Evangelical Communities' Illegal Activities and Government Practices in Late USSR (1960s - 1980s)

The article studies the ambivalent state policy in legalization of religious organizations in the post-war USSR. It focuses on the acute conflict between religious dissidents - members of the Evangelical Christian Baptists (ECB), led by the Council of Churches of the Baptist Church, and the Soviet authorities in the 1960s and 1980s on the issue of state registration of the communities. The first introduced documents of the CPSU Central Committee, the Council for Religious Affairs under the USSR Council of Ministers and the USSR KGB indicated that targeted intervention and tight control by the Soviet state triggered a response from religious nonconformists in the early 1960s. They began to perceive registration as a gross violation of the rights of believers and intrusion into the internal life of church. In turn, by the beginning of the 1970s, the authorities regarded the refusal of registration as the main threat to the political and ideological concept of loyal Soviet church. Thus, the authorities used a range of political, ideological and repressive measures aimed at forcing the supporters of the Council of Churches of the European Baptist Union to declare their loyalty and get registered. However, the efficiency of these measures was relatively low, since the faithful actively defended their religious freedom.