Holdouts: regional specificities of the Baptist move­ment in the first half of the 1960s (based on the mate­rials of perm region)

The paper deals with some aspects of the genesis of the Soviet Baptist movement in the first half of the 1960s. The research is based on the Perm region materials and represents primarily regional specifics of the movement. At the same time the activity of the Evangelical Christian Baptists (ECB) in the region was a part of the all-Union movement for the reinstatement of evangelical dogmatic principles. The ECB initiative group headed by Prokofyev and Kryuchkov challenged existing administrative discipline, which restricted believer's rights. The actions of the Baptists in Perm region were supported by many ECB communities. The Baptists were united by the idea, language of action and organizational structure and therefore presented the ability of small communities to defend civic rights and religious freedom. As a result the ECB movement compelled the power to find more flexible mechanisms of control and governing. In 1965 four large evangelic Christians-Baptist communities were registered by the Perm authorities. The author states that the appearance and spreading of the religious minority's movement became the consequence of the complication of Soviet social structure and the extending of the sphere of autonomous and private life.