Adventists

Adventists. A religious community whose dogmas are similar to those of the Baptists and which prophesies the Second Coming (adventus) of Christ. The sect was founded in the United States in the 1830s by William Miller. The largest Adventist body is that of the Seventh Day Adventists, whose observance of Saturday as the Sabbath has gained them the name Sabbatarians (subotnyky). The doctrines of the Adventists reached Ukraine, and specifically Tavriia gubernia, by way of German colonists in the 1880s. During the Soviet period the Adventists established the Union of Seventh Day Adventists, which encompassed 300 groups and had its headquarters in Moscow. One hundred and fifteen Adventist groups, representing 9,000 members, were located in Ukraine, primarily in the Crimea, the Donets region, and Chernihiv region, and, after 1945, in Chernivtsi oblast. Some Adventist communities joined the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian-Baptists; however most of them continued an illegal existence. The Adventists were persecuted during Nikita Khrushchev's anti-religion campaigns, and many of them (including M. Floreskul and O. Konoviuk) were imprisoned during the 1970s for giving their children religious instruction.