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Soviet Union [USSR] Protestant
Various Protestant religious groups, according to Western
sources, collectively had as many as 5 million followers in the
1980s. Evangelical Christian Baptists constituted the largest
Protestant group. Located throughout the Soviet Union, some
congregations were registered with the government and functioned
with official approval. Many other unregistered congregations
carried on religious activity without such approval.
Lutherans, making up the second largest Protestant group, lived
for the most part in the Latvian and Estonian republics. In the
1980s, Lutheran churches in these republics identified to some
extent with nationality issues in the two republics. The regime's
attitude toward Lutherans has been generally benign. A number of
smaller congregations of Pentecostals, Seventh-Day Adventists,
Mennonites, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other Christian groups carried
on religious activities, with or without official sanction.
Data as of May 1989
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