At the 33rd Congress of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (RUECB) in Moscow on 24 March, Pastor Alexei Vasilevich Smirnov was elected to succeed Yuri Sipko as President. Smirnov had garnered the vote of 326 of the congress\u2019 432 delegates (75%); 71 delegates cast a dissenting vote. A heated debate immediately prior to the vote revolved around two concerns: the fact that the Union\u2019s Council had presented only a single presidential candidate as well as the recognition that Smirnov remains unknown to large portions of RUECB membership.<\/p>\n
Smirnov\u2019s lack of notoriety is due to the fact that he has served and headed the tiny, 17-congregation-strong \u201cAssociation of Brethren Congregations\u201d (ABC) concentrated in Dedovsk on the Western outskirts of Moscow. That group grew out of the unregistered, underground Baptist movement which had split off from the official \u201cAll-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists\u201d in 1961. Smirnov\u2019s father was among the many who thereafter spent time in prison. According to the ABC\u2019s own description, the Dedovsk community was forced out of the unregistered movement 30 years later due to its commitment to evangelisation and inter-denominational relations. The ABC\u2019s church-planting efforts grew to include \u201cRucheyok\u201d (Little Creek), a campground to the west of Dedovsk. The camp made headlines when it landed on the receiving end of major state-bureaucratic repression during and following the national RUECB-convention there in August 2008. Despite its name, the ABC is not a church with historic, denominationally-Brethren roots.<\/p>\n
Though formally outside the RUECB, the ABC could be described as its closest ally. The ABC was a founding member of the \u201cPublic Council\u201d, an umbrella organisation of 10 denominations within the Baptist tradition, in 2006. Smirnov has served as its head since February 2009. Rev. Smirnov had joined RUECB-headquarters in November 2006 as head of its newly-formed Pastoral Department. That department has recently begun innovative programmes offering counselling services to Baptist pastors mired in personal crises.<\/p>\n
Aleksey Smirnov, born in Dedovsk on 24 May 1955, is an auto mechanic by trade. His theological training is limited mostly to correspondence courses offered by Moscow\u2019s Baptist Bible institute. Both he and Yuri Sipko are autodidacts and speak only Russian. In a private conversation at the Moscow convention, Smirnov\u2019s wife of 32 years, Inna Nikolayevna Smirnova, stressed that her husband is an eager learner. It was the repression of the Soviet era and family commitments which prevented him from receiving academic training. The couple has six sons aged between 17 and 31 years.<\/p>\n
Regarding the issue of democracy: At the last session of the Union\u2019s Council in Moscow on 19 November, the Council had reached the decision to propose only Smirnov as the successor to Sipko. Some weeks thereafter, the matter of democratic practice surfaced on the Internet. In a recent Internet-forum, the Ukrainian Sergey Rakhuba, the Chicago-based Senior Vice-President of \u201ePeter Deyneka Russian Ministries\u201d, chided the Council for its democratic deficiencies. He conceded that Smirnov was a worthy candidate: \u201cBut the deliberate rejection of any alternative approach to elections will keep the system from taking a courageous and strategically proper step towards progressive future development.\u201d The election process for the new President of the Belarusian Baptist Union in Minsk on 20 March had offered the assembled delegates a choice between two candidates.<\/p>\n
The Union Council meets twice annually and consists of the Union\u2019s 57 superintendents (also called \u201cbishops\u201d). The congress, for which roughly 800 pesons gathered in Moscow\u2019s Izmailovo Hotel, convenes every four years to elect the Union\u2019s leadership and discuss major business.<\/p>\n
Other members of the team<\/strong><\/p>\n Only hours after Smirnov\u2019s election, Evegeny Yurevich Bakhmutsky became the RUECB\u2019s new Senior Vice-President. The 33-year-old Bakhmutsky, who grew up in Kemerovo\/Siberia, was educated as an economist and manager and graduated from the Baptist seminary in Akademgorodok near Novosibirsk. He very successfully managed the Union\u2019s youth programme during the past seven years. He succeeds Dr. Peter Mitskevich as Senior Vice-President. Mitskevich, Rector of \u201cMoscow Theological Seminary\u201d, remains a Vice-President along with Ruvim Voloshin, the RUECB\u2019s Mission Director. All three Vice-Presidents were elected (or re-elected) by the delegates without the option of alternative candidates.<\/p>\n Bakhmutsky associates closely with the Illinois-based, non-denominational \u201cSlavic Gospel Association\u201d (SGA), which has been the RUECB\u2019s official representative to the English-speaking world since 1997. He is also head pastor of Moscow\u2019s recently-formed \u201cRussian Bible Church\u201d. This initiative, which is still meeting at Baptist headquarters, is one of numerous attempts by Baptist leaders to plant new congregations bereft of the cultural baggage usually associated with the Russian Baptist movement. Protestant subcultures are understandably uncomfortable to persons of secular or Orthodox orientation. The Baptist transition to a more urban and intellectual stance will obviously lead to a certain distance between the generatons.<\/p>\n