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Vladimir Shelkov

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Vladimir Shelkov (December 20, 1895 – January 27, 1980) was a Christian preacher and Seventh-day Adventist leader in the former Soviet Union. He headed the Church of True and Free Seventh-day Adventists, which rejected any government interference in the activities.[1]

Vladimir was born in Velyka Vyska village of Kherson Governorate in today Ukraine.[2]

In 1931 Shelkov was imprisoned for the first time by the Soviet regime and spent almost all his life in prisons and camps.[3] In 1946 Shelkov had been sentenced to capital punishment, which later was changed to 10 years imprisonment. His last confinement began in 1979 when a Soviet court in Tashkent sentenced him (then a delicate eighty-three-year-old man) to five years of hard labor camps.

He died in a labor camp Tabaga near Yakutsk in 1980.

References

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  1. ^ Marite Sapiets, "Shelkov and the True and Free Adventists". Spectrum 11:4 (June 1981)
  2. ^ Daniel Heinz (1995). "Vladimir Shelkov". In Bautz, Traugott (ed.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). Vol. 10. Herzberg: Bautz. cols. 1–3. ISBN 3-88309-062-X.
  3. ^ Letter to the President of the USA Mr. JIMMY CARTER, to the Congress and the Senate from The All-USSR Council of the Church Of the True and Free Seventh-Day Adventists, "Memorial" society, March 1978