I BELIEVE IN IMMORTALITY

Nikolay Yerofeyevich Boyko has been well known to God’s people of the persecuted brotherhood of unregistered churches since 1968, when his name first appeared on the lists of prisoners sentenced for faith in Jesus Christ in the Soviet Union.

Since the day he first turned to the Lord, he joyfully confessed the name of Jesus Christ to all people. For this he was repeatedly deprived of his freedom.

Only God knows how many derisions Nikolay Yerofeyevich endured in captivity. His oppressors denied him meetings with visitors, withheld his letters from him, and intended to literally destroy him by placing him in a refrigerated cell while he was ill with pneumonia.

But the Lord, in His indescribable mercy, watched over the life of His servant. Nikolay Yerofeyevich remained unbending and did not take the path of collaboration with his persecutors.

Although his oppressors did not intend to ever free Nikolay Yerofeyevich alive, the dear brother with God’s help lived on, staying faithful in the fire of incredible trials. And in answer to the prayers of the Lord’s people, in 1988 he was given back to the brotherhood of churches that had remained independent from government control.

Nikolay Yerofeyevich spent the subsequent fifteen years of freedom in earnest ministry. With whatever strength he had, he carried on pastoral ministry, served as a member of an interregional ministers’ council, and was the responsible minister working to build up churches in the Odessa district of the International Union of Churches of Evangelical Christian Baptists (IUC ECB), formerly known as the Council of Evangelical Baptist Churches (CEBC).

He reached the considerable age of eighty-two years, shining proof that our lot lies completely in the hands of the Lord and that existing conditions do not in the least determine the length of one’s life—only God’s will does. Despite the harsh path, he reached the finish line with great strength and went to be with the Lord at a patriarch’s length of days. Life’s battle he finished victoriously.

I was born in the small village of Pribuzhany, three kilometers from the city of Voznesensk in Nikolayev Oblast (administrative division of Ukraine). My mother could not remember the actual date of my birth and because the archives had been burned in the civil war, the date could not be verified. The date of birth in my documents is January 9, 1922, which I arbitrarily gave when I wanted to be admitted to technical school. Later I found out I was born the same day as a distant relative, meaning February 26, 1923.

My childhood was difficult. Famine raged in the Ukraine in 1933. Four children in our family died as infants; only two sisters, a brother, and I were left alive.

My parents considered themselves Orthodox but did not believe in God. I do not remember that they ever spoke to us about God or taught us to pray. I was told there was no God and I believed it. I never heard of believers, never met any, and one could say I did not have the interest.

During my first three years in school I was an average student, but between fifth and seventh grades I rose to excellence. I was elected class president. Then I entered the Komsomol (Communist youth league) and became secretary of that organization.

My responsibilities included collecting monthly dues, leading thematic discussions, and planning various events. Churchgoing was not among the activities of devoted komsomols.

After I graduated from high school, I wanted very much to be admitted to the Kherson naval technical institute in long-distance navigation. The competition was stiff and, in addition, the tuition costly. My family had almost no money and I had to part with my dream. I graduated from an ordinary technical school and worked in a ceramics factory.

From dawn to dusk my parents toiled to total exhaustion in the fields of the collective. I tried with all my strength to help them considerably with work around the house. Sometimes I even substituted for Mama in the kitchen, cooking something simple for the family.

On June 8, 1941, the Voznesensk regional military recruiting center called me up for the army. I arrived on June 11 to the artillery division deployed in the city of Lida, not far from the Polish city of Belostok. I settled into field school on the farmstead of a rich landowner where I trained altogether ten days.

Saturday evening, June 21, we watched a movie, not being particularly concerned about anything. But early Sunday morning we were awakened by a series of automatic gunshots and explosions of bombs dropped from airplanes by the Germans.

Outside the hysterical uproar did not subside. Several soldiers dashed into the clearing where we had marched previous days and fell under harsh gunfire—some were killed, some injured. I also rushed outside. The Germans were dropping burning phosphorus bombs from airplanes and firing relentlessly at the fallen soldiers. I darted back and forth around a big tree, dodging bullets.

Of the officers’ ranks only the duty major remained alive, he being with us in the field school. The rest of the officers living in town were killed that night.

The military divisions fled but the surviving recruits were left behind in the field school. The third day the major withdrew to make contact with central command and that night we were led out from town. On the road they gave out several packets of wheat concentrate and warned us under no circumstances to enter even a single house asking for something to eat or drink since the resentful local residents would kill Russian soldiers.

Our food supplies quickly ran out and we went hungry. Along the way we encountered the slain but out of conscience I could not take their survival rations from them. Yet I was afraid to go up to any of the local homes.

Armed soldiers walked ahead of us breaking trail; they fired defensively and we slipped through behind them. I walked ten days with neither sleep nor food. I learned to sleep while walking. Less than six kilometers from Minsk I entered a small house on the edge of some village.

"Son, this place is full of Germans!" The woman of the house threw up her hands in horror.

"Would you happen to have any clothes to change into?" I asked.

She gave me some pants and a shirt and advised me to walk straight through the village because miry swamps surrounded it.

The village was spread out. The street was wide. Whistling some tune, I sauntered along pretending to be a local.

The sun climbed high before I walked half way through town. Suddenly I heard from behind, "Halt!" I realized they were shouting at me but pretended not to notice.

"Russ halt!" they shouted still louder and more insistent.

I looked around.

"Kommen, kommen!" said a German and with a gesture of his hand motioned I come to him.

I came.

"Soldat?"

"No," I lied.

He momentarily snatched off my cap—a shaved head…

"Soldat, soldat!" and he led me to a small house.

He ordered me to sit.

As soon as I sat down I fell immediately asleep. I awoke only that evening, and only then from a strong blow. Apparently, they had been beating me a long time but although I felt the blows I could not wake up. A German appointed me to a column of prisoners consisting of both civilians and military, among whom were many commanding officers as well as regular soldiers.

They prodded us on to Brest by way of Baranovichi, Slonim, and Volkovysk. We were held in the city a short while and then sent by train to Germany. Once we arrived in the city of Kyustrin they lined us up in rows of five and conferred a number to every prisoner.

"Are there any Communists?" they asked through an interpreter. Silence.

"Commissars? Commanders?" No one stepped forward.

"Are there any komsomols?"

By that time I was so exhausted and weary I did not want to live. I thought better just to let them shoot me so I raised my hand. A few others timidly raised their hands after I did and we stepped forward.

The Germans went among the rows of haggard soldiers thoroughly scrutinizing each face and without difficulty pulled out eighty-five more! From one’s face it was not hard to tell who was who.

We were then redirected to the concentration camp "Sachsenhausen," not far from Oranienburg, the camp to which all the commanders and Communists were driven. We were fed rutabaga and turnips and rationed three hundred grams of bread a day baked with beets and sawdust mixed in.

They put us to work unloading building materials from barges. We carried bags of cement and threw bricks to shore passing them in a chain from hand to hand. We were dressed in old green overcoats and inner shirts soldiers had worn back under the tsars. By that time we were worn down to mere skin and bones—not an exaggeration. The overcoats hung on us like on scarecrows and to move in them was impossible. We took them off and worked only in our inner garments. People died like flies from the dampness, cold, and hunger and I saw those starving to death not having received the Lord—what an awful death it is! People also died from beatings.

Life lost all meaning for me, but despite the hopelessness of our situation, I did not think about God during those terrible years because they had convinced me He did not exist.

Time passed. My strength slipped away. The prisoners were taking turns carrying bags of cement from the barge to shore. I was all of eighteen years old but so wasted that a bag of cement weighed more than I. Two stronger prisoners of war who had just arrived put the bag on my back and I, scarcely able to walk, set out. Closer to shore the bag took over and I stumbled. I felt myself just about to fall with the bag forcing me down but no matter how hard I tried to stay on my feet, I collapsed anyway. The bag fell next to me and broke open, the cement spilling out. A guard seeing this scene rushed at me with a bayonet-tipped automatic. He would have pierced me straight through if I had not, mustering the last of my strength, rolled to the side. He reached me anyway with the bayonet and it penetrated my leg above the knee. In the heat of the moment I ran. The German raised his gun. The prisoners screamed out loud; he did not pull the trigger. Only then did I feel blood streaming down my leg. I bound up the wound with a strip torn from the back of my shirt and of course it became infected. The infection spread.

The concentration camp had neither doctor nor medical orderly and not a single medication. The wound did not heal. By now I could not walk to work. I realized my life was coming to an end. But I was so young! I felt sorry for myself. For what purpose did a person live? Was there meaning to life? These and many other questions arose in my soul and anguished me, but I could find no answer to them.

"It would be better to leave this life than to be so tormented!" the intrusive thought of suicide forced its way in. But my heart rebelled, "Why die so young? Living things no smarter than bedbugs live three hundred years! Should a man really, wise creature that he is, so foolishly end his life?!" Inside the struggle grew and provoked a sort of search, although still not entirely conscious, for the meaning of life.

The winter of 1941 to 1942 fell cold on Germany. Our camp was hidden from view deep in a forest wilderness. We found ourselves constantly surrounded by guards. Raw cold hung in the barracks and there was nothing with which to heat. The head officer of the concentration camp drove all the invalids into the forest to collect wood chips and brush.

Even with a stick I could hardly walk but they compelled me to gather sticks as well. Those who were in better health carried armloads of brush to the furnace. I dragged the dry branches into piles with a stick, now and then bending down to lift up a larger branch. Thus I made my way gradually along. Then, suddenly under a bush appeared something of a dirty piece of paper. I bent down and picked up a page folded several times over. Just in case, I decided to unfold it and if it were blank to throw it away. Carefully, so as not to tear the wet paper, I unfolded it. Something was written, and in Russian at that! I looked around—would anyone see? And I began to read "Our Father…"—the Lord’s Prayer! From the crown of my head to the soles of my feet an unexplainable joyful quiver ran through my whole being. I read it, savoring literally every word. I staggered at this prayer. I wept. It meant that doomed people such as I had a Father in Heaven! From this thought I felt an inner strength I had not known before. A feeling of joy mysterious to me poured into my soul worn out with suffering. To this day I cannot find words to express the blessedness of spirit I sensed at that moment as I held that homely piece of paper with its priceless words! "There is a God!" my heart triumphed. "There is a God!" This was the turning point in my life. I could not call this priceless find a coincidence!

If I had found that prayer in German, what would have been noteworthy about that? It was Germany. But to find the prayer in Russian, here deep in the German backcountry—that was a miracle! It was clear that only a Russian prisoner could have brought it to this land of sorrow. And who knows how that unfortunate one, perhaps dying, had let it fall from his hand?! The Lord’s ways are inscrutable!

Carefully folding the moist page, I hid it in my shirt pocket. When I arrived back at the barracks, the first thing I did was to memorize that prayer, for the paper might be confiscated but who could snatch it from one’s memory? And I not only memorized it, but morning and evening prayed this prayer of God. This was my first deliberate turning to God. I was actually afraid to forget to pray. As I recited the words of this extraordinary prayer, I felt how tenderly the Lord was touching my heart.

Several days I diligently, without mistakes, repeated the words that had become precious to me and then started to think deeply about their meaning. What strength flowed from every word!

"Our Father…" —that meant I was no longer an orphan, forgotten by everyone!

"Who art in heaven…"—that was where my God lived! Why had I not known that before? Moved to the depths of my soul, I decided that I had the right to make my need known to God. "Lord! If You exist, save me," the groan wrenched from my soul. "If You exist, help me. You see my condition—not much longer and my life will be cut short…"

Not knowing anything of the teachings of Christ nor knowing that God answers prayer, yet I expected that something in my life would change. Judging from conditions in the camp and watching prisoners dying daily, it was unthinkable to expect medical help. But after a very short time, all of a sudden an interpreter entered the barracks and announced, "All invalids, cripples, and sick—to the receiving room for the doctor!"

My joyful and confident heart trembled. "This is God answering my prayer!"

The hapless people gathered and went in one by one to see the doctor. Of all the sick the doctor designated four for surgery, including me. Three days later they loaded us onto a trailer and pulled us with a tractor under guard to the hospital. The surgeon operated on my wound, placed a dressing, and ordered me, "Do not unbind it." I obediently walked around with that bandage until it wore off.

I did not forget the Lord’s Prayer and noticed that after I prayed I became embarrassed to argue or smoke—my conscience condemned it. I stopped smoking, tried not to yell, and my conscience eased up. Later I understood that this was the Holy Spirit convicting me of my bad actions.

Within a few months after the operation, a bauer (farmer) came to the camp and asked the head officer for several prisoners to dig potatoes. "I have one invalid who can go—take him…"

The prisoners, myself included of course, joyfully flew into activity hoping we would be able to eat potatoes in the field. For two weeks we were taken to the potato digging. That year raw potatoes seemed more delicious to me than cooked ones might normally—I was that wasted from hunger. While working we wiped the gray tubers with a flap of our overcoat or shirtsleeve and ate them. For lunch the owner boiled potatoes in their jackets especially for us—what an unheard-of delicacy! The prisoners noticeably grew stronger and behold! The harvest ended.

Because I was still disabled I was sent along with several other prisoners to the concentration camp "Simensschtadt." God’s mercy was manifest in this also and of course it was an answer to my prayers.

From the new camp we helpless and exhausted invalids were driven on foot three kilometers to a factory where, whether able or not, we were to construct wooden plank sheds. The factory owner was concerned that each worker contribute to the production no matter what it took so they fed us a little better. They brought lunch to the factory. Although no one had ever taught me this, my heart was prompted to ask a blessing on the food. I knelt down in the presence of everyone, prayed, and then ate. After the meal I thanked God for the food.

The German who brought the food noticed that I was praying and he brought me a dictionary so that I would have a way to explain myself. Actually, I had known a little German since grade school. Sometimes German newspapers ended up in camp and I carried on with my self-education. Gradually I became familiar with the language, found out what was going on at the front, and told the news to my companions in misfortune.

"Do you believe in God?" the German was amazed.

"Yes," I answered with only one word because any contact with him was forbidden. A little later he brought me a religious book in Russian from some Catholic faith. It told about Christ, but as I later understood, its stories were extensively distorted. Out of ignorance I took them at face value. I did not know any better—I did not know the truth.

We were kept for a long time constructing sheds. This is how we built them: First we prepared the site, then we drove the support posts. We hoisted the beams onto the posts and then attached the planks to them.

The supervisor spoke to the workers in German but no one understood him. The prisoners just looked at him in bewilderment, not knowing what to do, and he beat them with a rifle butt.

"Nikolay, interpret what he wants from us. Why is he beating us?" the boys asked.

Just like that I replied, "Take shovels, position the wagon cars, and prepare the construction site."

The boys set to work contentedly. This did not escape the supervisor’s notice.

"You understand German?!"

"A little."

"Come along. You will be my interpreter."

From that point on I translated all the supervisor’s directives while working as an equal with the boys.

Right at that time the interpreter for the camp itself ran away (he had been born in Moscow) and the camp’s head officer ordered me to become interpreter. Thus I interpreted at work, in camp, and even in the hospital—the sick had been coming to the doctor but he could not understand their complaints.

——

In 1943, a person showed up in camp in a German uniform yet speaking pure Russian. We wondered what this meant and were wary of him.

"Announce throughout the camp that everyone come to the assembly hall—a meeting will be held immediately."

I gave the announcement.

It turned out that he was a Russian officer, a vlasovets (follower of the Russian turncoat general Vlasov) recruiting prisoners to the front. "Whoever wishes to join the Vlasov army, hand in a written statement to that effect," he suggested and promised to stop by our barracks from time to time.

Some had already submitted statements. I started to talk them out of it. "What are you doing? This means killing your own, brother against brother?!" By that time the conviction had already clearly formed in my understanding that it was sin before God to swear at someone, so much the more to kill.

The prisoners out of desperation were ready to do anything to break free of that place. "I will leave, get a little stronger, and then definitely desert to my own side…"

"It will be harder to escape from there than from here," I dissuaded others while myself not wanting to fall under the gaze of the vlasovets. As soon as he showed his face in the barracks I left for the most distant corner and hid. They looked for me, yelling, "Where did our interpreter go?" I did not respond. Several times they could not find me and I got away with it. Finally one time they discovered my hiding place and led me to the office of the camp head.

"Why have you been hiding?"

"I do not want to be recruited for that army," I admitted openly.

"So what are you? Bolshevik? Communist?" And thus it began! Although I was the interpreter they beat me badly.

"Tomorrow you will go off to work, Bolshevik!" ordered the camp head.

I went back to the barracks and started to think. I could walk—my leg had gradually healed. Likely they would shoot me on the road as a Communist if I went out to work. I started to pray earnestly to God. More than once I had seen how wonderfully He protected me but I was still afraid of death. I prayed almost the whole night, "Lord, protect me."

In the morning I stood with my work division in the camp yard. The chef from the kitchen encountered me there and asked, "Where will you go today?" I explained what had happened. He asked the division foreman not to lead the workers from the camp yard just yet while he himself ran to headquarters.

"I do not have an interpreter in the kitchen! I am already beside myself! I tell them to get certain food and they bring something different. Allow Boyko to help me…" He managed to obtain me.

In the kitchen I recovered physically and felt myself drawn to my homeland. From the newspapers I knew that our army had already neared the Orden. At this point another young fellow from Leningrad reinforced my intention to escape, "You know, as soon as our side crosses the Orden the Germans will either shoot us or send us to the Americans. It would be better to leave…"

Trying not to draw attention, we carefully prepared to escape and one night we ran away. They shot at us but we were already far enough away that the bullets did not reach us. We ran the whole night. During the day we traveled carefully since we were dressed in prisoners’ clothing. But when we saw that the Germans themselves were running about in a panic, whomever, wherever, without giving us the least bit of attention, we walked along more boldly. We crossed the front lines! We saw our own—Russians!

When we met up with our own soldiers we explained where we were from. And yes, from a look at our clothes it was not hard to believe us. The soldiers sent us to the commander in the rear. There I was assigned to the field artillery and went with our military toward Berlin.

Amazingly, I encountered prisoners from the camp from which I had escaped. "You are alive?! That can't be! We saw your bodies!" It turned out that the camp administration, so as to frighten the rest of the prisoners, brought in two corpses. "Whoever runs away can expect the same fate," they threatened.

Through all this I clearly understood that the Lord had heard my prayers and answered them. After this I began to view life completely differently.

——

The horrible years of war came to an end. All the soldiers dreamed of one thing—to return as soon as possible to their homeland and to their families, to all that was near and dear! And for the most part everyone did leave except for the few still detained in Germany.

In December, 1945, the military command completely unexpectedly informed me that a criminal case had been instituted against me as a traitor to the homeland.

The captain conducting the investigation wrote in the case files: "Boyko voluntarily surrendered with a weapon in hand …"

"Excuse me!" I retorted. "How can you, an officer, write such a lie?! I ended up a prisoner of war before even passing the basic combat course. I had not sworn the oath. They did not even have the right to give me a weapon! Even those who had taken the oath before the war started were issued only one rifle to three!"

"You were a komsomol. You should have found a weapon and shot yourself rather than surrender alive!" announced the officer.

"That is another matter! But why write, ‘he voluntarily surrendered with a weapon’?"

It was entirely useless to explain. The tribunal handed down the sentence: "Fifteen years hard labor, five years exile, and five years forfeiture of rights."

I was sent to Vorkuta to serve out my term of punishment.

What a merciful Lord! How would I have lived through all this if I had not met Him, if I had not learned to pray to Him?! Not a day went by that I did not call on Him. I was convinced that God existed! I was convinced that He heard my prayers and that He knew the truth no matter how unjustly they sentenced me. The knowledge that God’s hand was guiding me along the mysterious path comforted me such that I knew no disappointment or doubts.

The transit group of prisoners arrived in Vorkuta and thus my wanderings from prison to prison began. How I yearned to meet believers among the prisoners and to hear something about God. My faith in the living God grew stronger as He answered my prayers. True, at first I was amazed and confounded and thought, what if this were just a coincidence? Time and again I fully verified each answer and came to the firm conclusion that they were the marvelous works of God’s hands.

Now I understand that at the time I did not actually know God as I should. I only believed that He existed. Later I many times met people who although they did not deny the existence of God, yet did not possess the living faith that would have brought them assurance of salvation. They did not have eternal life and this testified to the fact that in reality they had not acknowledged their own sinfulness and therefore had not come to know the saving right hand of God.

In the camps I worked as a machinery fitter, fixed mining equipment, and gained reasonable skills in water systems. Therefore I was tossed around from prison zone to prison zone.

In one of the camps, as I walked past a seated prisoner I noticed he was reading a small booklet and I could not help but ask about it. The prisoner, hoping it would be uninteresting to me, explained, "This book is about God. A priest loaned it to me for a time…" I did not leave him alone until I talked him into letting me have it for at least a few hours. Nikolay Ivanovich Soloshchenko—that was the name of the believer—gave in to my insistent request. And thus for the first time in my life I held the holy Book! It should not be difficult to understand my joy. As a starving soul I drank in the holy words like a sponge, finding at last the answers to the questions troubling me. From the holy pages heavenly joy flowed into my soul—God had spoken to me. And then I trembled—I realized I was not just a sinner but a perishing sinner. How could such a holy God endure me and answer my prayers? My heart was smitten. Both joy and bitter sorrow poured into my soul. I cried and rejoiced. And then all of a sudden I was sent to a different camp and had to part with that precious Book having only skimmed it.

My whole life I never forgot that flame of hunger to hear and read the holy Word that engulfed my whole being. It lit my heart aflame and I persistently searched for believers in every camp, constantly eavesdropping on every serious conversation among the prisoners.

Suddenly the happy thought came to mind—I would write a letter to my sister and have her pay any price to buy and send me a New Testament! But in those years not only religious but even fiction literature was forbidden in the camp. Taking that fact into consideration, I asked my sister that if she bought one to let me know before she sent it. Since I was working with the sick I hoped I could obtain one of their addresses so my sister could send the precious gift to me through them.

Time dragged agonizingly. A new group of prisoners arrived in the camp—would there be believers among them? I sadly looked over the newcomers. My attention was drawn to a quiet young man, Stepa Boytke. As a youth, he had ended up in a juvenile colony, lived there until he reached the age of an adult, and since his term was not up had been transferred to the general camp. As it turned out he was from a Mennonite family, a German. We became friends and often spent our free time together. He told about the life of believers—this was of utmost interest to me. He said that at their church services children sing and recite poems—I could not imagine this in the least. Could children actually participate in the service?

Finally I received a letter from my sister: "Nikolay, that which you requested I found and sent to the camp…" Can you imagine what went on in my soul?! The Holy Scriptures had been sent to where they were categorically forbidden! I lost all sense of calm—every day I went and checked the list of packages received. I waited and then it came! My last name was listed!

"Stepa! What shall we do? The Book came!"

It was obvious that without God’s intervention God’s Book would not be given us.

When I first skimmed through the New Testament I noticed that fasting is a strength that reinforces prayer. "You know what, Stepa? Let’s fast. The Lord protected my life in captivity and brought me out of such a horrible abyss. Would He not help us now so that they would give us the New Testament? God knows how much I thirst to read His Book—it cannot be that God would not give it to me!" With firm faith and trust in the Almighty God we appointed a three-day fast and only on the third day did I go to the distribution.

Usually when giving out packages the head of operations was present along with the military doctor, the distributor to hired employees, and the distributor to prisoners (he carried out the dirty work of opening the packages while the rest thoroughly examined the contents).

"From where are you expecting a package?"

"From Voznesensk."

The distributor then untied the fabric wrapping of the package, pulled out the nails from the lid of the box, and lifted it off. I looked in and my heart quickened its beat—O God! Right on top with nothing hiding it, of significant size bound in black leather with a golden cross decorating the front cover, was a Bible! In my heart I cried out to God, "Have mercy on me, O God! Keep Your Book for me!"

The head of operations took the Book with a brusque gesture and began to casually page through it. I prayed, not taking my eyes from the officer. He leafed through to the end and returned to the first page.

"A Bible?!" he loudly read with amazement and glanced scornfully at me. "You there…you want to become a priest?"

"Not everyone who reads the Bible necessarily becomes a priest," I answered and continued to pray.

The officer slammed the Bible shut and threw it on the table. At that moment the military doctor announced, "Nothing prohibited!" and looked questioningly at me. "What shall we put the food in?" Only then did I remember I had forgotten to bring a pillowcase. The prisoners usually went for packages using a pillowcase for a bag.

"I forgot—I did not bring anything," I explained myself guiltily.

The distributor quickly took stock of the situation and handed me the wrapping from the package. Stretching it out, I put it down and the distributor with one dexterous move swept off the food thrown on the table and with it, the Book!

"Thank you!" I blurted out hastily and hidden by one, then two doors I ran! I ran so fast not even horses could have caught up with me! I did not feel the earth under me! I thought suddenly they would remember and it would be all over! But no one ran after me.

Later remembering that event, I understood how the Lord has the power to dim the minds of wicked people such that they are not in any condition to carry out their malicious intentions.

I ran into the barracks. Stepa was still on his knees praying to God—how precious it was to me to see the earnestness and thirst of that young man to have the Word of God!

"Stepa! We have it!" I exclaimed ecstatically, holding up the bundle. "We need to hide it immediately!"

We decided not to leave it in our barracks and found a secret place in a different barracks. For three days we did not take the Bible from its hiding place. What if they noticed! Later the camp administration conducted countless thorough searches to find that precious Book I had received, one could say, straight through the hands of the censors themselves.

When convinced no one was watching us, we tremblingly drew it out, hid ourselves in some tall weeds and began to read. I opened to the first page and was confused. Was this not the Book?! I had read a different one! Only later did I understand that this was not just a New Testament but the whole Bible. As I read it there was much I did not understand—I blamed this on my own ignorance. The hunger arose within me to grasp its meaning. I prayed much about this, wept, and read page after page on my knees. And then God arranged yet another circumstance such that I could read the Bible both day and night—without request from me I was reassigned to night shift as an instrument fitter, adjusting instruments and electrodes.

I read the whole night through and during the day tried to remember what I had read, but what was this? However hard I tried I could not remember anything of what I had read. For some time already I had noticed lapses in my memory—the knowledge I gained in school had vanished, as it were. I did not remember a single formula, a single law, which I used to know and understand. This was the result of the hungry five years in concentration camp, people explained to me.

Now how would I remember what I read from the Bible? So I prayed, "Lord, I need to not just read but also apply what I read in my life, but my memory lets me down…" After this prayer, the Lord turned my attention to the words of the apostle Paul, "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13). I was thinking—after all, only God could have created in me the desire to remember the Word of God. So then He would send even memory to me! Praying earnestly as I read, I noticed that I was remembering more than before. Thus God fulfilled the desire of my heart that He Himself had sent! And all that I memorized during those years (that was 1948) I remember well to this day. Was this not the mercy of God?

Soon I was sent, as always, to another camp and Stepa and I were separated.

Those to whom God has shown the mercy of being in captivity for His Name know how many times a day prisoners are searched. Led off to work—a search. Returning to the zone—a search. Someone brought something illicit—a search. A new group transferred in—a search. Previously they had searched me not particularly rigorously—I did not have anything forbidden. But now I had a Bible, and in a rather large format at that! I was transferred six times or more that year, meaning twelve searches before the entire camp. Leave the Bible behind? Such a thought did not even enter my mind. How could I part with it?! I had no other option but to always carry it with me. As soon as they announced a coming transfer I fasted until I reached the other camp.

I remember one time a prisoner found out that they were transferring me to a different camp and asked me to pass on a photograph to his friend. I did not know that it was also forbidden to have photographs in the camp so I placed it in a notebook that I had made myself by sewing together scraps of paper from the ends of cement bags.

A transfer. I was fasting that God would keep the Bible. The guard that day was one of the most obnoxious. "Empty everything onto the ground from your pockets and pillowcases," he ordered.

As I complied that photograph fell out of my notebook. Trampling all my handmade notebooks underfoot he yelled, "Gather them all up—you go to the punishment cell!"

"Lord, I am willing to go anywhere if only the Bible stays with me!"

I sat in the punishment cell. The guard called out, "For punishment, come scrub the corridor floor."

"I would scrub two corridors if only the Bible would survive," I thought.

God protected my Bible with His miracles—these were for me unforgettable lessons of the might and power of God. They strengthened and established my faith. Most important was to abide in constant fellowship with the Lord as Christ instructed: "If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you" (John 15:7).

Often the guard soldiers would page through the Bible during a search but not understanding anything, would close it again without opening to the first page where it was clearly written "Bible." Very dangerous moments also occurred but I always fasted and prayed inwardly that God would hide from cruel eyes His Book, which had become dearer to me than life. The Lord knew my need and thirst and kept my Bible safe up to the day of my release.

As I read the Bible I did not find in it those events with which I had had the pleasure of becoming acquainted in the New Testament and I wondered why. Although I did not understand much, yet I earnestly read page after page. I turned over the last page of the book of the prophet Malachi and—amazing! I read, "The New Testament of our Lord Jesus Christ." The next page said, "The Holy Gospel from Matthew." Now, only now, did I discover that the Bible consisted of two parts! Here were those familiar events! How happy I was! All was much more understandable and attainable in the New Testament. I obtained greater clarity as I reread one or another of the chapters several times. But that was not all.

My conscience was troubled but how was that? Reading the holy Book and yourself sinning? That was exactly the way it was—I did not want to get into an argument but I argued, I was against yelling but I yelled. What was going on? And then I read the words of the Apostle Paul, "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me" (Rom. 7:19-20). That was the problem! I could not control myself because I was a sinner. But how was I to free myself from sin? Rereading those verses, I grew discouraged. But when the words of the Gospel came to mind that Christ came to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance (Matt. 9:13), the light flooded into my soul—I was that very sinner! Kneeling down, I called out to God, "Lord, You see what a sinner I am! I cannot deliver myself from these vices (and I began to list my sins). I ask You to free me from them…" God heard my prayer. I came to know Christ as my own Savior. In that prayer I also told the Lord I wanted to consecrate my entire life to Him. "Lord, if it be according to Your will, I will be Your servant from this day forward. Lead me to where You want me to be, and whatever You command me to do I will do." I was overjoyed I had obtained salvation and been fully freed from known sins. I knew that dwelling with God in heaven for eternity awaited me.

The Lord caused my spirit to be born again from that dead life and from then on the Holy Spirit prompted me to testify to people of the love of God and of salvation in Christ. The Lord gave me such wonderful peace of heart. I prayed, "Oh God! You showed me the path of salvation. Help me to find Your children among the prisoners." Having prayed, I began to earnestly tell people about God. The Bible, of course, I could not loan out to just anyone to read—it would be confiscated and never again be returned. At night I wrote out copies of the Gospel of John and distributed them to those who wanted to read them. I copied it over many times.

I worked alongside non-prisoners hired at the Vorkuta machinery factory. Once, the time to leave for work came and the foreman had forgotten my time card. "Run quick and look for it!" he ordered his assistant. That person did not find it either and the convoy could not hold back all the workers for just one such as I. "That’s it!" he cried. "You are on your own, Boyko! We are closing the gates!"

They ordered me to return to the barracks and immediately the thought came that the Lord must have left me in the camp for a reason. Maybe I needed to testify to someone about God. With nothing else to do I thought I would walk through the zone—and it was big—and strike up a conversation about God with whomever I met. Half the day passed without meeting anyone sincerely interested. I went into my barracks, climbed to the top bunk, and continued to think. "Lord, there are no accidents with You. Why am I here today?" Then suddenly I heard…

"Is Obetotskiy here?" one young fellow was asking.

"We don’t know him," answered several prisoners. But I knew this person—he worked in our brigade of machinery fitters.

"He is at work right now," I explained. Then I listened as the prisoners lying on the bunks by the door went on to ask the boy.

"How old are you?"

"I am eighteen. I was transferred here from the juvenile colony."

The young man looked more like a schoolboy—thin, tormented, sad.

"Why were you sent to prison?"

"I murdered the chairman of the collective," the boy confessed despondently.

"It served him right!" laughed the criminals. "That is the least he deserved!"

"You approve of murder?!" I joined the conversation. "And you convinced me you are believers?!" I made them embarrassed. "The Bible says murder is a great sin."

The young man listened thoughtfully. I talked with him a little, said that Obetotskiy would come after the change of shift, and we parted.

The next day an unfamiliar prisoner came to our barracks looking for believers in God and they pointed him to me.

"Are you a believer in God?"

"I am."

"Then a young man is calling for you."

I dressed and went out. I looked around and on a bench I saw the young man with whom I had talked the day before, sitting and weeping.

"What is wrong?"

"After yesterday’s conversation I lost all sense of peace. You said murderers will be in hell. Will God forgive me even though I am a murderer?"

"Of course!" I assured him. "God is strong to forgive every sinner—you just need to fully repent."

With these and many other words from the Scriptures I comforted this boy who was sincerely grieving over his sin. I also showed him the secret hiding place where I kept my Bible and offered he carefully read it. He did read from it but the dark expression on his face remained—he was despondent. Once, he admitted he was continuously tormented by thoughts of suicide because the person against whom he had raised his hand always stood before his eyes. In the New Testament I found the account of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and how the robber received forgiveness of sins and I gave it to him to read. With hungry eyes and a heart pounding anxiously, he read the precious lines. I watched him as gradually his face lit up with God’s light, formerly unknown to him. He was beaming. He calmed down. Hope in the mercy of God had been kindled in his heart.

Only after these encounters and conversations did I understand why they had not found my time card or called me to work for several days. Truly there are no accidents with God. Soon he was taken for transfer so we parted. He returned the Bible to its place as we had agreed.

The life of prisoners condemned to extended terms deprived of freedom was dismal, monotonous, and joyless. From time to time it would come to life somewhat when a transfer group arrived, through a rough sorting out among the prisoners of their territories of influence and the grilling of tormented newcomers for prison news.

One such bleak evening, I poured out my soul to God as usual and lay down to rest. At night while I slept, I do not know who said to me, "Another ten-year term awaits you, but for the Word of God." I could not forget such a thing. Waking up with a start, I prayed from my heart, "As is pleasing to Your will, O God!" Since my repentance I was ready to spend not only a new ten year term but my whole life in prison if only to preach to these desperate people about Christ. I took personal note of this dream and prepared inwardly for new trials, not having yet completed my first term.

The New Testament—what a delight to the spirit in it! I read and followed it but much was unclear and who would explain it? And so I came running to that tried and true method of mine, fasting and prayer. I always fasted for three days and nights at a time despite the heavy labor. Through fasting and prayer the Lord not only strengthened me physically and spiritually, but also revealed precious truths.

These words in the book of Acts perplexed me: "Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him" (Acts 12:5). In my imagination the church was a building. How could a building pray? Either this was a misprint or I was not in a condition to understand what was written. "I will fast," I decided, "and the Lord will reveal it to me."

That very night a guard woke me.

"Get up quickly! A transfer."

Opening my eyes, I looked at the neighboring bunks of prisoners from my brigade. All were asleep.

"Why aren't you rousing the others?" I was upset.

"Do not talk! Get dressed quickly—the convoy is already waiting."

Nothing being explained, I submissively went out. I was sent to a different mine.

Where I would work or with whom did not interest me. The first thing I asked when arriving at that other camp was, "Are there any believers here?"

"There are!" they answered me and described an old water carrier. It turned out that in this camp they considered people of diverse faiths believers.

I found the elderly man. He was a sincere brother, a believer from Zaporozhe Oblast—Yegor Lazarevich Bashmakov. He immediately suggested I pray. Joy overflowed my heart—I was meeting a true Christian for the first time. I wept on my knees. The brother came to life when he found out I had a Bible and his eyes shone. Taking it up, he began to cry like a child. "How were you able to bring it in here?!" Words cannot convey what sweet conversation we enjoyed! How we were comforted in spirit!

That evening, suddenly it became clear that I had been brought to this camp by mistake and they immediately demanded I return to my former place of work. By now, I saw in all this the wonderful providence of God as the brother answered all my accumulated questions that needed clarification. He answered freely, convincingly, briefly. "Turn to this verse of the Holy Scriptures." I would read it, and the veil of mystery would disappear! How simple everything was! The elderly man also taught me to use parallel passages of the Bible.

"Can a building pray without ceasing?" I asked like a child. "What is a church?"

"Turn to Acts chapter eight and read verse three."

"As for Saul, he made havock of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison" (Acts 8:3). "So this is what the church is!" I exclaimed for joy. "Now I understand, I understand!"

Yegor Lazarevich suggested I read the thorough booklet he was guarding by Yakov Kreker, Alone with the Savior. I buried myself in reading and obtained great spiritual wealth!

"You know, I will write out a copy of it so I do not forget."

"They are just about to call you for a transfer!"

"Let’s pray to the Lord about it. I believe they will not send me until I have copied it."

We prayed and I hurriedly began to copy it over into a notebook of sewn-together pieces of paper from cement bags.

I was not led off to work because there was no work of my specialty. I wrote all evening and all night. While everyone else slept I enjoyed drinking in the wonderful truths of God.

At morning roll call I went out to the guardhouse. "There is no convoy. Return to the barracks and wait!" So I happily went back to copying. I caught a few snatches of sleep, always writing and writing. Every morning I went out and returned, and thus it went until I had completely copied the booklet. I had just finished when they returned me to the camp from which I had been taken, finally having found a convoy and a vehicle to drive me back. My faith was strengthened. Most valuable was that God knew my needs and was wonderfully working through all the little events of prison life. They may seem insignificant to some, but to me, so unworthy, each one of them demonstrated the great mercy of God!

God cultivated my soul and strengthened my faith by sending encounters with different believers. I simply could not understand—why did people of various religious movements read the same Gospel and yet interpret it differently? I talked with some believers about the Holy Spirit and became wary of their insistent, even obsessive conviction that believers should without ceasing speak in other tongues. By this time I had already read through the New Testament several times but nowhere had I come across anything of the sort.

"You misunderstand this matter," he emphasized with superior knowledge. "I was once the same as you."

"What were you?"

"A Baptist."

"And what is a Baptist?"

"Then what movement are you?" he asked with amazement.

"I do not know," I answered, definitely sincerely confused, and then asked a new question. "What is a ‘movement’?"

"I used to be Baptist but that was a mistake and now I am a Pentecostal," he interpreted his viewpoint to me.

Hearing that, my mind demanded an answer to the question—of what movement was I? I came into the barracks, knelt down, and prayed, "Lord, reveal to me through Your Word of what movement I am." I opened the epistle to Jude and read, "…it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints" (Jude 3). Which faith was delivered to the saints? I looked up a cross-reference for that verse and read, "Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel" [or evangelical faith] (Phil. 1:27). Not Orthodox, not Catholic, but evangelical should be faith! In confirmation of this thought I read from the gospel of Mark, "Repent ye, and believe the gospel" (Mark 1:15). How clear it all was! Why to this point had I not noticed that since one needs to believe in the gospel, my faith was evangelical! From my heart I thanked the Lord for the answered prayer.

"I am from the evangelical Christians!" I triumphantly told the Pentecostal when I met him next.

"That means you are a Baptist!" he instructed.

A new riddle! And a new question, "What are Baptists?"

"Those baptized upon confession of faith," he explained good-naturedly.

"Well, I am not yet baptized so that means I am not a Baptist," I clarified for myself and rejoiced that the Lord sent me answers to difficult questions through His Word.

I also happened to talk with Seventh Day Adventists. I felt that I was not in agreement with their arguments. I prayed, "Lord, give wisdom and instruction." And then I remembered the verse from the Scriptures, "For there is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof."Although I remembered the words, I did not know where they were written in the Bible. By visual memory I did recall they were on the top right of a page. I opened the New Testament and, beginning with the epistle to the Romans, paged through to Hebrews—and I found it! (Heb. 7:18) My opponent found it difficult to challenge the clear words of the Scriptures.

Thus I studied the Bible with the Lord’s guidance, for the most part at night when everyone else was asleep. Once I was so buried in thought I did not hear the cruelest guard enter. I froze. According to the camp rules of order, when administration enters prisoners should rise. I stood. I was praying. He approached. In front of me lay the open Bible and notebook with notes. He took the Bible and began to read. My heart trembled, "Lord, protect it!" My heart was already prepared for the punishment cell. If only the Bible would survive! The guard unhurriedly read, read some more, and then silently placed the Book on the table and just as silently went out. The whole time I had been crying out to God. As soon as the guard closed the door, I quickly hid the Bible and lay down. Covering myself with a blanket, I continued to pray that the guard would not remember, would not come back. Praise God! God showed mercy this time also—the Bible was preserved. I was continually being convinced of God’s might and of the power of prayer.

The Lord taught me to turn to Him with every need. I was assigned to the job of plastering because no work of my specialty was forthcoming. Although in my youth I had helped my father carry tiles, I could not plaster. Now I had to. How I disliked that dirty job! The substance ended up more on the floor and on me than on the wall—and my attitude was bad. I decided to pray, "Lord, help me to love this work because if it were not according to Your will they would not have made me plaster." The Lord heard my prayer—I set to work with joy and every day it went better and better for me. No longer spilling the compound everywhere, I myself stayed clean and now I even enjoyed plastering. I came to this personal conclusion—if you love a job then you begin to do it with joy, from the soul, and it always goes better!

Later, while doing major repair work in one of the Vorkuta prison zones, I found in a barracks under the floor boards a notebook full of Christian hymns. I very much liked the content of the hymn, "Oh, a poor sinner am I! Yes, I am such…" but I had never heard Christian singing. So I chose a melody myself and sang it from the depths of my soul.

Everyone knew that I was constantly looking for believers among the prisoners. Once, I went for my portion in the mess hall, like every prisoner with my own wire-handled tin can, and sat down to eat. Seven men of an elderly age entered the building. All were husky and broad-shouldered, although as thin as any other inmate. In my spirit I sensed that they were looking for me, which was exactly the case.

"I greet you, brothers," I addressed them as they approached.

"Hello," I heard in answer and realized they were probably Orthodox.

"Tell me, are you brothers?"

"Which kind of brothers?!"

"In Christ."

"We are Orthodox."

"Well, would there happen to be any of my brothers in this prison zone?"

"You mean you are not Orthodox? You betrayed your faith?!" they reproachfully attacked me.

"I never had any faith. I was an atheist but now I have come to believe on the Lord. Anyway, who are you?"

"This is a priest of such-and-such church, this is so-and-so…" they began, listing their names and the parishes where they had served.

These were venerable elders who had lived under the reign of the tsars. Now, in 1952, I was to meet them.

"I ask you whether there are any of my brothers, evangelical Christians, in this prison zone?"

"There are."

"Introduce them to me, please." The old men did not object.

"Do you have eternal life?" I was interested to know as we walked along.

"Who among people can know that?! That is known only to God…"

"In that case, you are preaching to people about Christ, telling them that everything does not end at death and that eternal life lies beyond the grave, and yet you yourselves do not possess it."

"Young man, you need to earn it!" in a condescending tone they tried to bring my thinking around. "And do you have it?"

"I have it."

And suddenly, that elderly gentleman for whom I had instinctively felt a degree of respect when judging by appearance began to hurl harsh words at me.

"You know, now that we are arriving to my brothers, I will more reliably explain to you that I have eternal life."

They brought me to the barracks where the brothers were.

"I greet you, brothers!"

And immediately—what a different spirit. The elderly brothers and I, young, joyfully greeted one another. We wept for joy.

"Brothers! I have a full ‘Loaf of Bread’!" When they found out I had a Bible, they cried like children. Looking around in all directions to ensure no none of the authorities were coming, I carefully opened the Bible and read from the first epistle of John. "God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life" (1 John 5:11-12). For me, the Gospel was authoritative. On the foundation of the Word of God I was convinced, with the Holy Spirit testifying to me, that I possessed eternal life.

Seeing that I had a Bible, the Orthodox men changed their tone of conversation, becoming softer and more respectful. They even asked my elderly brothers, "Tell him to also share it with us to read."

"Brothers," I did not object, "when I am at work you may read it, only be careful."

From later conversation I found out that the Vorkuta believers had passed a New Testament through to our brothers but they had not taken enough care—the operations enforcement officer caught them reading and confiscated it.

Several months later I found out that soon I would be transferred to a different camp. I was sorry to leave the brothers without spiritual food, but I could not give them my own Bible.

"Let’s pray and fast," I suggested, "and they will return the New Testament that they confiscated from you. Faith is needed and God will come to help…"

"No, brother Kolya! Would they really give it back?"

I told them about the many miracles which the Lord had done in my life and how for four years I had carried my Bible from camp to camp through all those searches. They were amazed and agreed to pray. The New Testament had been confiscated from brother Zhukov so I advised him to go to the operations enforcement officer. All of us were fasting.

"What’s the news?" I was interested to know when I returned from work.

"He threw me out of his office and told me not to come back."

"We will continue to fast. They will give it back for our persistence," I encouraged the brothers. The next day the operations enforcement officer threatened brother Zhukov, "If you come one more time, you will go to the punishment cell."

"We will not get discouraged—we will continue to fast. Tell the officer this, ‘For the sake of that New Testament, I am ready for anything because it is my spiritual bread!'"

When the officer saw brother Zhukov for the third day, he asked, "You what, came yourself to the punishment cell?"

"Officer, put me in the punishment cell, only give me back the New Testament. You could withhold a ration of bread—I would manage without food, but not without the New Testament. No, it is my spiritual bread."

The officer stared long at the brother, intently and searchingly.

"Oh well, come over here!"

The brother went up to him. The officer opened a drawer of the desk and there lay more than one New Testament.

"Which one is yours?"

The brother, not believing his eyes and ears, pointed to the New Testament.

"Take it, old man! But if you end up here again, you won’t get another book and you’ll never get out of the punishment cell!"

"Thank you, thank you!" the brother thanked him as he left the office.

I returned from work and went straight to the brothers.

"Nikolay! Can you imagine? He gave it back!" the brothers were overjoyed.

"See what the Lord can do according to our faith?"

We knelt down and from our hearts, with tears, thanked the Almighty for hearing our prayers.

I left content that the brothers had the Word of God. The wonderful memories of the mighty works of God would warm their souls to the ends of their lives. I never saw them again.

I was taken seventy kilometers north of Vorkuta to Khalmer-Yu. The Holy Spirit prompted me to fearlessly witness to the prisoners about the joy given in Christ and the Word of the Lord took root in the hearts of three prisoners in that zone. Rejoicing in salvation, living one in spirit, we gathered in our free time to read the Bible. One of us always stood watch in order to warn us in time if the administration appeared. In good weather, although we hid in a hollow grown up in weeds, we still took the greatest care, sitting such that each of us was looking a different direction. The Lord carried out a work in our souls through His Word. He strengthened me in faith and dependence on Him but also tested me, teaching me unforgettable lessons.

Once, the brothers and I were in the barracks reading about the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. A brother (the same age as I, from the city of Saransk in Mordovia but not a church member in our brotherhood) asked,

"Nikolay! How could the devil show Christ all the kingdoms of the world in one moment?"

"The devil just showed in Him a picture of them, just as we, for example, might watch a movie."

As soon as I pronounced the words, "showed in Him," the horrible thought immediately came over me that with those words I had blasphemed the Holy Spirit. I flung myself on the bed and a sob shook my chest. The brothers bent over me, not understanding what had happened.

"Brothers, I won’t tell you anything right now. Go to your barracks." And I myself continued not just to cry but to sob. To the extent I had been convinced that I had obtained salvation and had eternal life, to that same extent I was sure that I had blasphemed the Holy Spirit in that moment and would forever perish, that I no longer had salvation neither in this age, nor in the age to come. The tears finally stopped and I just sighed heavily and thought, "Lord, is that really true? Is it so?" And suddenly, as if from far away, the thought crossed my mind that this was a treacherous lie. This thought grew clearer and more distinct: "Satan was deceiving you and you did not even notice how masterfully he did it." Joy warmed my spirit, growing with every moment. Although the tears had already dried from my eyes, after this delightful thought they again rolled thick and fast down my cheeks. But this time they were tears of deep joy from God. They were tears of thanksgiving. "Praise to You, Lord, that this is false, that this was a frightening deception from the devil."

Later I understood the trick the devil was playing. I had said that "the devil showed in Him a picture," but it seemed to me that my mouth pronounced, "the devil in Christ." Through this thought satan wanted to defeat me once and for all, but God came to meet my stricken heart, teaching me to be watchful and to recognize the tricks of the enemy of the human soul, an accuser and liar.

This lesson, although it was difficult, stood me in good stead throughout the rest of my life when I later, by the Lord’s mercy, became a pastor and teacher in the church. Young brothers and sisters, church members, sometimes reached the point of despair from thoughts, obviously false, that they had blasphemed the Holy Spirit. Having undergone in my own experience all the horror of satan’s deception, I helped despondent souls make their way out of the labyrinth of the devil’s lies and understand that they had not blasphemed the Holy Spirit.

Life in the camp took its normal tedious course. One evening I prayed as usual before bed and fell asleep. I awoke with the distinct and unusual joyful thought, "What would you do if you were freed in a year!" Prayerfully thinking it over, I said, "Lord, although I have already spent thirteen years away from home and another seven years lie ahead uncompleted of this term, yet I want to make a covenant with You--I want to be baptized before I go anywhere else. Only after that will I go home as a church member so that I can preach to all my family and friends about how You protected and saved me." At first, when I was under the initial impression of these thoughts, my soul was somewhat restless, constructing joyful plans, but as one gray day passed after another without the slightest hint of change, the keenness of the impression faded away and I forgot all about it.

Sufficient time passed (for me that year dragged on long) after these exciting thoughts of mine. One night I awoke because the duty guard was reaching up to the second tier of bunks where I was sleeping and was tugging persistently at my foot.

"Get up, and quick—for a transfer!"

"What transfer? When everyone is sleeping?!" I did not understand.

"I said ‘quick’! A transfer to Vorkuta."

"Why am I needed there?"

"They are summoning you to trial."

"What trial?! I have not committed any crime whatsoever!"

"Let’s not talk…"

I jumped down, quickly gathered my things, went to the guardhouse and sure enough was sent under guard to Vorkuta, straight to trial. A person thinks over everything carefully in a time like this. Would they add a term? Did some serious accident happen at work attributed to my fault? Did someone slander me? And so on and so on. All sorts of troubling assumptions besieged my heart except that which I was to hear: "For lack of criminal content and for conscientious attitude toward work the remaining term of punishment is hereby removed."

I was at a complete loss of what to think—how could this be?! Ordinary criminals had been released immediately after Stalin’s death but I was a convict with a hard labor assignment and had a long term remaining. And why had I alone been summoned to court and released?! "Lord! I have never complained to anyone," I prayed in my soul. "I am unendingly happy that I have received eternal salvation and now I am even ready to spend the rest of my life in imprisonment and tell people about You, that You give salvation and eternal life to Your glory instead of unending torment in hell."

What an unexpected turn of events! With God, truly nothing is impossible!

Just as soon as I had received my documents of release, I remembered that exactly one year earlier, in the eve of 1954, the question had arisen within me, "What will you do if you are freed in a year?" Now I had been released! What God had foreordained came to pass! The knowledge that my lot was in God’s hands warmed my soul.

While in the camp, we kept up some connection with the Vorkuta believers through a brother who was a new Christian. He was allowed to work outside the prison zone without guard and met brother Malega, who had been exiled to this locality for faith in God and worked as head of the railway station in Khalmer-Yu. Together with brother Grigoriy Ivanovich Kovtun they had founded the Vorkuta church. Brother Melega told the Vorkuta believers about us. Through him I had obtained the address of a brother living with his family in Vorkuta and the day I was released I went to his house. His wife received me graciously, "We heard about you, dear brother."

And so, for the first time in my life I was present at a Christian church service. All, absolutely all, was new and unusual and I was trembling with excitement. The Vorkuta meeting of God’s people was filled with such enthusiastic participation! The lively group of the redeemed by Christ, of about sixty church members, lived like one family! And they all received me, a complete stranger of whom they had only heard, like a family member! This amazed me and moved me to tears. Now I understood what Christ’s church meant—a holy family of those related by the blood of Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters who were children of a Heavenly Father! And it was an eternal relationship! No one had the power to touch these bonds because they were a spiritual unity of hearts!

I wept through the entire first service. God gave me joy incomparable on earth! In speaking with the brothers, I told them my treasured desire—to receive holy water baptism as I had promised the Lord so that I would return home as a church member in order to testify of salvation to my family and friends. But at that time the church did not have an ordained minister.

"I am willing to be baptized in winter through a hole in the ice and I am also willing to wait, trusting the Lord."

I found an apartment for a place to live and worked in the same Vorkuta mechanics factory, only this time as a hired employee. The Vorkuta church met from house to house for services, keeping strict secrecy.

My understanding of God and of walking before Him that I had obtained from studying the Holy Scriptures in imprisonment did not differ from what I heard in the church meetings and in conversations with the brothers. I was all the more established in the right way of God that He had revealed to me. I rejoiced that the Holy Spirit oversees the Holy Scriptures and reveals their truth—the meaning placed there by God Himself for every sincere heart, for every Christian who is reverent before the Word of the Lord and ready to obediently follow His commands. I also understood that the Spirit of God could not work differently in the hearts of the redeemed, prompting one to one thing and others to the opposite.

The brothers and sisters of the Vorkuta church were of one soul—praising God not just in the services but also zealously testifying of the Lord to the residents of Vorkuta perishing in sins. Those who were sincerely seeking the path of life and were languishing under a load of sins came to the church services, turned to God, and received the joy of salvation. Regrettably they were few in number.

Prisoners for Christ lived out extended sentences in the Vorkuta camps, suffering for their faithfulness to the Lord and His Word. One of them was a brother young and dear to my heart, Nikolay Georgiyevich Baturin. At the time I was released he was on daytime parole and sometimes came to church services. He could not be kept long in the evenings to talk because he was to show up back in the zone at a strictly designated time. Later I wrote back and forth with him—what a wonderful impression his letters and spiritual musings left on my soul. How dear he was to me with his meekness and faithfulness to God!

Once, a young man came to my apartment in Vorkuta. Apparently he was looking for someone like-minded and came across me. A conversation sprang up quickly but the talk did not go well—his and my views of God and of the Holy Scriptures differed diametrically, one could say. In spirit I sensed he was not a sincere Christian.

"Could you tell me of what movement you are?"

"Jehovah’s Witness."

I needed this encounter in order to be further established in the true understanding of God's Word since I was still a novice in faith.

"Christ is God revealed in flesh," I testified to the young man on the basis of the Holy Scriptures.

"You understand incorrectly," he objected. At every one of his false arguments I opened the Bible and brought to bear concrete verses of Scripture. He could not refute the clear evangelical truths, became angry, and as he left he slammed the door so hard the walls shook.

While awaiting baptism, I wrote home about my early release. Correspondence developed among me and my relatives. Then, suddenly a telegram came from my sister: "Kolya, come immediately. Mama died." This sad news was a serious test of my faith. Having prayed, I was strengthened in hope on God. I told the brothers about my decision, that I could not break my promise to God, and that I would not go home until after I was baptized.

The northern spring was in full swing. The sun literally ate up the snow. Powerful streams of melt water made their way to the Vorkuta River. The water in it rose higher than its normal level, the ice softened, and the river broke up sooner than usual. And my soul was full of joyful anticipation. "Lord, when will I make my covenant of faithfulness with You?" The news that an ordained minister had been released from bonds spread through Vorkuta as quickly as lightning. The entire church knew that I was yearning in anticipation of someone to baptize me. A members’ meeting was scheduled and I stood before the church for examination. I requested them to ask me more questions. "You know my background and who instructed me. I had to grasp all the truths of the Scriptures on my own, fleeing very often to fasting and prayer. Make it clear whether I correctly understand the evangelical truth." My answers did not provoke concern in anyone and the entire congregation unanimously received me into church membership.

Snow still lay on the river bank and enormous chunks of ice jutted out when I, overjoyed, was buried in the waters of baptism! Out of my overflowing joy that I was a member of Christ’s Church, the water seemed hot to me. And so, in 1955, in fulfillment of the promise I made to God, I joined the holy family of the Lord’s people! I promised to serve God with a dedicated heart. And only then did I go to my hometown.

I had spent three years and ten months in concentration camps as a prisoner of war, followed by eight years and nine months in the Vorkuta camps. Finally, having been released and then baptized in the Vorkuta church, after the long years away I went back to my hometown of Voznesensk where my sister lived.

I had written back and forth to her while in the camp in Khalmer-Yu. At that time I asked her to search out evangelical Christians in the city and she fulfilled my request. She found believers and sent me the address of the Voznesensk youth and pastor. How I rejoiced through written fellowship with the people of God! With spiritual instruction they supported my dependence and faith in the Lord.

And now—the joyful, unforgettable meeting with the Voznesensk church! I quickly merged as one with the youth because in spirit we were related like family, loving the Lord.

I had played musical instruments ever since my school days so we bought guitars, mandolins, and balalaikas and for the first time in that church praise sounded forth to God on musical instruments. Great joy filled the hearts of the whole church and especially the youth!

——

I did not want to leave the friendly church and my new young Christian friends, but since I could not obtain work I was obligated to tear myself away and go back to the North for the time being.

Immediately after my release, my supervisor in Vorkuta had not wanted to let me go since I was a specialist. But here I was, returning to Vorkuta of my own accord! "Stay here! Why would you go anywhere else?!" he had tried to talk me into it with some special incentives.

As it turned out, I alone was listed in my parents' will to obtain their house after their death. The right to inherit it was left to only me since my sisters and brother refused their portions. Hearing this, my supervisor brought out his last weightiest, as it seemed to him, argument in the hope that this would stop me from returning home again. "Nikolay, you will regret it! We have much more freedom here than there..."

I understood the hint—in the North the KGB operated much less effectively than in Ukraine and in the central regions of Russia. His forewarnings did not dissuade me, however. I quit my job and, committing myself to the loving Lord, went home.

Having returned home, I asked the church to accept me as a member. The several months of testing flew by quickly and the Voznesensk fellowship (at that time it numbered about ninety people) unanimously received me into their ranks and immediately assigned me work with the youth.

We gathered enthusiastically and energetically for choir and orchestra practices and sang from our souls. Sometimes we enjoyed studying the Word of God but most often these services were spent in simple conversation about questions that interested the youth.

I did not have the courage to preach in church, considering myself poorly informed in the Scriptures. When we went with the youth orchestra choir into the village, though, I would preach. We usually let the believers in a village know ahead of time that we were coming so they would invite their unbelieving relatives and friends to their homes at the designated time. The Lord blessed our diligence. Many village youth were among the visitors. The hunger with which they listened to the sermons and spiritual songs from young people like themselves was obvious. In those years the bus service in the oblast was poorly developed. We walked on foot to a village eighteen kilometers from Voznesensk except for some of us who could afford to ride on bicycles. Sometimes a passing car stopped and then we tried to send the sisters. We visited nearby villages after the Sunday morning service and distant ones in the middle of the week. Thus we reached Brat Raion (administrative subdivision of an oblast or krai), Arbuzin Raion, Maryanovk, Constantinovk, Borganovk, Kosubovk, and Aleksandrovk.

——

In my life I saw many wonderful expressions of God’s power. One such incident from the first years of living in Voznesensk remained vivid in my memory. I came home about one in the morning after orchestra practice (I usually was the last to leave). I had just fallen asleep when someone knocked at the door, and the knock was so loud that the windows rattled. I jumped to my feet—the house was light! The light was from the street! I ran to the door—my sister was knocking and yelling, "Kolya, save us! We're on fire!"

Her house stood on the opposite side of the street, and next to it was a haystack. Praying, I grabbed a bucket of water and ran. My sister’s home was not burning, but her neighbor’s was. The roofs of the houses at that time were almost all thatched with tall marsh grasses such as cattails. Easily lit aflame, the thatch flies upward and then falls as a smoldering fire wherever the wind takes it. Already many spots on my sister’s haystack and the roof of her house were burning. Unless plenty of water were poured on them, the house itself would burst into flames. The water in the bucket was coming quickly to an end, but the smoking and burning flying grass was falling and falling. I looked, and below near the house a bush was burning. I realized a bucket of water would not save the house. I looked at the sky—not one cloud! The night stars were shining. Moreover, the breeze did promise rain. I prayed with faith, "Lord, You see everything. Help! You can do anything!" The water in the bucket was gone again in a moment. I cried out, "Pass up some more water!" In trembling anticipation I looked at the sky—from somewhere a dense storm cloud appeared and a quiet fine rain began to fall. Gradually mustering strength, it saturated everything around with water. The flames subsided and the rain stopped. Now and then a burning piece of straw thrown into the air and falling down would be quenched when it fell on the damp roof. With deep emotion and inner delight I thanked the Lord for the miracle of His mercy, for the answered prayer! "Who am I, Lord, that You would hear me?!" A fire truck drove up and finished extinguishing the neighboring house. The relatives, calming down, carried back into the house their valuables that they had hurriedly brought out in case of a fire, and I went home. I lay down but could not sleep. An inner voice prompted me, "Go and testify that God worked a miracle. He sent the rain!" I submitted. I went to my sister's house where they were all sitting around the table, rejoicing that the fire had not spread to their house.

"Give thanks to God! He was the One Who sent you the rain! Any other way and you would be left sitting on an ash heap." I channeled their discussion in the needed direction as I told how the Lord had answered my prayer.

"That’s it! We had no way to figure out from where in that clear starry sky that cloud came, and the rain?!"

But they quickly forgot God’s mercy. Only later, as my sister started to draw near to God, did she often remember that incident and was amazed how God hears the prayers of His children!

——

I decided to visit my brother who was living in Kriv Rog in an apartment his factory had issued to him.

"Lenya, we are brothers. Why are you wandering about on your own? Move in with me. We will fix up the house and live together," I offered.

He agreed and moved in. We lived in very friendly manner although he was an unbeliever.

Voznesensk was a southern city—not far from the Black Sea. Friends from the Vorkuta church came to us with their families for summer vacation; my brother and I received them into our home with joy. Their visit also brought encouragement and confirmation in faith to the church. Their youth together with ours traveled with great zeal from village to village with the Gospel.

——

I had difficulty finding a job although I had specialty training—I was a metalworker of mountain mining equipment and possessed sixth-degree qualifications in water systems. Of course there were no mines in the city but water systems were needed everywhere. Wherever I went to apply for a job, they would take my documents and tell me, "Report for work in three days!" Meanwhile they would run a background check. At the appointed day I would come—and meet trouble. "Excuse me, but the supervisor has hired someone else…"

"Nikolay, you will never be hired with your past. Enroll as a student in cobbling shoes. There will always be a penny in your pocket," a believing brother advised me.

I took the advice, but cobbling apprentices were paid only fifteen rubles a month from which a percentage was additionally deducted from persons without children.

In 1956, I decided to get married. I told my bride Valya, a sister in the Lord, that ten years of suffering for the Lord awaited me. "Before we enter into marriage, you should know about this and make the decision counting on this. Maybe this is only the beginning of suffering for Christ--I do not know. But the Lord showed me that they will sentence me for ten years. Do you agree to such a troubled life?"

"Let what comes to you come also to me! All is in God’s hands." I heard the answer. The Lord united us for all of life, giving us one heart and one narrow path of following Christ.

(I will tell an event from ahead. Twelve years later, when there were already eight children in our family, I was sentenced to ten years of deprivation of freedom as a minister of the church, in fulfillment of the revelation which the Lord had showed me while I was still in Vorkuta.)

Our family grew and I could not support them on fifteen rubles a month, so I decided to make and sell shoes in the market. By that time I was a master cobbler. But the police did not allow me to realize the fruit of my labors because I was supposed to pay them also.

While searching for an appropriate job I worked as mason and plasterer on a remodeling and construction brigade. In time I learned that the city building management was urgently looking for a water systems specialist. I went to the department of skilled labor. The woman looked intently at me. It turned out we had been classmates—she recognized me and I remembered her. Rapidly looking through my documents, she hurried to inform the department head about me and apparently spoke well of me. "Come for work!" she confidently told me when she returned from the department head's office.

At first I was servicing four boiler rooms and then they assigned me the remaining five. That summer I fixed all the defects and the next winter not one complaint was received against the work of the boilers.

Everything was in place with work when unexpected difficulties arose with my sisters—they did not want my unbelieving brother Lenya to be living in our parents’ home and my sister demanded her portion. It was not pleasant. After all, I had pulled Lenya from a good job and he had left an apartment in Kriv Rog. Gathering all the relatives, I said, "I will give Lenya my part and find something else for myself." God helped me to buy a piece of land while my brother stayed on living in our parents’ house, paying our sister her portion. The conflict was over without a flare up, praise to God!

——

In 1959, the pastor of the Voznesensk church, an elderly man, went completely blind. A certain Kovalenko was ordained in his place. He immediately warned me, "Do not go any more with the youth to the village to visit believers or preach the Gospel." The words of prohibition sounded somehow harsh and indisputable.

"Why?" I was taken aback.

"The regional executive committee forbids it. The rumor reached them that you are trying to persuade people to your faith."

"Godless people can say a lot of things but you know that we are doing a holy work. We promised to come to a village with the stringed orchestra."

"I told you—you shall no longer set up any visiting trips!" the pastor announced categorically.

"This forbids us to evangelize…"

"If you had been called out into a woodlot at two in the morning like I was, you would not be talking like that…" with bitterness and helplessness he revealed the secret to me.

"We are called to tell people about Christ," I tried to somehow encourage him.

"You are young and don't realize that they will hang a lock on the door of our house of prayer (church building) because of your evangelism…"

"But what if they hang locks on the hearts of believers?"

"Now don’t you become know-it-all! You see, all the blame for evangelism in the villages lies on you."

After this conversation the pastor invited me to the church council, consisting of the twenty founding members who had registered the fellowship. These were old church members who in the 1920s had languished in prisons and exile for the Word of God. Hearing the pastor's arguments, they all fell silent with a sense of doom.

I also was confused. Could it be that I was misunderstanding the Scriptures by not adjusting myself to the situation developing around the church? Again and again I searched the Scriptures, examined myself, and was confirmed in spirit that God's Commission needs to be carried out both in troubled and in favorable times.

Despite this, I was supposed to submit myself and the youth stopped evangelizing from village to village. But in my heart I yearned for fellowship with the saints and we gathered in the city with aged brothers and sisters. Then these meetings were forbidden as well. The spirit of the youth was in constraints as all holy activities were suppressed. They had assigned me to carry on spiritual work with the youth, but even the littlest positive initiative called forth displeasure and indignation from the pastor of the church.

Young brothers and sisters who had sincerely repented came to me with their difficulties. "What do we do? As soon as I turn in to the church my written request to be baptized, KGB agents come to work and try to make me change my mind so that I would ‘throw away that faith’?"

I knew that several young friends had been refused baptism for several years and I asked the pastor about this.

"What can we do?" he threw up his hands helplessly.

"How do the enforcement officer and the KGB find out that a young person wants to be baptized?" I asked.

"We simply hand over their written statements to the regional executive committee, like any other ordinary activity," explained the minister. "Since the committee forbids it, I do not have the right to baptize a youth."

"In Vorkuta they baptized me without asking anyone."

"Every power is from God! We must remember that. Whoever does not submit to the authority, does not submit to God’s establishment," the pastor instructed me, being himself incorrectly instructed.

With each passing day, new limits were placed on true service to God in the church. Children and youth under eighteen years old were forbidden to be present at church services. I could not agree with the pastor's arguments that this was right.

The words of elderly men from the Vorkuta camp who had spent decades suffering involuntarily for the Word of God came to my memory. I decided to fast and pray and ask for an answer from God on how to carry out ministry in such a dark time for the church. I wept much, checked my own condition, and besought the Lord to reveal His will.

In the journal of the AUCECB (All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists—the government-sponsored union of churches), Brotherly Messenger, I read that soon "The New Position of the AUCECB" would be published, with which not all believers would agree. Supposedly God’s people and every church would be expected to receive these documents and carry out ministry in accordance with them. I took this as a hint that they wanted to introduce something dangerous into the life of the church. When I had the chance to read the full text of this document, it became clear that they were directing the church in a deviant way.

Grief enveloped my soul. I began to speak about this with believers but I saw that no one was attaching any special significance to it. A brother, a deacon with whom I spent an entire night in conversation, tried to reassure me by emphasizing one thing: "Value the times. It is good that this is happening, and not worse…" Such advice did not calm my spirit.

I decided to go to Moscow to the general secretary of the AUCECB, Aleksandr Vasilyevich Karev, whose sermons I loved to read in the journal. I heard the same from him, "We should submit to the authorities, for the authority is from God."

"Christ said not to forbid the children from coming to Him, but the ministers do not even let them into the church. In this they are violating the Holy Scriptures…" I set forth my arguments.

Aleksandr Vasilyevich confidently said, "That was for one time but now we are in another…" This flow of conversation extremely amazed me. I returned to Voznesensk with a heavy heart.

Soon the senior pastor over the oblast, K. L. Kalibabchuk, visited our fellowship. They told him, of course, how I was annoying the local ministers through my disagreement with the new way things were in the church and he wanted to speak with me in the presence of the other brothers. The discussion was difficult—I had been a church member for only four years while their lengths of Christian service numbered in the decades. They tried to prove that we should submit to the existing authorities. In spirit I did not agree, as I understood that the authorities cannot demand submission from the Christian in matters of faith.

After the conversation, K. L. Kalibabchuk asked the local ministers to be lenient toward me. "Brother Boyko still has his first love toward God! Do not put special pressure on him. Pat him on the back and let a little time pass. He will eventually cool off, grow quiet, and settle down…"

——

All these years I had maintained written communication with the brothers of the Vorkuta church and of course I wrote about the progress of God’s work in our regions. "Nikolay," they invited me in a letter, "come, we miss you…" My wife did not object, "Go, get away for a little while from all these concerns… I will handle the children fine…" (Our fourth child had just been born.)

It was a joyful reunion with friends. I told in detail about the difficult conditions for spiritual life in my fellowship. This was news to them. "Our brothers do visit other churches and find that something incomprehensible is taking place all over the country," the Vorkuta brothers sighed concernedly, but what exactly was happening they could not understand and they did not know what advice to give me.

The brother responsible for the Vorkuta church offered me the book by I. V. Kargel, Light from the Shadows of Future Good. By the time I had read a few chapters, I was so drawn into it that I could not pull myself away. However hard I might try, it would be impossible to keep it in my memory. The truths contained in that book were important not just for me, however. I wanted to pass them on to the people of God in my church upon my return home so I asked the brother’s permission to write out a copy of the book. I bought three ordinary graph paper notebooks and with minute handwriting wrote day and night. I had no desire to sleep or eat. Although I was not much of a writer, my hand did not tire. So as not to lose time in travel, I spent the night in the house where the regular church services were held and wrote through the whole night.

In a month I had copied out three notebooks of ninety pages each. The precious book was in my hands! My happiness was unsurpassed. What deep exhortation from God I received through this great work of dear Ivan Veniaminovich Kargel!

The brother, seeing my hunger, brought out another book by the same author.

"Have you read, Interpreting Revelations?"

"No," and I right then took up reading it. Through the thoughts contained in this book, the Lord showed me that turning aside from the evangelical truths was sin. I understood also that I was standing on the right path and was strengthened significantly.

I began to write out a copy of this book but had only succeeded in completing a few chapters when a telegram came from home—they were asking me to come home soon. The brother loaned me the book so I could finish copying it at home. Later I returned the book to its owner in the care of someone who visited me.

——

I was returning by way of Moscow and wanted to stop by to visit my aunt in Zagorsk, eighty kilometers from Moscow. My train was to pass through the station without stopping. I worried that I would have to go back to Zagorsk by electric tram and thus lose much time. So I prayed, "Lord, help! Everything is possible for You!"

The train passed through the station and continued on through the city, then suddenly began to slow down and came abruptly to a stop! Quickly gathering my things, I asked the conductor to open the train car door. He sympathetically opened it. I jumped from the running board into a snowdrift (it was winter) and at that point discovered the reason for the stop: ahead a drunk had slid onto the tracks off a sheer vertical snow embankment and had no way to climb out to a safe place. How the Lord answered my prayer! I was extremely thankful and rejoiced like a child at this mercy of God!

Arriving in Moscow after visiting in Zagorsk, I stopped by A. V. Karev, but was already lifted up in spirit.

"Aleksandr Vasilyevich," I addressed him. "I have read your articles extensively. Before you wrote one thing but now you are saying something different…"

"There was a time when we wrote what we understood to be true, but now is the time of the authorities and we should submit to them…"

"They are forbidding us to preach the Word of God to those perishing! And our pastor also does not permit…"

"You need to obey them, dear brother."

"But obey whom more—God or the brothers?"

"Listen to your elders. They sat in bonds for their faithfulness to God. Do you really think that they understand the Scriptures worse than you? You are still so young…"

"I do not think that they understand the Scriptures worse. The Word of God calls us to preach the Gospel but they are trying to persuade us not to."

"Dear brother, submit to them anyway. If difficulties arise, address them to the pastor over the oblast."

In discussing these sore points with the older ministers, I fell into a vicious cycle. Completely aligned with the criminal work of suffocating the church, they sent me from one to another of them. It was difficult for me to find a way out of the exclusive circle of this deviant understanding.

The years 1959 to 1960 were times of my independent spiritual formation. Reading the Holy Scriptures, I became firmly convinced that I needed to obey God despite the circumstances. I often spent time in fasting and prayer.

After my second conversation with A. V. Karev in Voznesensk, Kalibabchuk came again. He spoke a long time with me and then summoned me before the council of twenty founding members.

"You are not keeping pace with us by telling everyone that we are going down a deviant path…" I was faulted for this and on May 1, 1960, I was excommunicated in a members’ meeting "for not submitting to the authorities and to the church."

A great sadness lay on my heart but the disappointment did not overwhelm my spirit. I did not doubt God’s salvation and the presence of Christ with me. After being excommunicated, I continued to attend church services but unintelligible verbal attacks spewed from the pulpit. "Dissenters! They are destroying the church!" I did not understand to whom the preachers were referring; at that time I did not know anything about "dissenters."

Weighed down in soul, I went to Odessa. I knew the Odessa ministers by correspondence and had heard good comments about them. I arrived at the home of Nikolay Pavlovich Shevchenko, who had just returned from a trip to Kiev. We got acquainted. From the very first minutes, a broad, trusting feeling arose between us.

"I traveled to Moscow to petition about the seizure of the Odessa house of prayer. No one is giving their attention to the needs of believers," the brother mourned. "They sent me to Kiev and there the ministers advised, 'Meet in homes and be content that at least you can fellowship like that…'"

"They already excommunicated me," I shared my concern with the brother.

"For what?"

I explained.

"We need to go and talk with your brothers..." He hoped to find mutual understanding with them.

And soon they came to Voznesensk: Stepan Nikitovich Misiruk, Nikolay Pavlovich, and three other brothers. They were not offered the chance to preach. At the end of the service, one of the brothers who came extended greetings and asked, "Tell us, please, why you excommunicated brother Boyko?"

"Because he does not submit to the law and does not obey the church!" the pastor answered, and explained to the whole church that these were "dissenters" who had come!

The brothers tried to explain something but the pastor disrespectfully interrupted them, not allowing them to say anything to the Lord’s people.

The Voznesensk youth loved me but were afraid to openly support me since the ministers had warned both the youth and their parents that they should refrain from fellowship with me.

The Odessa brothers came a second time, but this time the pastor did not even receive a greeting from them. At the end of the service, the brothers asked the church members standing in the yard of the house of prayer:

"Was brother Boyko excommunicated for sin or for something else?"

"Because he did not obey the brothers! He does not comply with the Legislation!" they explained.

"Brother Nikolay is right. He is standing on the correct path," timidly commented those grieving the leading ministers’ departure from the truth.

The brothers who came offered several clarifications: "To not baptize youth, to forbid children to be present at church services, and to stop preaching to sinners about Christ is sin, contrary to the Scriptures. If the godless are compelling us to violate the Word of God, then in works of faith we must refuse to obey, as the Apostles once did."

Having heard this instruction, sincere souls were strengthened and openly said, "This means that brother Kolya is right in submitting more to the Lord than to people." For such expressions, first seven families were excommunicated and then another seven—mainly fathers and mothers of large families.

Instead of preaching as before, they were from the pulpit discrediting the "dissenters" and me in the service. I decided to no longer attend that church since because I was there people could not listen to the Word of God, hearing only slander against faithful followers of Christ.

Fifteen people were excommunicated and the Odessa ministers advised us to meet separately. Most often the church services were held in my home, and to the joy of all of us, many children were present. God showed us mercy and blessed children’s lessons began. Parents brought their children to the service in any weather.

People in the registered church quickly noticed this gratifying change and began to come with their children to our church service. The parents were promptly excommunicated. Our group grew to twenty-three church members and was strengthened spiritually.

"Why are children present at the church services of the separatists while in our church they are not allowed?" asked the ministers in the registered fellowship. They were disturbed, summoned Kalibabchuk, and complained that people were leaving their fellowship. He amazingly permitted children to be brought into the house of prayer. "You answer for your children before God," he said.

The church members of our group sincerely rejoiced at this change. "Why not return to that church? Maybe all of a sudden they will permit youth to be baptized?"

"Let's take our time. Maybe this is just a shrewd maneuver intended to remove the stumbling block causing believers to come over to us," I cautioned them against a hasty step. And it was exactly so. Seeing that not one of the separatists who had left earlier came back to the registered fellowship, Kalibabchuk announced from the pulpit: "According to the Legislation on Religious Cults, we do not have the right to bring our children to church. At one time, I permitted you to do so anyway on your own initiative, but now we are categorically forbidden to do so. Instruct your children at home!"

The Lord had kept us from an incorrect step because He was watching over us with love. Together with our young children we conducted church services and praised the Lord.

——

Change also came about in my living conditions. The earthen hut in which we had made ourselves comfortable fell down from age and moisture such that only mountains of earth were left of it. Praise to God, the children were not showered with it. My wife managed to slip out with only the Bible. All our unpretentious furniture was literally crushed. We temporarily found places for the children with neighbors and we ourselves slept in the surviving corridor.

We had no money whatsoever with which to obtain a house. My small paycheck sufficed only to feed the family. But the police, not understanding our situation, for some reason threatened to force us to obtain a place to live.

The Lord did not leave us. When I told people at work about my situation, they advised me to take a house plan to the bureau of assets and apply for a building permit from the city council. I took it in and they signed their agreement to my plan.

But with what financial means would I build a house? The Lord met us with His wonderful care in this also—at work they gave us beams and boards salvaged from destroyed barracks. They usually distributed them already sawn into pieces for firewood. I asked them to give them to me whole and so gradually gathered the needed materials.

Our church was friendly—we helped one another in big jobs. When I began to build, God put it on my heart to do everything myself, with only my brother and uncle helping me. At first, the believers were offended. "Why do you disdain our help?" But later they understood that this was the way it needed to be. (Later I was intensively interrogated during the trial, "Who helped you build the house?" Neighbors and my brother were brought in as witnesses that believers did not help. My foes apparently intended to confiscate the house and leave my big family without shelter. But the Lord took care of this in advance by prompting me to build it on my own.)

With God’s help I built the house. We bought many chairs and I made small benches for the children. The first thing we did was to invite the church to hold services in our house. All was spacious and comfortable. Joyfully we praised God together as a church.

In 1961, God raised up a great revival among His people in our country. The Voznesensk group of believers responded with joy to the call of the Lord through the Initiativnaya Group* and was included in the application to the convening Chresichaina congress of Evangelical Christian Baptist churches. From all our hearts we joined the persecuted brotherhood with its suffering and difficulties.

With unrestrained wrath the enemy of human souls took up arms against those grieving over the destroyed saints. I met with one of the brothers and we, earnestly inspired in the revival work, exchanged addresses. In 1962 he was arrested. The head KGB agent in the city of Nikolayev, the deputy prosecutor of the city of Voznesensk, and police officers descended on me with a search.

"Is your husband coming home for lunch?" the uninvited guests questioned my wife.

"No."

"Why?"

"It is a long drive."

The head KGB agent gave command to the police officers, who summoned me from work, seated me in a "bobik" (police vehicle) and, as never happened in any other case, we were let out through the gate.

"Why did you lie to us in saying that your husband does not come home for lunch?" he reproached my wife with an insolent grin.

"You brought him, so here he is," my wife answered calmly, although she looked alarmed.

"Set about to the search!" the head KGB agent commanded his coworkers.

"Do you have a warrant from the public prosecutor?" I tried to stop them.

"We have the deputy prosecutor with us—that is sufficient!"

"Even in the presence of the public prosecutor himself official permission is needed."

"Bring in the witnesses!" the head KGB agent ordered, completely ignoring my protests. "And you," he pointed at me and my wife, "take the children by the hand!"

We seated the children on the bed next to us. The head KGB agent sat at the table, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and smoked demonstratively.

"I request you not to smoke in my home…"

"I am at my place of work and I have full right to do what I want!"

"In your office, yes, but in my house you do not have that right, and in the presence of small children at that."

"I am supposed to!"

A policeman brought in the witnesses—our neighbors.

"Sit at the table opposite," the head KGB officer ordered me.

I sat down and he began to write. Then he took a deep puff and with wild delight let out all the smoke in my face.

"You should be ashamed to conduct yourself this way in someone else's home. You are a well-educated person. Why so humiliate yourself?"

"We have yet to talk to you!" he threatened me arrogantly. "Get on with the search!" he urged those under him.

"Without a warrant you cannot do a search," I again objected. "And do not involve the witnesses in an illegal deed."

Confident in their rightness and impunity, they thoroughly searched every crack in the house and in the attic. They looked in the oven and in the furnace ash pit, searching for something in the ashes. With rods they pierced the ground in the garden.

All the spiritual literature, including the letters of the Initsiativnaya Group, my handwritten copies of the books by I. V. Kargel, several general notebooks with poems and hymns, sermon outlines, spiritual notes that I had compiled while reading the Bible in Vorkuta, and photographs were all confiscated. In my inexperience I had not expected a search and had not taken care to hide my precious books.

——

In August, 1962, the persecuted brotherhood spread sad news: Nikolay Samoilovich Kucherenko, a minister of God, passed away in Nikolayev under interrogation at the KGB. When I found out about this and saw with what cynicism and malice the KGB of the city of Nikolayev carried out the search in my home, I committed myself in prayer to a similar fate and made the inner decision rather to die than to be unfaithful to the Lord.

My preparations were not in vain. Soon after the search they took me straight to the Nikolayev KGB. I climbed up a metal staircase to the fifth floor of the old building. KGB interrogator Galizdra led me into an office and said in a kind-hearted tone, "Boyko, we need your autobiography. You have plenty of time. Sit down and calmly write." Inviting me to a table, he put down a sheet of paper and pen and then left the room.

I started to write, but then I prayed and immediately the clear thought came that within these walls they already knew not just my biography, but also those of my grandfather and great-grandfather.

"Well, how is the writing going?" the interrogator entered to check what I was doing.

"I am not accustomed to writing such things, especially when I have no idea of the purpose…"

"We need it. Do not hurry, just reconstruct everything in your memory and write. We are not rushing you." Then he went out again.

I set down the paper on which I had begun to write, tore it into fine pieces, and threw them through the small open windowpane. They flew around in all directions like snow. I was praying in my thoughts. Then I heard someone running up the stairs. A guard in a military uniform opened the door and after seeing that I was sitting alone, he just as quickly ran back downstairs.

Silence. I prayed, "Lord, if I die, so let me die, but help me to remain faithful to You…"

I heard measured, unhurried steps. Galizdra entered.

"Did you write it?"

"Yes."

"Give it to me."

"I tore it up and threw it out the window."

"You are lying!"

"Look."

He looked out. "There is nothing there."

"Apparently, someone down there swept them up."

"I must search you…"

"Please."

"Why did you tear it up?" he asked, not finding anything.

"You know, before you summoned me here, you already knew all about not just me but also my distant relatives."

"Ahhh! So this is how you behave yourself?!" the expression on his face changed. "Well, let’s go."

We went down to the third floor and entered an office where the deputy head of the KGB and another interrogator sat.

"Sit down, Boyko."

At first they asked distracting questions to start me talking—what sort of family I had, where I worked, and when and how I came to believe. And then the unexpected:

"Where did you meet with…" and they gave the last name of the arrested brother with whom I had exchanged addresses.

"I will not answer questions about my fellow believers or about my convictions."

"Why?"

"You do not have the right to invade my inner life," I answered quietly but confidently.

"Boyko, we know that you are an expert in your field and that your photograph is on the wall of honor… Why don't you want to give us the information we need?" (The interrogation was being conducted in Nikolayev but the photo was in Voznesensk!)

"I already answered."

"You were raised in the Soviet system and were a secretary of the Komsomol organization. Why don't you want to help us? Tell us, have you met with Kryuchkov? How many times have you been in Odessa?"

"I will not answer such questions."

"What do you mean? Don't you know where you are?" the other interrogator was outraged.

"I know. At the KGB."

"That is so, Boyko. Now no God will let you out of here."

"If needed, the Lord will bring me out of here."

"We know that you already spent a term where polar bears live, but now we will send you to where not even the hardiest beast dare wander!"

"Even there where the hardiest beast dare not wander, Christ will pasture His lambs!"

"How long will you torture us?!" he pounded his fist on the table.

"You are three and I am one—how am I torturing you?"

"How long will you dance around in here?" he pounded on the table again in a rage.

"I am quietly sitting on a chair…"

"Boyko! We will teach you a lesson!" they continued to threaten.

"Tell me, please, are you Communists?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered, dropping his threatening tone.

"Who is Lenin to you?"

"A guide."

"And my Guide is Jesus Christ. For Him I am ready not just to suffer but to die. And although no one is persecuting you yet, you distort and violate all the laws of your guide—both the Decree and the Constitution," and I began to cite the main theses of the Decree from memory.

Then I read excerpts from the brochure God and Freedom written by the academician Strumilin and published in Moscow in 1960.

"This is your man writing…"

"We have a democracy," the interrogator stated in a condescending tone.

"Why then do you publicly announce in the city squares that there is no God, yet believers are forbidden even to bring their own children to a house of prayer? From L'vov to Vladivostok all the stores are overflowing with atheistic literature, but in not one of them can you find Christian newspapers or books! Why?"

"We have a socialist democracy and you need to understand this…"

"You are interpreting it as is convenient to you."

Two days passed in such conversations. At lunchtime they led me out to the duty guard. Nearby were stairs to the basement. "Down there they probably tortured brother Kucherenko," I guessed and inwardly prepared for the same fate.

On the evening of the second day the interrogator led me to his office on the fifth floor and then left the room. In time he led in a man and a woman, witnesses.

"I invited you in from the street so that you, as witnesses, would sign a document that this person refuses to give any sort of evidence."

While the interrogator drew up the document, I conversed with the witnesses. "I believe in Jesus Christ, and they (I pointed to the interrogator) are interfering with my inner spiritual life. According to the law, they do not have the right to do so because the church is separate from the state…"

"Are you really so young and yet in our times you believe in God?!" the witnesses were amazed.

I continued to tell them about myself and about faith in God.

"Cut it short!" screamed the interrogator. "You took it into your head to preach within the walls of the KGB!"

"Only write why I refused to give evidence," I asked the interrogator.

The witnesses signed the document and left, but me they freed only the next morning.

"Do you have money for the road?" the interrogator asked unexpectedly.

"No."

"Here is money for you for the trip home and a note you will show your supervisor at work. And do not think, Boyko, that God freed you! It was us, for the sake of your four children. But this is not our last meeting. We will not leave you without attention…"

I returned home to find my wife in mourning—a minister who had joined our group from the registered church had come and said, "It's all over, Valya. Nikolay will not return…"

It turns out that the very same day as I was taken, he had been summoned to the city police department. He never told the conversations they had with him or what they threatened. They let him go that same day and he immediately returned to the registered fellowship. He repented that he had attended the separatist church and he was received back, only not as a minister but as an ordinary church member.

I told the church all about my conversations with the KGB. "What will we do from now on?" they asked me. "Will we continue to meet?"

We did not change the church services. The church grew and the children praised God. We continued to travel out to the villages with the Gospel. I was the only preaching brother, one could say.

They threatened us, they persecuted us, but our earnestness to God no one could quench—each of us was aflame with love to Christ. The church knew that I had sentenced myself to death. "If we suffer, we suffer, if we die, we die. If only we would remain faithful to the Lord!" I convinced the brothers and sisters. Looking at my sincerity and readiness, they all were strong and did not get discouraged. Visits from the Odessa ministers also contributed to the spiritual work of the fellowship. They held the Lord’s Supper with us.

Sometimes the senior minister of the AUCECB in the Odessa Oblast, A. G. Kvashenko, visited us. He was warning churches belonging to the persecuted brotherhood of threatening dangers. He told what unattractive work the ministers of the AUCECB were carrying out and that they, together with the persecutors, were preparing to come against the true church. He told how ordinary believers were collaborating with the authorities.

Everything was just as he said. From 1962 to 1968 I was under the intense watch of KGB agents. They placed my house under constant surveillance, including even neighbors in this job.

Since I worked in building management located in the city council building, the group of KGB agents that arrived from Nikolayev to watch me both worked and rested in one of the offices of the city council. As soon as I showed up, they tried to enter into conversation with me. Apparently, they had been assigned to invite an atheistic lecturer to try to change my mind since I was a former atheist and komsomol. I spoke with so many lecturers I lost count.

The Lord taught me to not depend on my own mind, but rather continuously abide in prayerful fellowship with Him. I always inwardly called out to the Lord and completely cast myself on His Word, "But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost" (Mark 13:11). Whether they were summoning me to a lecture or leading me into the office for an interview, I went praying, sat praying, and was in unceasing contact with the Lord as the conversation we