her native Sweden with my sister Rhoda and me. It was in Sweden that our ministry to the persecuted church began (December 1951). Mom spoke at many churches throughout Europe asking for prayer and support for her husband and other imprisoned pastors. She began educating and informing the West of the conditions of Christians suf-
fering communist aggression in the East.
On New Year’s Day, 1963, my father was finally able to join us in Sweden. He was very happy to be able to work with Elis Düring, Director of Slavic Mission in Stockholm. who had helped our family for many years, when we were still in Bulgaria. As father did not speak Swedish and he was traveling extensively in the USA, he decided to move there in 1970. Dad and mom worked for UE in their California office. Before starting ECL in 1972.
Although the communist considered father dangerous, he was allowed to visit his beloved homeland in October 1988, but the communist did not permit father, a month later, to be buried in Bulgaria.
It seems that the Bulgarian communist considered father more danger- ous when dead then when he was alive.
Father is buried at the Forrest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glen- dale, CA. (November 1988).
Today a street is named after him Dr. Harlan Popov street in Sofia, Bulgaria. The first evangelical Pastor in Bulgaria being honored in this way.