Mikhail Petrovich Kulakov (; March 29, 1927 – February 10, 2010) was a Russian Seventh-day Adventist pastor, religious freedom advocate, biblical scholar and translator. He became the first president of the church's Euro-Asia Division in 1990.

Kulakov was imprisoned and exiled in the Soviet Union for his religious activities. He later worked to unite Adventist congregations and strengthen their ties with the worldwide church. His efforts to secure a recognized church organization through cooperation with the Soviet authorities met opposition from some Adventists. He helped establish , which opened in 1988, and was one of the founders of the Adventist publishing house Source of Life.

In 1990, he participated in the Supreme Soviet's debate on the draft law on freedom of conscience and religious organizations, arguing that religious institutions should be allowed to offer a full school curriculum. In 1992, he founded the Russian chapter of the International Religious Liberty Association and served as its secretary general. He was listed as the association's representative at Russia's 1993 Constitutional Conference.

In the early 1990s, Kulakov founded the , in Russia's Tula Region, and initiated and directed a collective project to translate the Bible into modern Russian. The project's New Testament translation was published in 2000. After his death, his son took over the leadership of the project. The complete translation was published under his son's direction in 2015.

Early life

Family, education and early ministry

Kulakov was born in 1927 in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), the son of a Seventh-day Adventist pastor. In 1928, his family moved to Tula in central Russia when his father, Peter Stepanovich Kulakov, was sent there to serve as a pastor. The Kulakov family was under scrutiny from the Soviet state security authorities. In conversations recorded by Olga Suvorova, Kulakov recalled his father's arrest in 1935 and exile in Siberia, where his mother and the younger children joined him. The family lived in the village of Krasnyi Klyuch in the Krasnoyarsk Region until 1939. After the exile ended, the family moved to Samara and then to Maykop (Adygea, Russia). Kulakov recalled that they relocated to Ivanovo shortly before the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. In Ivanovo, Kulakov enrolled at Ivanovo Art School and graduated in 1947.

In August 1945, Kulakov was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In his memoir Though the Heavens Fall, he recalled that his father had baptized him at the age of 18 in a secret nighttime ceremony, away from the city lights, together with seven other people. Following his baptism, he began helping his father conduct clandestine worship services and carry out missionary work.

According to his recollections, his father was arrested again after the war and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. Writing in Liberty in 1994, Kulakov recalled that, while his father was under investigation, the security authorities had repeatedly questioned him at night about people attending worship services. He said that he had refused to provide information. See pp. 17–18.

Kulakov recalled moving to Daugavpils, Latvia, before his mother and brother joined him. In Daugavpils, Kulakov continued his church work and taught drawing and drafting at a local school.

Imprisonment and exile

In March 1948, Soviet state security officers arrested Kulakov and his elder brother Stephen. After six months in prison in Ivanovo, Kulakov was sentenced to five years in Soviet forced labor camps. According to his recollections, he served his five-year term (1948–1953) first in Mordovia and then in Karlag, near Karaganda in Kazakhstan. He learned German while imprisoned.

He recalled that Stephen served his term near Vorkuta and died in exile after his release from the camps. In a 1990 interview with The Indianapolis News, he said that he had considered himself a happy man despite the hardships of imprisonment, and that fellow prisoners had seen him in the same way.

After completing his sentence in 1953, Kulakov was sent into permanent exile in the Kazakh village of Myrzykul, in the Kustanai region. According to his recollections, he later obtained permission to settle in Semiozernoye, where he taught drawing and drafting at a school and met his future wife. During his exile, he married Anna (née Velgosha). He was released from exile under an amnesty. In 1955, he and his young family moved to Alma-Ata, the former capital of Kazakhstan. There, the family became active in the ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church despite severe persecution.

Kulakov had six children.

Church leadership and unification efforts

Early leadership and international contacts

In 1958, Kulakov was ordained as a minister and elected head of the unofficial Seventh-day Adventist organization operating in Central Asia, Kazakhstan and the South Caucasus. He held this position until 1975.

During the 1960s, Kulakov coordinated the work of unregistered Adventist congregations in Soviet Central Asia and faced repeated harassment from the KGB and local authorities. His family moved from Almaty to the village of Akkul’ (Dzhambul region) in 1960, then to Kokand in 1962 and Chimkent in 1966.

Historian Alexander Kashirin describes Kulakov as a principal intermediary between the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Soviet Council for Religious Affairs and Soviet Adventist leaders who supported his approach to church unity. Contacts with the worldwide church were constrained by state restrictions. Kulakov was invited to the General Conference session in 1970; that year, he received permission to travel to the United States on a private visit to an aunt in San Francisco, California. During his visit, he attended the General Conference's Annual Council and met its president, Robert H. Pierson, who offered support for his efforts to unite Soviet Adventists and present them as law-abiding citizens.

After returning to the Soviet Union, Kulakov worked with colleagues in the Central Asian republics, the Baltic republics, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova on efforts to consolidate Adventist communities. According to Kashirin, cooperation with the authorities was intended to secure permission for a central church organization that could develop theological education, publish religious literature and maintain regular contacts with Adventists abroad. This approach encountered opposition within the church. Kashirin notes that some Adventists objected to Kulakov's criticism of underground religious activity, arguing that congregations denied registration should not be blamed for operating without it.

In 1975, Kulakov attended the General Conference session in Vienna, Austria. He was elected to the Executive Committee of the General Conference and became a member of the Academy of Adventist Ministers.

Leadership in the RSFSR and the Euro-Asia Division

In 1975, the Adventist congregation in Tula petitioned the Council for Religious Affairs to establish the position of senior presbyter for the RSFSR and proposed Kulakov for the post. That year, he moved from Kazakhstan to Tula at the invitation of fellow Adventists, as he recalled in a 1992 interview with the newspaper Kommunar.

In 1977, at a meeting of Adventist ministers in Gorky held with government permission, Kulakov was elected senior presbyter of the Adventist Church in the RSFSR. The participants were mainly supporters of his initiative and of the former All-Union Council of Seventh-day Adventists. In a statement circulated in 1980, opponents challenged the authority of the new organization, arguing that many ministers had not participated in Kulakov's election.

At the General Conference's Annual Council on October 7, 1981, Neal C. Wilson reported on a recent visit to the Soviet Union, during which he had urged Adventist leaders to work towards organizational unity. Kulakov and Nikolai A. Zhukalyuk also addressed the council, conveying greetings from Soviet Adventists and expressing confidence that organizational unity would be achieved in the near future.

According to Kashirin, by the mid-1980s the organization led by Kulakov in Tula had brought together most of the congregations previously aligned with rival groups or remaining outside them. In 1985, a temporary Adventist coordinating council was formed in the Soviet Union. Kulakov (from the RSFSR) and Nikolai A. Zhukalyuk (from Ukraine) were elected coordinators. They worked closely with church leaders in other Soviet republics to reunite and organize national and local Adventist associations in accordance with the worldwide church's Working Policy, as far as circumstances allowed.

In 1988, Kulakov was chairman of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's Republican Council in the RSFSR. On April 30, 1988, the Los Angeles Times reported that Kulakov was due to receive an honorary doctorate from Southwestern Adventist College in Texas that day.

In July 1990, Kulakov was elected president of the newly formed Euro-Asia Division of the world Adventist Church at the General Conference session in Indianapolis. He remained president until 1992.

Writing about the Adventist Church in Russia, Oleg Morozov credited Kulakov with helping to unite scattered congregations, train new ministers and reconnect Soviet Adventists with the worldwide church. Kashirin likewise emphasizes Kulakov's role in expanding international contacts and educational opportunities, while noting the political compromises that cooperation with the Soviet state entailed.

Seminary and publishing house

The Soviet government granted permission to establish an Adventist seminary in Zaoksky on January 27, 1987.

The Kulakov family moved to the village of Zaoksky in 1988. That year, Kulakov opened , described by A. S. Kashkin as Russia's first institution for training Adventist pastors. His son, , worked with him to establish and develop the seminary and was its rector by 1992. They had obtained the necessary permissions after negotiating with the authorities.

From 1988, Kulakov taught pastoral theology and homiletics at the seminary, combining teaching with administrative duties. He also edited the church newspaper Slovo primireniya ('Word of Reconciliation').

In a 1992 interview with Kommunar, Kulakov recalled that volunteers from Adventist churches across the Soviet Union had completed the main construction work in six months. Many had used their annual leave to work on the complex without pay.

The journalist N. Efimova, who visited the complex for the interview, described the seminary as having been built on the site of an abandoned school. A library and printing facility were still under construction, and an experimental farm demonstrated agricultural techniques to local residents. Efimova also reported on Kulakov's plan to move the church's administrative center to Moscow while retaining Zaoksky as a center for ministerial training.

In April 1988, the Los Angeles Times reported that a joint Soviet–Adventist printing venture remained under negotiation.

Kulakov was one of the founders of Source of Life, the USSR's first Seventh-day Adventist publishing house.

Public activities

Peace conferences and social initiatives

In the 1970s and 1980s, Kulakov represented the Seventh-day Adventist Church at public events and international peace conferences in the Soviet Union and abroad. In June 1977, he participated in the World Conference "Religious Leaders for Lasting Peace, Disarmament and Just Relations Among Nations". In 1982, he was invited to take part in the World Conference "Religious Workers for Saving the Sacred Gift of Life from Nuclear Catastrophe" in Moscow. Kulakov also took part in numerous other Christian peace conferences abroad.