Review of Imprisoned for Christ

It was the night of Oct. 24, 1988. The place: Nozharevo, Bulgaria, where the Rev. Christo Kulichev had been exiled from church and family for more than three years.

He was on his knees thanking God for the faith that had not been compromised in eight months in prison and three years of exile.

Kulichev was imprisoned initially in Central Prison of Sofia, where “many leave their bones, but all leave their health.”

“I thanked God,” he prayed, “for my release from exile and for His presence during it all. For sustaining me early in interrogations in prison. His Holy Spirit strengthened me through the rigors of Central Prison (Sofia). I thanked God for His presence with me in Kremikovtzi Prison, where even other prisoners had seen prayers answered and prayer miracles performed. Solitary confinement at Sopot Prison had been used by God in an extraordinary way to open doors for ministry. And Nozharevo, my place of exile, had become a place of spiritual renewal. My heart poured out praise and gratitude that God’s presence had been so near and real through all of these trials.”

Kulichev spent many hours being “interviewed” behind this steel door in Central Prison.

Kulichev’s ordeal began on January 9, 1985, when the doors of the first of his three prison “homes” closed behind at Sofia’s Central Prison.

As pastor of the First Evangelical Church of Sofia (In Eastern Europe, “Evangelical” is used to describe not only a theological position but also all churches that are from the “free church” tradition.) and of the Union of Evangelical Churches, he was arrested for refusing to obey the Communist government’s Committee on Internal Religious Affairs. The Committee said the State, not Christ, was the head of the church. They put their own man, Pavel Ivanov, in the church pulpit.

At one point, deep into his many months of relentless interrogation, Kulichev was reminded of the saying:

And play little games his interrogators did, during hours of questioning. As Satan had offered the world to Jesus, all Kulichev had to do was to comply with Communist Party orders and he could return to his church. He always refused.

“I prefer to be in prison with Jesus,” Kulichev told his first interrogator, Chavdar Penkov, “than to be free without Him. Even if I were with my family and back in the pulpit, there would be no satisfaction for me if I was outside of God’s will. The prison becomes a palace when I’m there with Christ.”

Penkov’s “little game” involved telling Kulichev that his church members no longer cared for him, that his family had deserted him. Penkov cajoled, threatened, taunted, but nothing swayed Kulichev’s faith.

“Show me what Christ has done for you in this miserable situation,” Penkov asked.

The situation was indeed miserable. Crowded cells smelled with human waste. Sounds of torture came from the second floor of Central Prison. Guards enforced strict silence and kicked and beat prisoners who took more than two minutes in the toilet area where they could go only once a day. Cold air poured through broken windows, so cold that it “would strip the hide off an ox.”

“The prison systematically attacked one’s personal worth,” Kulichev recounted. “A feeling of abandonment and helplessness shattered a person’s emotional balance. If it were not for my faith–knowing God was with me and had a purpose for my life–I would have lost all hope.”

Bright moments did occur. Transferred to a second prison, Kremikovtzi, on the outskirts of Sofia, he was asked his profession by the admitting guard.

“I told him I was an evangelical pastor arrested for my religious beliefs. I will never forget his words: ‘You have my respect and admiration for that.’”

After he took him to a crowded cell, Kulichev’s guard threw a clean white sheet on the mattress. “Its whiteness seemed to actually gleam in the dark,” Kulichev remembered. “After sleeping for weeks on a thin mattress thrown on the floor, a clean sheet on a bunk bed was an unbelievable luxury.”

A clean sheet was the only consolation at Kremikovtzi in the small cell crowded with more than 60 prisoners. Vladimir Nikolov, an SS agent, took over the interrogation, warning Kulichev that the only way he would get out of the prison was by following the instructions of the Committee on Internal Religious Affairs.

Finally, in April 1985, Kulichev went on trial in a courtroom packed with members of evangelical churches, who were ordered to leave during the trial because it dealt with “national security matters.”

“Prison taught me that spiritual liberty is more important than freedom of movement.”

At the end of a three-day trial dominated by hostile witnesses, Kulichev was sentenced to eight months in a medium security prison. Still Nikolov was ready to make a deal if Kulichev would accept Pavel Ivanov as pastor of the church. After consulting with his family, Kulichev turned down the proposal: “You offered me this proposal months ago. I couldn’t accept it then, and I can’t accept it now.”

After a brief stay in Plovdiv Prison, three and one-half hours from Sofia, Kulichev was transported to a labor camp in the village of Sopot. Living conditions were much better–less crowding, better food, freedom to converse with other prisoners–than at Sofia Central Prison. Moreover, he was able to discuss religion and counsel fellow prisoners.

Then in August 1988, back to Sofia, with some time with family and friends and to encourage the churches, but the ordeal was long from over. He was called to the Ministry of Interior and confronted with his old adversary, Nikolov, who sentenced him to three years of exile in a camp at Nozharevo, 450 kilometers (280 miles) from Sofia, near the Turkish border. Populated by Turks, except for the Bulgarian mayor, the village of Nozharevo was described by Christo as a “human garbage dump.” Exiles were free to roam about the village, most of them unshaven and unwashed, reeking of alcohol.

In his transfer papers, Kulichev was described as a “hostile religious fanatic, a self-proclaimed pastor from the First Evangelical Church in Sofia.” He was warned that he was forbidden to preach any religion while in exile.

Kulichev proceeded to make a life for himself. He tended the mayor’s garden, sold his carpenter skills for small wages, was allowed to turn an abandoned storage shed into living quarters.
Life attained a rhythm which Kulichev found both wholesome and pleasing. He accomplished more work in a single afternoon than other exiles could achieve in a day. He ate well, as locals paid him with food. The mayor even shared produce from the garden that Kulichev cultivated. He refused an offer of a job to erase all the Turkish names from tombstones in the cemetery.

Halfway through his exile, Kulichev lost sight in his right eye. The doctor in Toutrakan, two hours away, said his sight was lost permanently. Allowed to return to Sofia to seek modern medical treatment, he was told he needed laser treatment, with no assurance that sight would be restored. His old nemesis, Nikolov, viewed Christo’s presence in Sofia: “You have deceived and manipulated people so that you can interfere with the church again.”

He charged, “You and your so-called ‘believer’ friends have been campaigning to win sympathy in foreign circles. It’s not easy to get your name on a station like the BBC.”

“You don’t understand the power of a free press,” Kulichev told his interrogators.

“You don’t understand the power of a free press,” Kulichev answered. “If you hadn’t sent me to prison, neither the BBC nor anyone else would be interested in me. Thank you for making me a celebrity.”

Now came another development that enhanced Kulichev’s hope for freedom. On January 8, 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party and President of the USSR, called for glasnost with new economic and political openness. He raised hopes of freedom of worship without persecution.

Nikolov made his final ploy in the winter of 1988: “I am offering the possibility of dismissal before your sentence is completed. All that we ask in return is that you agree not to cause conflicts in the church or take leadership positions offered you.”

He offered the same old condition, repeated and repeated for three years. And the same answer: “I would rather return to Nozharevo and exile than agree to stop preaching and teaching the gospel.”

Events were working in Kulichev’s favor. Gorbachev pronounced glasnost in the Soviet Union, with local control rather than party control of government. The Bulgarian government adopted the principles of glasnost. Every passing day it became obvious that hardline Communism was fading away.

With Kulichev ordered to return to exile in October 1988, Nikolov did not reveal that he had already been released. He traveled 450 kilometers to Nozharevo, the exile camp, only to have the commandant tell him he had been discharged.

It would be six more months before the Communist puppet, Pavel Ivanov, would step down at First Church, and Kulichev return to his pulpit.

In his first sermon, Kulichev reminded his congregation that “ours is not a story of human interest or reversal of personal circumstances. Neither is it a story of glasnost nor political reversal. Rather, it is a story of God’s grace as seen in the cross and the resurrection. Our hope is irrepressible because we have experienced the truth of the resurrection in our lives.”

Imprisoned for Christ, written by Michael P. Halcomb, shown right with wife Bonnie, tells about the ordeal of Christo Kulichev, left, in Bulgarian prisons.

The Congregational Connection

Until 1991, the Christian world had assumed that the Evangelical Congregational Churches, several of which had been planted by Congregational missionaries in 1844, had disappeared from Bulgaria during the Cold War.

The Rev. Dr. Michael P. Halcomb, then Associate NACCC Secretary for Missions, learned differently that year in a phone call from the Rev. Panos Litsikakis, our missionary in northern Greece. Litsikakis had heard that Bulgarian churches had survived, despite Communist oppression.

Halcomb and wife Bonnie, Litsikakis, and the Rev. and Mrs. Phaedor Cambouropolis, our missionaries in Athens, Greece, subsequently went to Bulgaria. They visited church after church in cities and farming villages. The church people spoke lovingly of the Rev. Christo Kulichev, the leader who risked his life to oppose Communism.

Back in the United States, Halcomb corresponded regularly with Kulichev, but another year passed before they actually met in Bulgaria. Halcomb then heard first hand about the Bulgarian minister imprisoned for a faith that never wavered through years of persecution. Thanks to Michael Halcomb, we now have the full story of how Christo Kulichev overcame evil, through the grace of God.

–JBP

A‘Imprisoned for Christ’

The Congregational Connection