Word: kryuchkov
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...restraints, as well as a democratic vote in the choice of council leaders. Though the hated orders were rescinded, the bond of trust between the leadership and the more impassioned Baptists was broken. The Reformers formally went into schism, setting up their own church council with the Rev. Gennadi Kryuchkov, now 52, as president and Vins as secretary. To dramatize the need for an overhaul of Soviet legal restrictions on religious life, Vins and Kryuchkov led a daring march on Communist Party headquarters...
Both were soon sent to jail for three years. Once released, they set up a clandestine field operation for support of the Reform churches. Kryuchkov, the movement's leader, was never caught, and still directs the organizational work in hiding. But in 1974 police arrested Vins again in Novosibirsk. Refusing an offer of leniency in return for his cooperation with the KGB, Vins served a five-year term in the harsh labor camp at Yakutiya in Siberia. After that term ended this spring, he faced five more years of Siberian exile, when his liberation was engineered by Washington...