Divisions 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.
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.