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Jespite this persecution, a mumber of non- ~° prmist Chrigtian groups had srisen in the Nineteenth Centu:, and by 1917 could count a substantial number of converts. The Rus- sian Baptist Union, originating in the Ukraine, and the closely related Union of Evangelical Christiats that had sprung from Lord Radstock’s missionary work in St. Petersburg, were two of the most important of these dissenting groups, and between them they could count more than 105,000 members in 1914.* Orthodox Power Destroyed The immediate impact of the Revolution waa to benefit the non-conformist sects by destroying the power of the Orthodox Church, For the first time they enjoyed a legal status, and in spite of an atmosphere of increasing Communist hostility the Baptists and Evangelical Christians grew to a combined mem- bership of at least 4,000,000 by 1928. The history of the Orthodox Church during this Sarna noriog is. af rourse, onite different rUuren £ & Same or course, quite ai i period is, fleren The unfortunate intolerance, obscurantism and corruption of much of the State Church prior to the Revolution marked it as a particular target of the militantly atheistic Communists, and there began at once the long and involved struggle between the government and the now disestablished church that did not end until 1943, when an agreement was entered into which granted all religious groups in the Soviet Union a measure of freedom in purely religious matters in return for their pledge not to interfere in the spheres of activity that the state reserved to itself. This struggle between state and church, aimed originally at the dominant Orthodox Church, in time was broadened to include all religious groups, and between 1929 and 1943 every religious faith operated under severe and hostile restrictions. It was still possible to hold services of worship, but the basic Soviet law on religion, issued in 1929, forbade activities other than worship, and struck so effectively at church organization that the number of functioning churches and congregations Geclined drastically during the 1930's. By 1940, for example, the number of Baptist and Evangelical Christian congregations was cut from its 1928 figure of 3,200 to less than 1,000. All of this changed with the 1948 agreement, which is still the basic law under which all religious groups function. Under it anv church is free to oreanize train ite clerev. eeck new mamharc any church 1s tree fo organize, train its clergy, seek new members and conduct its services without fear of persecution. We found *Serge Bolshakof, Russian Non-Conformity (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1950), p. 118. 69