WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT BEYOND THE RAPIDS
For many years we wanted to tell the story of how God helped our family through persecution. When God laid this desire on our hearts, we simply wanted to give testimony to His faithfulness. We had no idea that times would change and that religious freedom in America would erode. It is our hope that Christians in the west will learn from our experience, and know that when persecution comes, it is possible to walk with the Lord and serve Him. Circumstances may change, believers may live in freedom or persecution, but Jesus is always the same. We are grateful to Evelyn Puerto for reliving the era of persecution with us, so that others can be encouraged to be faithful to the end.
—Igor and Lena Yaremchuk
This is the moving story of a precious believer in Christ, who remained faithful despite extreme, government-sponsored persecution. More than that, it is the story of God’s faithfulness to His beleaguered people, showing once more that even the most evil intentions of sinful men can be employed by God to bring about great good. Irpin Biblical Seminary is a monument to that great truth, and the life of Dr. Alexei Brynza is a testimony to the immeasurable grace of our omnipotent God, who is able to make all things (including our hardest trials) work together for good.
—John MacArthur
At long last you have the opportunity to read the inspiring story of my friends Lena & Igor Yaremchuk. You will be fascinated to see what opened Igor’s aesthetic eyes to recognize the existence of God. And you will be inspired by the heartrending story of a family’s struggle for survival amidst crushing persecution. This book will bless your life.
—June Hunt Founder, CEO, CSO (Chief Servant Officer) HOPE FOR THE HEART
Beyond the Rapids is a gripping story of a family that demonstrated courage and faith in their bitter struggle against atheistic communism. Evelyn Puerto tells of God’s intervention and the demonstration of His hand of comfort through answers to prayer in the midst of great fear, deprivation, and uncertainty. The historical content lends great credence to the events and helps us understand the tremendous struggles followers of Christ, living in an oppressive society, experience. The reader will be captivated by the lives of the Brynza children, the difficulties they encountered because they were from a Christian family, the romantic intrigue they experienced, and God’s protection and grace in their lives. It is a wonderful story of God’s faithfulness to a family dedicated to His glory.
—Dr. Bob Evans International Representative BCM International
BEYOND THE RAPIDS
One Family’s Triumph over Religious Persecution in Communist Ukraine
Evelyn Puerto
Copyright 2010 Evelyn Puerto
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1: GRANDPA AND THE FIRING SQUAD
CHAPTER 3: YOU CAN’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU LEARN IN SCHOOL
CHAPTER 4: PAPA’S SEARCH FOR GOD
CHAPTER 5: ADVICE FOR FINDING A WIFE
CHAPTER 6: A POWERFUL EARTHQUAKE
CHAPTER 7: OUR ILLEGAL SUNDAY SCHOOL
CHAPTER 8: PRAYERS THAT INSULT GOD
CHAPTER 9: GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD
CHAPTER 10: RECEIVE ALL FROM GOD’S HAND
CHAPTER 11: I MEET THE BONE EATER
CHAPTER 12: PERSECUTION AT HOME AND WORK
CHAPTER 13: JOY IN SPITE OF TERROR
CHAPTER 15: THE SOVIETS’ HAMMER AND GOD’S HAMMER
CHAPTER 16: CAN FROG’S SKIN CURE CANCER?
CHAPTER 17: AMBITION AND FAITH COLLIDE
CHAPTER 19: AN ENEMY OF THE ESTABLISHED ORDER
CHAPTER 21: REFINING LIKE SILVER
CHAPTER 22: SURRENDER BRINGS VICTORY
CHAPTER 23: FIGHTING TO AVOID CONFLICT
CHAPTER 24: FOOLISH AND WISE CHOICES
CHAPTER 25: GOD PROTECTS AND PROVIDES
CHAPTER 26: A SKEPTICAL SCIENTIST
CHAPTER 27: ON A HELICOPTER IN AFGHANISTAN
CHAPTER 28: HOW GOD USED THE ATHEISTS TO HELP ME FIND HIM
CHAPTER 29: A SCANDALOUS ROMANCE
CHAPTER 30: INSTEAD OF A CAMEL, I RODE THE BUS
CHAPTER 31: ALL GOOD WIVES CAN MAKE BORSCHT
CHAPTER 32: I PROPOSE MARRIAGE
CHAPTER 35: A SMOOTH COURTSHIP?
CHAPTER 36: “WE CAN TELL IGOR TO GO AWAY”
CHAPTER 38: A PREMONITION OF DEATH
CHAPTER 39: IF YOU FLY, YOU DIE
CHAPTER 40: IGOR MEETS A WITCHDOCTOR
CHAPTER 41: THE TERRIBLE RABBIT
CHAPTER 42: SAVED BY A COMMUNIST
CHAPTER 43: CARDS, CRIME, AND THE ARMY
CHAPTER 44: THE END OF THE SOVIET UNION
CHAPTER 46: GOD’S PLAN REVEALED
FOREWORD
A LEGACY THAT KEEPS ON GROWING FOR THE GLORY OF CHRIST
BEYOND THE RAPIDS is a riveting treatise of Dr. Alexei Gavrilovich Brynza’s exemplary life and his powerful eternal legacy. It is the true story of an authentic Isaiah 66:2 servant of Christ who, along with his beloved helpmate, Valentina, and their four children, faithfully served the Lord. It takes place principally in the region of Zaporozhe in southeastern Ukraine during the cruel oppression of all believers by the savage communist regime of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. But it concludes gloriously under post-communist freedom in Irpin, a suburb of Kiev, with the development of a wonderfully fruitful theological seminary.
This is the story of a faithful Christian family that stayed true to the Lord, despite the severe consequences that Christians faced during the brutal communist persecution over several generations. When our Heavenly Father answered the prayers of countless Christians throughout the globe and brought the godless regime down, He raised up Alexei Gavrilovich Brynza to lead in the training of faithful men to advance His Kingdom across the lands of Russia. Through many adversities, God had shaped Brynza into a man bearing His special qualifications that He set forth through the pen of the prophet Isaiah, one “who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word” (Isaiah 66:2).
Dr. Brynza was raised in a loving but severely persecuted Christian family. His father, Gavril Brynza, was exiled to a work camp in harsh Siberia. Alexei grew up believing the Bible as God’s Word, committed his life to Christ at a young age, and began preaching the Gospel as a teenager. Baptized at age twenty, he became a Baptist pastor at thirty-seven, and was elected regional pastor for the Zaporozhe oblast at the age of forty-three. In 1990, when Pastor Brynza was fifty-eight, the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (UECB) selected him to lead the development of a new seminary for the training of pastors and church planters.
I first met Pastor Alexei in 1990. While not tall in stature, he was a giant in his knowledge and understanding of God’s Word. Growing up in a Baptist church at that time was akin to growing up in a Bible institute. In a typical week, there were five services and three sermons from the Scriptures in every service. Young Alexei loved the Lord, was faithful in church attendance, and studied God’s Word at every opportunity. In spite of having no formal training in the Bible or in theology, he became a self-taught Bible scholar and a Christ-like pastor.
When the Lord brought the Iron Curtain crashing down in 1989, Pastor Yakov Kuzmich Dukhonchenko, the leader of all UECB churches in Ukraine, was deeply concerned that the sudden burst of freedom would attract a flood of false teachers, who could bring great harm to their precious churches. Many had given their lives and others—including Dr. Dukhonchenko—had endured extended prison terms for the crime of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They had stayed faithful no matter how severe the oppression became. The communist opposition had unwittingly served to purify their faith and make them strong.
However, these humble believers, who knew how to die quietly for their Lord without resistance, were unaware there were people in the free world who called themselves Christians but didn’t believe the Bible as God-breathed, inerrant, and all-sufficient. Dr. Dukhonchenko determined to establish a seminary to train faithful pastors, who in turn could equip their churches to stand against the myriad of theological errors that began to pour in through well-intentioned missionaries and guest preachers from Western nations.
Pastor Alexei Brynza was a humble, faithful shepherd, who loved the church and revered God’s Word. He was precisely the type of shepherd that Dukhonchenko and the UECB Council wanted their new seminary to produce. In Luke 6:40, Jesus said, “A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.”
Pastor Dukhonchenko and Pastor Brynza, with help from the UECB Council, determined that church leaders would select married men ranging in age from 25-35, who were serving as preachers on the basis of faithfulness, giftedness, and fruitfulness. Those who met the criteria and passed a written exam on Bible knowledge would be invited to come to the seminary for oral and preaching exams. In February, 1991, fifty-five men were sent by their regional pastors for these exams.
It was a remarkable several days. Each man underwent an oral examination concerning his testimony, personal life, ministry experiences, and Bible knowledge. Thirty UECB pastoral leaders sat in a semi-circle questioning each candidate one-by-one. Then all fifty-five candidates preached a fifteen minute message.
Then Pastor Dukhonchenko came to me with a very worried expression. He said, “Brother Robert Robertovich, we have a very serious problem. We have thoroughly evaluated fifty-five candidates and find all of them qualified to study at our new seminary. What shall we do? Our budget can accommodate only twenty-five.” I replied, “Brother Yakov Kuzmich, if you are saying that the Lord has sent fifty-five instead of twenty-five, then we will trust Him to provide what will be needed for fifty-five.” Trusting the Lord for the necessary resources, the seminary began. Grace Community Church of Los Angeles sent three Master’s Seminary professors—Dr. Richard Mayhue, Dr. George Zemek, and Professor James Stitzinger—to conduct the initial classes. Pastor Alexei Gavrilovich provided wonderful leadership, taught many classes, and personally discipled hundreds of students. His beloved Valentina was a constant blessing to the wives of the students and the women enrolled in the Christian Education and deaf ministries programs. Greg White, Bruce Alvord, and Brian Kinzel, also sent by Grace Community Church of Los Angeles, began to teach in 1992. As of 2010, they are still teaching and have raised their children in Ukraine.
Graduates are serving churches in every oblast of Ukraine, in many parts of Russia, and in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Several graduates have become the directors of regional Bible institutes in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Moldova. A number are serving as regional pastors in Russia and Ukraine and in the leadership of the Ukrainian UECB. In recognition of his outstanding faithful service, The Master’s Seminary granted an honorary Doctor of Divinity to Alexei Brynza. Indeed, he was a valiant warrior dedicated to upholding the truths of the Word of God at any cost. No error that caught his attention ever escaped without his taking measures to see that it was corrected.
On October 3, 2008, the greatly loved and highly revered founder-president of Irpin Biblical Seminary went home to heaven to be with His Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The words of the apostle Paul concerning himself serve also to describe the life and ministry of Alexei Gavrilovich Brynza: “for to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). Our beloved brother had fought the good fight, finished the course, and kept the faith. This outstanding book about Alexei Gavrilovich and his family will greatly bless and strengthen the faith all of who read it.
—Dr. Robert W. Provost
President, Slavic Gospel Association
INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’M VERY GLAD you will write my father’s story, about how God helped my family. But I hope no one dies this time.” This was not the reaction I was expecting from my Ukrainian friend, Lena.
I first met Lena and her family when I traveled to Ukraine, from Russia, where I was serving as a missionary. Fatigued by the long trip, I could barely pay attention to Lena’s tour of the seminary where her father served as rector. One part stood out. “Here are my father’s books. During the years of communism, they were illegal. Most of them were buried in the yard in a metal chest. My father dug them up at night if he wanted to use them. My parents never told us that they even had these books.”
Lena’s father, Alexei Brynza, was a Baptist pastor during the final twenty-five years of the Soviet Union. The Great Terror of Stalin’s years had long been over, but fear still controlled the population. However, the difficulties Alexei faced pale compared to what his parents endured: Stalin’s Terror and the Great Famine in the 1930s, as well as the horrors of Nazi occupation during World War II. The communist party, intent on creating an atheist state, never ceased its efforts to stamp out all religious belief. Alexei and his wife, Valentina, struggled to raise their four children as Christians in a society that was overtly hostile to Christianity. Set in the city of Zaporozhe (which means “beyond the rapids”), the narrative spans the years from early in the twentieth century to shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, covering three generations of the Brynza family.
Lena and her three brothers grew up knowing they were different from most of their classmates. As they grew older, they each faced distinct challenges and were tempted away from following Christ. They each take a turn narrating their own story, as do Lena’s husband, Igor, and her youngest brother’s wife, Ruslana, both of whom were raised as nonbelievers and came to faith later in life. Relying on interviews with the family, I have attempted to compile their recollections into an account as faithful as possible to the actual events of their lives. Some names have been changed out of respect for persons who still may be living.
I was not the first person to be struck by the amazing way God worked in the lives of the Brynzas. During the early 1990s, novelist Scott Taylor met Lena and Igor when they were living in the United States while Igor attended seminary. Intrigued by the way God drew Igor to faith and brought Lena and Igor together, he set out to write their story. Sadly, cancer took his life before he could finish.
In 2002, shortly after my return from Russia, I was approached to write the story of Lena and her family by Pat Grace, who herself had been inspired by the victory God had given the Brynzas. After some reluctance, I agreed. Lena’s comment about people dying didn’t help; at that time, she had no idea if any of Scott Taylor’s work was available or how to contact his relatives.
Two years later, while I was visiting Ukraine for some follow-up interviews with Lena and her parents, Igor received an email from Erika Taylor. She had promised her father on his deathbed that she would finish his book, and was prepared to make good on her promise. Erika generously gave me all of her father’s interview notes and drafts. These provided much of the material for the sections on Igor and his courtship with Lena. Erika herself, over the course of weekly phone conversations that often lasted late into the night, provided much guidance on structure and writing and helped me shape the book from what would have been a dull documentary into something much more readable. She also contributed greatly to the structure and tone of the section about Yakov, demonstrating what a fine writer she is. Her encouragement kept me going through many difficult times, and her friendship is one of the joys that have come to me through this project.
All people in Russian-speaking countries have a middle name, or patronymic, which is their father’s first name with an ending of –ovich or –evich for men and –ovna or –evna for women. Use of the first name and patronymic when speaking to someone shows respect, like using Mr. or Mrs. Most first names have a familiar form, such as Yasha for Yakov, which is similar to using Bob for Robert.
I am grateful to all the Brynzas for sharing their stories and for their time and willingness to be interviewed. Lena and Igor were especially helpful in answering many questions and translating drafts for her brothers. It was a privilege to get to know Alexei and Valentina, and to witness lives that are truly dependent on God.
Pat Grace was an encouragement and cheerleader through this entire project, and she and her husband, Wayne, provided valuable financial support, as did Central Presbyterian Church. Randy Mayfield’s support and encouragement are also deeply appreciated.
Tanya Gavrilova Bougie performed the first round of interviews, and I am deeply grateful for her help at that stage of the project. Thanks to Priscilla Gunn for allowing the use of her house while reviewing the draft with Lena and Erika.
Many people provided feedback on various drafts or pieces of drafts of the book: Margie Diebold, Ellen Schmidt, Terra Ayers, Eileen Pheiffer, Gary Woodward, Greg and Mickey Button, Carlos and Leigh Iwaszkowiec, Paul Reising, Joyce Lindstrom, Jenny Whitman, Carol Myers, and others. Brenda Nelson’s copywriting expertise and thoughtful advice were especially helpful. Robert Provost of Slavic Gospel provided some very welcome corrections.
My husband, Tony, wholeheartedly loved and encouraged me, gave me thoughtful criticism and advice, and never let me give up. He and my stepdaughter, Kristina, also deserve appreciation for letting me talk about this book night after night over dinner. Thanks, Kristina, for helping me over a few places when I was stuck.
And mostly I am grateful to our Lord and Savior, who works all things for good for those who love Him.
Lena, the daughter of the Brynza family, weaves her memories of growing up in a Christian family in a society that blatantly mocked and oppressed believers with the stories of her grandparents’ and parents’ struggles to remain faithful to Christ despite persecution, famine, and hardship.
CHAPTER 1: GRANDPA AND THE FIRING SQUAD
Stone walls do not a prisone [sic] make.1— George Bernard Shaw
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. —John 8:32
As told by Lena
MY PARENTS DIDN’T allow my three brothers and me to play with the other children in the neighborhood. They built a wood fence around the yard and installed a gate, which Mama locked every morning after Papa left for work. Then she let us amuse ourselves in the yard while she was cooking or planting potatoes or taking care of the goats. We often stood at the gate, peeking through the bars, stretching our hands into the air, rejoicing that our hands were free, even if we were not, waving at the neighbors passing by, neighbors who laughed at us, remarking we were like prisoners in jail.
Maybe the neighbors were joking; maybe they remembered that our grandfather had been imprisoned during the Great Patriotic War. Many Ukrainians rejoiced when our country was invaded. Some greeted the German army with bread and salt, the traditional symbols of welcome, hoping the Nazis would rule more humanely than the iron-fisted communists. After two years of German oc¬cupation, the Soviet Army drove the Nazis out, fighting so fiercely around Zaporozhe that the Dniepr River ran red with the blood of the dead.
The Soviet Army rounded up all the men who survived the occupation to take to the front. My grandfather, Gavril, was among them. He refused to fight. The Baptist church left decisions about participating in war or bearing arms to each person’s conscience. For Grandpa, it was clear. “I am a Christian,” he said, “and I will not kill anyone.”
To the Soviet authorities, this was traitorous. How could any citizen shirk his duty to defend the Motherland from the fascist invaders? The Nazis treacherously attacked our country, plundered wantonly, slaughtered millions of people, and carried off thousands more to slavery in Germany. Maybe my grandfather would have been more willing to help a regime that had not been so cruel to believers. He certainly wasn’t going to compromise his principles to help the Communist Party complete its Five Year Plan. He would remain true to his faith and convictions no matter what.
For many years the authorities sought reasons to arrest Grandpa for his faith; now they had grounds to execute him. He was tried, sentenced to death by firing squad, and thrown into the death cell with others condemned to die. There he sat for an entire month. The guards distributed almost no food and offered no medical care of any kind to these prisoners, reasoning that the inmates were going to die anyway. Why waste good food or medicine on traitors and criminals?
Every morning, as the pale winter sun peaked through the tiny window high up in the wall of the unheated cell, the cell’s door grated open and a guard appeared. As he probed the faces of the condemned with his flashlight, the prisoners waited, resigned, knowing what was about to happen—one of their number would be called out never to return, and each one hoped to be spared one more day. But the guard’s light would finally settle on one weary face. “You. Let’s go.”
One morning the light drilled into Grandpa’s face. He calmly said good-bye to his cellmates. After a month in the death cell he still wasn’t sure why he had been arrested. Was it for refusing to fight in the army, refusing to kill another human being? Or was it simply for his faith? Now his sentence was about to be fulfilled; it didn’t matter why he was to die. He staggered to his feet, lightheaded from hunger, stiff from inactivity.
The weak light of the winter sun pierced Grandpa’s eyes when he left the cell. Each step was a struggle, every muscle protesting, pain shooting through his feet as he walked to certain death, his heart at peace. He knew that in a few minutes he would be rewarded for his faith and enjoy eternal life with God. The guards marched Grandpa along the muddy streets of the camp. As they passed the headquarters, an officer came out. “Where are you taking this man?” he asked.
“To the firing squad.”
“What has he done?”
“He’s a Baptist leech who won’t fight.”
“My mother was a Baptist,” said the officer. “I can’t allow you to kill him. Give him another trial.”
At the second trial they sentenced Grandpa to ten years hard labor in a concentration camp in Siberia. Grandpa’s suffering was only beginning.
CHAPTER 2: UNLIKELY HEROES
[Stalin]—Greatest Genius of All Times and Peoples —Soviet banner2
Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together. —Psalm 34:3
As told by Lena
“LENIN LIVED, LENIN lives, and Lenin will live forever,” we chanted with our classmates. Lenin, the great builder of the revolution, was a hero for all time, our teachers told us. Of course they idolized Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, not only for his courage, but because he proved the superiority of our communist technology over America’s. And they urged us to imitate Pavlik Morozov, the boy who fulfilled his duty to the state by denouncing his father to the police for being anti-Soviet.
However, my Baptist family honored different heroes; people we met through the stories of our parents and grandparents. Nearly every day my brothers and I wandered across the yard to our grandparents’ house to see what Grandma and Grandpa were up to. Whatever the job, they worked together in tandem. I can see burly Grandpa peeling potatoes, his balding head bent over the task, the knife dwarfed by his muscular hands. Tall, skinny Grandma prepares the borscht, carefully pouring off the ruby liquid, keeping only the pale remnants of the beets that had lost their color through long boiling, adding pieces of carrots and cabbage she’d slivered to precisely equal sizes. As she moves from table to stove, she hunches over a little from long habit. She started stooping when she married a man shorter than herself—she did not want to appear dominant. Like a good Baptist wife, she always covered her hair with a dark colored scarf, except on Sundays, when she wore her white one. In those days, there was one way to wear the scarf, and the husband was the head of the household. That Grandpa turned his wages over to Grandma every week never seemed to bother anyone.
Across the years I feel Grandpa’s massive forearms circling me as I sit on his lap, his muscles rock-hard from a lifetime of manual labor. His green eyes light up as he tells and retells stories of faith: David defeating Goliath, Daniel escaping uneaten from the lions’ den. As we grew older, the heroes of the stories changed from biblical figures to my grandparents and their acquaintances, people whom God had miraculously rescued. Grandpa’s escape from death by fi ring squad was just one of these stories, and my brothers and I marveled at what God had done for him. Not wanting to scare us, my parents didn’t tell us the details when were small. When we were teenagers and learned the truth, our kind and funny grandpa took on a whole new persona. We began to understand why this tough man cried when he spoke of God’s protection on his life; he became an inspiration to us.
My grandfather, Gavril Brynza, never wanted people to think of him as a hero; he never saw himself as anything but a simple man. He was born in 1904 into an unbelieving family. That is, his mother was a believer but his father was a drunk. My great-grandmother, Yana, living in fear of her husband, did not attend the Orthodox Church as often as she would have liked.
For most of his life my Grandpa Gavril lived in Upper Khortitsa, a small village on the west bank of the Dneipr River, opposite the city of Zaporozhe. In his youth, Gavril tended a herd of sheep, working with descendants of the German settlers who carried their Protestant faith to Ukraine. He saw the Germans’ faith and how it made their lives different from most of the Ukrainian peasants. The Germans were hard-working, prosperous, and sober; the Ukrainians were poor, and often drank up what little money they had. Now and then my grandfather would visit the German Mennonite church because, as he would tell us with a laugh, “I liked to look at the girls.” In 1923, he came to believe and was baptized. Three years later, he married a woman who had also come to faith. Even well into his eighties, he was still working as a manual laborer, performing menial jobs or herding animals.
Sometimes he made jokes of his stories. Sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea with apricot jam, he would ask, “Lena, did I ever tell you how the pig saved Ukraine?”
“How could a pig save Ukraine, Grandpa?”
“It really happened, Lenichka. Many years ago, when the Tatars came through and conquered our land, they took everything there was to eat: cows and chickens, grain and fruit. Being Muslims, they didn’t take the pigs. So the pigs were all the people had to eat. By giving their lives those pigs saved the people from starving. There’s even a monument to the pig in Ukraine. It’s true.”
No matter the season, or the work that went with it, the stories never stopped. Out in the yard, with the spring breezes tousling the new leaves on the oak trees, Grandpa and Grandma planted potatoes. “Grandpa, why are there so many Germans here in Zaporozhe?” Grandpa turned over a spade full of black soil, damply smelling of spring. He stepped back from the hole he was digging, leaned on his spade, and wiped his face. “They’ve been here almost 200 years, Lena. After the war with the Turks, there weren’t enough people left to farm the land.”
Grandma tossed three tiny potatoes into the waiting hole. “The Tsarina, Catherine, invited German farmers to come, making many promises of all kinds of help.”
Grandpa covered the potatoes with dirt and started tamping it down. He didn’t tell us the rest back then when we were small. Catherine II wanted to repopulate her southern lands and to show the locals the ways of productive German farmers. Knowing Mennonites were persecuted in Germany, she lured many to Ukraine with the promise of religious freedom. Her promises weren’t kept for more than a generation or two. The government began persecuting believers with beatings or arrests, punishing those who converted an Orthodox person into a Protestant with many years in a labor camp or exile in Siberia. In 1905, new laws were passed, easing some of the persecution, giving people the right to choose their own beliefs and even to leave the Orthodox Church.
“Think about it, Lena,” Grandpa told me. “Those settlers came here with nothing. There were no houses or barns or tilled fields or gardens waiting for them. All they had was their faith. They had to rely completely on God and trust Him, even when times were hard.” In later years, I had many opportunities to trust God: in illness, in fear, in doubt.
CHAPTER 3: YOU CAN’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU LEARN IN SCHOOL
If it is necessary for the realization of a well-known political goal to perform a series of brutal actions then it is necessary to do them in the most energetic manner and in the shortest time.
—Lenin, in March 19, 1922 letter to Molotov3
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. —Isaiah 61:1b
As told by Lena
SOMETIMES WE CAME home from school and told Grandma and Grandpa our own stories, stories we learned in school. We thought we knew everything.
“So, then, Grandma, there was the Great October Revolution of 1917. Lenin saved the people from oppression by the tsar and created a system where everyone is equal. Now workers are not exploited and we live better than anyone else on earth.”
Grandma’s brown eyes smiled sadly into Grandpa’s before she turned back to chopping cucumbers. Grandpa gazed thoughtfully at his work-worn hands, stained red from the beet he was slicing. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized how carefully my grandparents and parents avoided contradicting what we learned in school, only correcting us when the teachers told us there was no Creator, or made other statements that directly opposed the Bible. Otherwise, they waited until we were older and could be trusted with the truth to tell us what the teachers left out.
So in time they told us that, yes, life was brutal for the common people under the tsars. At first, many Christians thought the Revolution was God’s tool for liberating them from the oppression of the tsar and the Orthodox Church. Some helped the Bolsheviks, reasoning that under a new regime, Protestants would be more likely to gain religious freedom.
“Why did they think that?”
“They forgot that if you feed a raven, he will peck out your eye,” Grandpa told us. “They believed the Bolsheviks’ slogan “All power to the soviets!”
This meant each factory, organization, or collective farm’s soviet, or council, would have the power to make its own decisions. No longer would there be a central government issuing edicts and supporting one national religion.
But it didn’t turn out that way. In practice, “all power to the soviets” meant all power to councils controlled by the Communist Party, and the Party planned to control all aspects of people’s lives. At first Lenin was busy making a peace treaty with the Germans so he could extricate our country from World War I. Then a civil war consumed his attention. For the most part, churches were free to do as they pleased.
But in 1922 Lenin determined to make a quick end to any resistance from the Orthodox Church against the Soviet government. Confiscating all valuables from the churches and monasteries, claiming they were needed to provide help for famine victims, Lenin plundered the wealth of the Orthodox Church and diluted much of its power. He sapped what remained by ordering that church leaders be seized, judged, and destroyed. Anyone who protested was tried in court for interfering with the construction of a socialist society. The idea was to suppress opposition in so brutal a manner that people would not forget about it for a long time.
While Lenin was concentrating on the Orthodox Church, Protestants like my grandparents enjoyed five or so years of relative peace. After Lenin’s death, Stalin used Lenin’s tactics against Protestant leaders. The Atheist Five Year Plan began in 1928 and was supposed to end all religion in the Soviet Union. The next year, Stalin created government agencies like the Committee for Anti-Religious Propaganda and the Department for Victory over Religion.
While the main targets were people of influence, ordinary church members were not spared, and they faced imprisonment for the most trivial offenses. One man told his children not to use a red pencil. Since red was a symbol of the revolution, the authorities accused him of holding a belief against Communist power, and sentenced him to ten years in prison.
In spite of this, my grandparents did not waver. They continued to meet with other believers and to worship God; Stalin’s laws and repressions did not stop them. These were the horrible years of the 1930s that my grandparents would not tell us about when we were small, the years when the Baltic-White Sea Canal was built on the bones of the workers; workers sentenced to labor camps for believing in God or not believing in Stalin; workers who constructed the canal with wheelbarrows and their bare hands—a canal which for many became their grave. The thousands of prisoners who died during the winter were simply stacked up in piles; their burial would have to wait until the ground thawed in the spring. When we asked about their younger years, all my grandparents said was that times were difficult and God helped them. “You see, children, the Lord preserves the faithful. He will always be faithful to you. He cares for us like a shepherd cares for his sheep, so the Bible tells us. The sheep don’t always understand what the shepherd is doing or why he is leading them through places that seem scary, but a good shepherd always does what is best for the sheep.”
In the same way, we learned what we never heard in school, what happened to believers during the Great Patriotic War. This war was the Soviet Union’s proudest achievement, its triumph over the treacherous Nazis who attacked our western borders and swept through most of Ukraine in a few months. We all attended the parades on Victory over Germany Day and cheered for the war veterans, who proudly marched down the main street of Zaporozhe, chests covered with rows of medals shining under the spring sun, united in their show of patriotism, proud of the solidarity that helped them vanquish their enemies. We all visited our city’s eternal flame, burning forever in memory of those from Zaporozhe who died in the war, a fraction of the almost thirty million who perished in the Soviet Union during those years.
I must have been about fourteen when Grandma told me that many believers thought the Nazi invasion was God’s judgment on the Communists for their wanton destruction of human life, His way of liberating the faithful from oppression by the atheists. During the occupation, the Nazis opened some churches, allowing baptisms and church work among the youth, appearing, at first, to be less heavy-handed than the communists.
Then the Germans razed the aeronautical plant, destroyed the factories of Zaporozhe, and demolished the great dam across the Dniepr River, the largest hydro-electrical plant in Europe at that time. They spared nothing, ruining schools, hospitals, and crops, slaughtering herds, confiscating anything of value from people barely able to survive. The Nazis even scooped up some of the fertile black earth that was our pride and the source of much of our wealth, and shoveled it into freight cars to take back to Germany. They killed hundreds of thousands of people, many in mass executions, and took tens of thousands back to Germany to be slave labor in German war factories.
My father’s family was poor and didn’t have much the Germans wanted, except one cow. As they plundered the village, Nazi soldiers seized the cow and then marched further east on their way to invade southern Russia. Papa’s family had now lost their major source of food—the milk the cow produced. All they could do was pray to God for help.
A few days later, early one frosty morning, a loud, insistent sound like the engine of a train woke my father and his family, a sound they soon realized was vehement mooing. In the yard stood their cow, which had escaped and found her way home.
“All we could do was praise God,” Grandma told me. “During the three years of the German occupation, we thanked God over and over for the miracle of the returned cow. That was how God kept us from starving until the Soviet Army liberated Zaporozhe from the Nazis. Ten million Ukrainians died in that war. Somehow, for some reason, God preserved our family.”
“So, Grandma,” I said. “The Red Army saved you from the Nazis.”
“Yes, Lena, at first we rejoiced, and welcomed our liberation as optimistically as we greet the New Year. But anyone who lived through the occupation was under suspicion. The authorities feared we might be Nazi spies or collaborators. Many people were arrested and sent off to labor camps just for having cooperated with the Nazis in an effort to survive. Your grandfather, as a known Christian, was doubly suspect.”
Grandma went on to tell me the whole story. Late one night, Grandpa was arrested. The police confiscated everything the family owned, taking even the children’s toys, leaving them only with the clothes they were wearing, and evicted them from the house. Neighbors mocked them for having a traitor in the family. Grandma and her children turned to God and prayed that He would help them survive.
Having nowhere else to go, they crowded into the small houses of others from the church, staying a few days with one family, a few weeks with another. After six months, they decided to return home to their vacant house. None of the officials paid any attention.
Then Grandma discovered a strange bush covered with dark berries growing in the backyard. No one had ever seen a bush like this anywhere. They ate the berries, and my grandmother made all kinds of soups and stews out of the leaves and branches. Often this was the only food they had, the only means they had of avoiding starving to death. A few months later, when their situation was no longer so desperate, the bush died.
Years later, while walking in some woods in America with my father, I noticed that he was looking closely at all of the bushes, examining the leaves and berries. He kept saying, “That’s not it, it’s not here.”
“What are you looking for, Papa?” I asked.
“The bush that saved our lives. I’ve been looking for it ever since and never found it. So I thought that maybe it grows in America. But it’s not here. It must have come straight from God.”
Sometimes Papa joined in with his own stories. After the war ended, famine seized the country, not as bad as the great famine in the 1930s, but horrible nevertheless. People spent their days searching for whatever food they could find, prizing each beet as if it were an abundant feast. Every morning my father, who was twelve, would get up early to stand in the bread line. If he arrived late, the store would run out of bread and the family would have nothing to eat. He noticed after a while that if he prayed as he ran down the dark streets he would always come home with bread. “They were childish prayers, of course,” he told us, laughing. “But the results did show God’s love and concern for my family, and helped my faith grow.”
Another time Grandpa told us more. “After my trial, they shipped me in a cattle car across the Soviet Union, through Siberia nearly to the Pacific Ocean. A hundred prisoners were packed in so tightly that most had to stand. If someone fell down, others tumbled on top of him.” He rubbed his hands together, remembering the journey made in unheated cars. “It was so cold that frost formed on the bolts near the ceiling. We sucked that frost for a tiny relief from our thirst.” Even so, scores died on the way.
God continued to watch over my grandfather by providing him with work in a milk factory, rather than being assigned hard labor in the mines or construction brigades. The prisoners lived on bread, soup, and porridge, barely enough to survive. They slaved all day with only a few minutes’ break for meals. “We were like ants, toiling without end, not really knowing what the purpose was. To the guards, we were of no greater value than so many grasshoppers. It was such a miracle that I did not perish. God carried me through,” Grandpa told us. The camps in the Far East had higher death rates than the other camps; many had special brigades just to bury those who had died.
After appealing to every agency she could think of in an effort to find her husband, after finally accepting that Grandpa had in fact been killed by the firing squad, Grandma froze in shock one snowy December day when she opened the front door to see Grandpa standing there. He had been released after serving six years of his ten-year sentence. The family’s joy at the reunion was as great as if they had all been freed from prison, all feeling as if a great victory had been won; God had preserved them and their house. Many people, their homes destroyed during the war, dug pits in the ground, covering the pits with sod for a roof, living underground for years. My father’s family at least had a place to live. No one wanted to hire Grandpa, an ex-prisoner, except for hard labor, but even his meager wages lessened the hardships his family faced.
The released prisoners like my grandfather brought wonderful news back to the believers in Ukraine. “Stalin thought he was hurting our churches, taking away the leaders,” they said. “But all he was doing was sending out thousands of missionaries, all over Russia and Siberia.” The fruit of their labor was scores of new churches scattered across Siberia, around the prison camps and in towns nearby. What Stalin meant for evil, God used in a mighty way for good.
Hearing the stories, my brothers and I wondered. Would God ever perform miracles like that for us? We found out later that He would, but at great cost to each of us.
CHAPTER 4: PAPA’S SEARCH FOR GOD
Regeneration through labor. —Slogan in a concentration camp, 1930s4
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. —2 Corinthians 5:17a
As told by Lena
EVEN IF I am the only believer in the entire Soviet Union, I will agree to endure whatever punishment you give me for my faith, I will endure it with joy.” Pushing his teacup aside, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, my father fixed his eyes on the face of the speaker. A man from the church was telling the story of his trial and his response to the judge after receiving his sentence. It was 1947, and my fourteen-year-old father had made the acquaintance of some newly returned prisoners. Most of them were incarcerated for their faith during the 1930s, and spent the entire war in prison camps, grateful to God for sparing them from the front lines. Every evening my father sought these men out, drinking in every word. One told of how he took advantage of his position as the fireman for the labor camp, using some of his water supply to secretly baptize new believers.
Others talked of receiving letters from their wives, letters that read: “I am shamed to be married to a traitor to the Soviet Union, a betrayer of the homeland. I am humiliated to have an Anti-Soviet as the father of my children, and no longer want to consider myself married.”
“It was difficult to remain joyful in such pain,” one man told my father. “We didn’t know if those letters were true or if our wives were forced into writing them, threatened with prison and the thought of our children being taken away, to be raised as atheists. But we trusted God, and He was faithful to us.”
My father’s new friends taught him how to use his faith, how to live it. Before going to prison, these men had accepted that any dreams they had for education or a comfortable life were never going to come true. In the communist state, the best that believers could hope for was the life of a poor laborer or farm worker. After being sent off to the labor camps, these men had to relinquish even their modest desires, such as living quiet lives with their wives and children.
While in prison, their faith was tempered like steel. They overcame their anger at the injustice, and instead did the only thing they could: seek God. He answered, changing their hearts so they could rejoice in their circumstances and learn to forgive their captors and any others who tormented them. By accepting their trials as from God’s hand, in trusting Him fully, in surrendering to His will, their faith was strengthened, and they were given peace and joy and a profound sense of God’s love. They learned to live wholly for God, to rejoice in fellowship with Him, to be grateful for His love and mercy toward them, and to be channels of Christ’s love to everyone around them. It never entered their minds to be angry with God.
“Who am I, that God, the sovereign of the universe, would even notice me? Who am I, that I should tell my Creator how to arrange my life? As God’s Word teaches us, that’s like the clay telling the potter how to shape the pot!” one man told my father. “God is holy, and just, and what’s more, He died to save me from my sins. How can I demand anything more?” During the years they were imprisoned, it probably never entered their minds that one day their stories of faith through trials and the depth of their relationships with God would inspire someone like my father, who would grow up to be used mightily by Him.
Not content with telling my father stories, these men challenged him directly. “Alexei, do you have a relationship with God?”
“I was raised in a believing family,” my father answered.
“That’s not enough.”
“I know the Bible, and I pray to God for things I need, and He answers me.”
“No, that’s not enough either. You need to be willing to commit your life to God’s service, and repent of your sins.”
“I haven’t committed any great sins. What do I have to repent of?”
“Young man, sin is sin. So what if you’ve not really committed any big offence? Are you trying to tell us you’ve never been unkind to your sister or disobedient to your mother? Or have never done anything out of selfish motives? These sins are enough to separate you from God.”
Throughout 1949, my father was torn between faith in the God he knew was real, and a desire to just hang out with his friends. Participating in the church youth group intensified his inner struggle. The other five members of the group, single women in their twenties, propelled my father to a deeper understanding of the Bible and how to act on it. The first time they took him to a village to preach, he felt burning shame, knowing he was telling others how to be right with God, and he hadn’t made the commitment himself!
Little did he know that thirty years later one of his own sons would feel that same shame, although in more dramatic circumstances. By the end of that year, Papa made his decision and repented publicly in the Upper Khortitsa church.
In the fall of 1949, after finishing the seventh grade, Papa aspired to study metal work in the hydro-energy teknikum, or vocational school, where he would receive training in a technical skill and a high school diploma. At first Papa didn’t dare hope he’d be able to study anywhere. While tuition was free, he had no money for books or living expenses, and no hope that anyone would help someone whose father was in prison for being a traitor to the Soviet Union. Most likely Papa would be obliged to go to work, to start helping my grandmother support the family. To everyone’s surprise, the director of the teknikum granted my father a stipend, which would cover his books and living expenses. To this day my father credits God for moving that director to give him exactly the help he needed. Once again, God provided when there was no other hope. Unable to see into the future, my father didn’t know how often he would wrestle with his circumstances, forced to rely solely on God and His sometimes dramatic ways of answering prayer.
CHAPTER 5: ADVICE FOR FINDING A WIFE
The whole of life, the entire course of history convincingly confirms the great correctness of Lenin’s teaching. —Mikhail Gorbachev5
If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. —James 1:5
As told by Lena
WHILE OUR PARENTS were occupied with church business, my brothers and I often walked across the yard through the vegetable gardens to visit Grandma and Grandpa. Our brick house was surrounded by a large yard and faced one street, and my grandparents’ house faced the road behind. Papa and Grandpa built our house for my parent’s wedding, and it started as just a bedroom and kitchen. Papa added on to it, one year a bedroom for the children, another year a guest room, another year a larger kitchen. We had no running water, and the kitchen stove, which burned wood or coal, provided the only heat.
“Yakov keeps bossing me around, Grandma. Was Papa like that with his sister?”
“Oh, no, Lena, he took care of her without complaint. There was only one way he was not obedient.”
“What was that?”
“He read his books until late at night. If I caught him, I would order him to go to sleep, knowing what he would do. He would turn off the light, wait for me to fall asleep, and then start reading again.”
“How did he meet Mama?”
“We were scared he’d never get married,” Grandma laughed. “He was so timid, he never even talked to a girl.”
Papa was as anxious about finding a wife as if he were taking an examination he had not prepared for, and not only because of his shyness. He knew he needed a wife who was a believer, but none of the girls in the Khortitsa Church seemed appropriate. So he decided to travel across the river to Zaporozhe, to a bigger church with many young people.
In what he now calls his “naiveté,” he would dream about traveling somewhere and seeing a woman that he might strike up a conversation with, and then marry her. He prayed to the Lord, that if he did propose to someone, the woman would accept. My father reasoned that if a woman rejected him it would mean that he had acted outside the will of God, a thought that deeply troubled him. He didn’t want to fail in his obedience to God.
“Your father also sought advice from older men in the church, mostly from Oleg. What a strict man!” Grandma told us. This Oleg profoundly influenced my father and the formation of his Christian point of view.
“Alexei, you must never use another person in making your choice of a wife,” Oleg told my father. “Nor should you rely on circumstances, such as if thus-and-so happens, I will do so-and-so.”
“But then what should I do?”
“Be very serious, since God has given us the ability to reason. When you look at a woman, ask yourself ‘How will my children perceive her? What will they think if their mother is a salesclerk?’” (This was one of the lowliest jobs in Communist society, almost shamefully capitalistic, so most of the people working in stores were the least educated and had the fewest abilities.)
“If a woman follows a serious lifestyle,” Oleg continued, “then she will pass a serious view of the world on to her children.” In our country, to say someone is serious is to say that he is a solid, stable person, who is dependable and mature. To say someone is “not serious” is to dismiss him as trifling, insincere, or childish.
Here Grandma would stop her story and gaze at us piercingly. “You children wouldn’t marry someone who isn’t serious, would you now? And certainly not an unbeliever?”
“Oh, no, of course not, Grandma.”
My father’s advisor had more advice for him. “It is rare to have one kind of mother and a daughter who follows a completely different path. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Look for sincere faith,” he said, “and dedication to God, so that the Holy Spirit can work in her.”
Papa worried and prayed, and his parents helped him in defining the qualities he wanted in a wife. She should be modest in her behavior and dress, and involved in ministry. In late summer of 1958 his thoughts lingered on one particular girl he’d observed in a large church in Zaporozhe, even though they’d had scant contact. Papa decided to speak to her at the next possible opportunity.
This girl eventually became my mother, Valentina. One Sunday in August of 1958, Valentina and her friend, Nadya, decided to fast and pray, asking God to send them husbands in His time, or to let them know if they were to remain single. They were about twenty-five years old, already considered old maids, and had no prospects of marriage. The next day, a young man proposed to Nadya. Mama had to wait a little longer—until that Thursday.
On August 28 my father proposed to Valentina. They knew each other slightly, but she had never thought much about him. She asked him for two days to pray about his proposal, and accepted him on Saturday. In a way, I don’t think Papa’s mother ever completely approved of his choice of a wife. At the time she met my father, Mama’s clothes were cut a bit more fashionably than my grandmother thought was seemly.
Less than a month later, Papa and Mama officially registered their marriage, and on September 21 they were married in the church. Papa still talks of how his family tried to talk him out of marrying Mama on their wedding day, because her face was so white. “Surely she has TB or pneumonia!” his aunt insisted. Really, Mama was pale from working late the night before preparing food for the wedding guests. Seeing her fatigue, soon after dinner my grandmother sent the newlyweds home, to the house next door my father and grandfather had built. As there were no lights in the yard or in the house, they had to fumble around in the dark to find the bed so they could celebrate their new life together.
Soon after the wedding, the KGB called my father.
“We know your wife,” they said. “We know she worked with youth in the church. We haven’t bothered her yet. But now you have chosen her. Know we are watching you both.”
These threats were no surprise to anyone. Everyone understood the Communist Party’s reasoning. Anyone who is religious is not wholeheartedly for the government. If someone is not for the government, they must be an enemy. My grandfather, trying to protect my father, made a large metal chest for my parents as a wedding gift. Having filled it with much of his Christian literature, a large portion of it banned Christian books and magazine articles he had laboriously copied by hand from copies passed from believer to believer, Papa buried the chest in the yard. The rest of his collection of literature was kept in the tool shed, in a concealed space between the ceiling and the attic floor. The KGB never found Papa’s forbidden literature, because it was kept hidden, except when he was actually reading a book or magazine. Had any of this literature been found, Papa could have been fined or imprisoned. This is one story my parents never told us until the Gorbachev years brought a little more freedom.