The following year, armed with a permit from the Commissariat of Agriculture,
Prokhanov and another engineer led an expedition to the Altai region
near Mongolia where, after enlisting the assistance of experts from
Tomsk University, they proceeded to survey various potential sites for a grand
evangelical ideal settlement, the City of the Sun or Evangel’sk (both terms
were used). With local government representatives looking on, they planted
three cedars and three maples to mark the chosen spot. Plans progressed after
their return to Leningrad, and in the spring of 1928 the same team set
off for the Bethany commune in Tver’ Province to study in detail whether it
might serve as a model for organizing the new Christian society.
The City of the Sun was never built, for by 1927–28 the tide was turning
against religious organizations, independent public initiatives, and dreamers
whose visions could not be channeled to the party’s cause. But the Evangel’sk
proposal stands out as a prime example of the possibilities for exploring
alternative models of social transformation in the early Soviet era. At this
very time the Party press was full of projects to reconstruct not just the structure
of everyday life (byt) but citizens’ whole worldview along Communist
lines. Visionary town planners were also imagining new kinds of cities that
would express the collective spirit of a radically transformed humanity.120
Here was Prokhanov, proposing to bring a Christian perspective to this
utopian thinking—and receiving government assistance to do so!
from Russian Baptists And Spiritual Revolution, 1905-1929, By Heather J. Coleman, Indiana University Press: 2005.
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