Russian German Lutheran 'Brotherhoods' in the Soviet Union and in the CIS: Comments on their Confessional Identity and on their Position in ELCROS

Abstract

An article by Sergei Filatov appeared in Religion, State and Society vol. 28, no. 1 (March 2000) entitled 'Protestantism in postsoviet Russia: an unacknowledged triumph'. I am taking the opportunity presented by this article to look back at the communities in Soviet Russia and to examine the question of their perception of their confessional identity. First, however, I shall summarise Filatov's conclusions, which I also intend to discuss. Filatov states that three Protestant confessions existed in Russia before perestroika, namely: the Baptists (in the form of the officially recognised All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (Vsesoyuzny soyuz Yevangel'skikh Khristian-Baptistov) and the illegal Council of Churches of Evangelical ChristiansBaptists (Sovet tserkvei Yevangel'skikh Khristian-Baptistov)); the Pentecostals; and the Seventh-Day Adventists.' Most Russian Germans, he continues, were officially regarded as Lutherans but 'in fact, the Lutheran German were far from being Lutheran'. Since before the 1917 revolution the majority of the communities had in fact been 'dissident Pietist trying to free themselves from the control of the official clergymen imposed on them by the tsarist authorities'. The Pietists had achieved this freedom as a result of the Soviet authorities' liquidation of the Evangelical Church (ELC). As a result most Russian Germans had become Baptists or had joined the 'so-called congregations of brethren (bratskiye obshchiny)' . Filatov portrays the developments which followed perestroika as a 'struggle for power' between the native 'Lutherans' on one side and a coalition of church, state and clergy from West Germany on the other. 'Pressure from the West Germans led to a German citizen, Bishop Georg Kretschmar, becoming head of the Church and clergymen from West Germany being appointed to almost all leading positions.' The aim of this coalition of German political and religious figures was, according to Filatov, 'to organise the national and cultural life of Russian Germans. The ELC was supposed to promote the social policy of the German government by discouraging German emigration from Russia.' As a result of this 'short struggle for power (1994-97)', Filatov claims, only a small number of the original Russian German believers remain in the church in Russia today.2 This concludes Filatov's theory.