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Alexander Sergei Zhaichenko. You were an advisor to the USSR Council of Ministers and have had a distinguished political career.
You are author of a book entitled Christianity as a Means of Economic Renewal of the USSR.
Could you tell me more about yourself, how you became a Christian, whether you were raised as a Christian or whether you had a sudden conversion?
I was raised in a completely non-Christian family.
You see, the majority of Russian people are not atheists and were not atheists never.
We are so-called passive agnostics.
I belong to the family of, so to say, employees.
And we were, my family and thousands and millions of such families were isolated from the church, from Christianity, from faith.
So nobody in my family knew something about Christ.
But, you see, there was a question in my heart, in my soul, why I am here on the earth?
What is the reason that I was born here?
And I kept asking this question to myself.
And when I was a student, I remember I was a student in university,
I tried to ask this question to my professor in philosophy.
And I asked him, what is the reason of man's life on this earth?
And he turned to the audience and told comrades, look upon this student.
He gave us an example of an uncorrected question.
Because, you see, he has an idealistic approach and you should not follow this vision.
So that's why I stopped asking such questions
and tried to find these answers in books, in philosophical, starting, in philosophical works.
And still it was a question.
It continues to the time, the friend of mine smuggled a Bible from the west.
And the first time I took Bible in my hands, it was in 1978.
And I started to read it.
And since I started, I remember I started from the book of Medivh.
It was Medivh chapter 1.
And I said to myself, oh, probably atheists were right.
How uninteresting and dull is such book is.
There is a lot of names in succession of Jewish names.
I came home and I thought, oh, it's not very interesting book to read.
But when I came to chapter 4 and chapter 5, I realized to myself that probably it is a book where I can find my answers and my questions.
So since then I regard myself as a Christian.
Every day I started to read the Bible.
And only through Bible I choose, not only Christ, I choose my confession.
I choose my church.
But it took me seven years more to find my church.
Because nobody around me for the whole decades, there were nobody, no Christian who will lead me.
So first time I went to the church in Tallinn, Estonia.
And I found myself in a foreign country.
There were a lot of non-Russians who speak non-Russian language.
So I was brave enough to come to the church and to speak and to listen to the service and to sing.
I was very, very joyful.
Then I returned to Moscow and I said to myself, Alexander, you must be brave here in Moscow.
It's a time for you to find your church and to be with your brothers together.
But it's impossible.
I have no information.
It was not information in an inquiry or office or telephone booth you can find at a church.
But the church screamed at me.
They told me that even though you are non-communist, it was very dangerous for you to be revealed.
Because they will sack you immediately.
So they tried to find the way to baptize me.
It was impossible to be baptized in the church because it was the only one church in central Moscow.
And all names were reported to KGB, the General Secretary of the Baptist Union,
whom I chose as my father, so to say.
And at last we decided to be baptized in my flat.
Because at that time I received my flat, my separate flat, not in communal room as I lived before that.
I lived with the family of four in three families' rooms, sharing with families' one kitchen.
So it was in 1986.
And me and my wife, we were baptized in our bath tap.
And so officially I became a member of church, but still I was screened.
Nobody in the church knew something about me.
Only in 1985, I am sorry, in 1989 it was decided for me to be revealed completely.
I became a member of Bible Society Board, of the Board of Bible Society.
I became a member of openly of church.
And it's a miracle.
At the same time in this very year I was invited to become an advisor to the government.
I realized that you feel the importance of religious renewal.
How do you see the connection between religious renewal and economic renewal?
What do you think is the effect of Christianity on a market economy, on free enterprise, in Russia now?
If you ask average Russian man, what is the reason of his poor conditions?
He will tell you.
It's of course of poor work performance, of very low productivity of labor, productivity of other factor of productions.
And of course the answer will be right.
But if you will ask him, what is the reason of low productivity?
Only a few persons will tell you that it's because of very poor motivation of person, very poor.
And if you, it's really also the right question, the right answer.
And later if you ask him, what is the reason of your poor motivations?
He will probably tell you that it is because absence of healthy standards, ethical standards, norms of behavior.
And at the workplace, in the family, in politics, in the life of community.
But if you proceed and ask another question, what is the reason, why there is such a low ethical standards?
Only a very educated person will tell you that it is because of very poor morality or absence of morality.
And it is really such a case with Russia.
And the last question of course in this chain, why is, why there is such poor morality?
And only, I think only believers will tell you that because there is no faith in majority of people,
there is no faith in their savior, in their God, in the Lord.
Because only your personal faith in savior, personal faith in God,
will create conditions for very stern, very rigid moral values,
will create moral atmosphere for your living.
That is, moral atmosphere means such your commandments as love for the person, love for his faith in your future, as hope.
The faith, hope, and belief, and love.
And so you see these links which constitute a chain, a chain which unites the real situation,
in actual life of a man, and community, and nation, with the belief, actual belief in God, of one person, a person.
So I think in Russia there is a chain which is ruined in all its, practically in all its links.
Because communists were deliberately demolishing and demolishing all these links, especially faith and morality.
They were very happy with the achievements in these fields because they became totalitarian leaders,
not only in political and economical life, but also in spiritual.
But they were unhappy with the economic, with their situation in ethical standards,
because they need motivated soldier and very motivated worker, productive worker.
So in order to substitute motives and ethical standards, in Stalin's time they chose a fear, the main motive, the main motive of a man.
But when Stalin died and there was nothing in this country, they tried to, the situation started to worsen further.
And now we see there is corrupted, the broken links of this, I think, the whole chain, the whole chain.
And we in Russia, in very urgent need to restore it, to restore the economical situation on the bottom side of the ladder of the chain and in the upper.
We need you, Christians of the West, to come here with your ministries, with your missions, with your Bibles and to teach us how to pray.
But we also need you to come here and to find your enterprises and to show us, to show how to be effective, how to be profitable.
At the same time, remaining honest man and a Christian.
And I think we shall learn, we shall first see and then we shall learn the acting and the living ethical standards, how they should be implemented in actual life.
Notice is written in a way they are written in the books.
So I think we need to be filled all these chains very quickly.
We should not wait for four centuries as you did in your culture, in your Western culture, we should do it very quickly.
And I think that in the Western countries there is also such a problem.
Alexander Sergeevich, how do you see the role of a Christian now in Russia during this period of transition?
You know that in our country we have a lot of problems with finding new convicts with evangelical promotion or evangelization.
And I think that it is a problem of people who are fighting themselves or fighting their way to the Lord.
And I think that there is also, there are two tasks.
One qualitative and another quantitative in terms of getting the country, of becoming a country to be civilized.
One is that in a qualitative term it means that our Christians, Orthodox and non-orthodox Christians
must be fully aware of the idea of salvation through Christ.
We must accept all the values, all the commandments, all the testaments which were given to Christians by Christ.
At the same time I think that there is a qualitative dimension of this problem.
We are members of Protestant churches are very unumerous, they are very few.
And I think that new Christians, Christians which follow the actual road and actual path to the Holy Kingdom of the Lord
they must increase their ranks, they must increase the dimensions of Christianity in this country.
I think to my mind there must be at least 10% of population among Christians, newborn Christians
who share such a view of Christianity, who are active, who are personally committed to Christ,
who are personally, I repeat, committed to Christ, who are not attendants to the churches,
but who serve to the Lord with all their forces, with all their deeds.
And I think that this portion might be maybe like 10% of populations.
I call it a critical mass.
A critical mass it will be like a Christian detachment in the country.
We may be found in a working class among farmers, among intelligentsia, among leaders in economy and political life,
because they will be persons who may be trusted, who may assume bold steps towards reformation of Russia,
who follow both morality, health and morality standards and ethical ones.
The person will be like a salt, remember like a salt, and we must be salt in this country.
You are head of the Association of Christians in Business, and you're a member of the board of the Russian Bible Society as well as its treasurer.
Could you explain why these roles are important?
Yes, I was, I had a, I had a privilege to be elected as a president of Association of Christians in Business one year ago.
And we are association which consists of 50 active members and more than 200, so to say, followers, followers up.
We are working in CIS countries, not only in Russia.
And our main task are first to train people, to train actual businessmen and would-be businessmen in order to help them,
to help them on this very difficult road.
We also help them to follow the norms of ethical and moral behavior, you see,
in order to witness to all the persons, all their employees and their colleagues from non-Christian community,
how to be honest and how to be effective and how to be Christian.
And our next stop is, and the next task is to promote micro and small businesses in this country,
because it's very, very important and essential.
Like a basement, like a background for the future of economy.
A majority of our members are private ownership, owners of the enterprises,
and they are engaged in production and producing goods for personal consumption.
They are not found in retail, they are not found in intermediary,
and consulting their actual producers in farming, in construction, in manufacturing.
So we are hoping to, and we have some programs to promote such a small and micro businesses.
And next, our very important task is to evangelize, evangelize non-Christian businessmen.
We should not wait when they will start matured businessmen.
And we are sure that they will not become a matured businessman without moral and ethical revival of their life.
So we want to go to them, unite them, and to create, like in Moscow, we create a club for fair business,
which includes both Christians and non-Christians, and we are sharing the same interests.
We are speaking when we have some rules and code of behavior in order to be clean and to be fair in business.
At the same time, we organize them as outreach meeting, we are sharing gospel with them,
we are giving them testimony about Christ, and we want to organize them,
and to serve as a bridge between their non-Christian life and the church.
Because the peculiarity is that high professionals and highly educated people,
they don't want to go to traditional church, both Orthodox and Protestant confessions.
And these forms of professional communities of Christians are very, very important and very convenient.
It's like an intermediary step from their non-Christian life to the Christian life.
We want to be like a bridge. It is a very important task.
By the way, we find a lot of new members among these persons.
My other position is a high member of the Board of the Bible Society.
I was selected as a treasure because of my economic background.
And I think the Bible Society is very, very important because it spread the news about the Lord.
It spreads the gospel.
You see, it was a very bad tradition in our life that the Bible New Testament was isolated from the ordinary people,
from grassroots. And the Bible Society serves as a lever to distribute and to promote distribution
of Bibles and New Testament among rank and file in our society.
Alexander Sergeevich, thank you very much.
Thank you.
