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.