1841 and after 1866 the church was forced to conduct its administrative business and synods in Russian. The number of congregations went down to 12, though 2 new were founded in the course of the 19th century by Czech settlers from Zelów. The church managed to avoid any nationalistic conflict between its Lithuanian peasant members and the still predominant Polish nobles. At the beginning of the 20th century, a number of Polish Calvinists from Żyrardów, Kuców, and Zelów emigrated to the United States and in 1915, a Polish Presbyterian parish was formed in Baltimore, Maryland; this parish existed until 1941. Independent Poland (1918–39) Immediately after Poland regained its independence, both the Warsaw and Lithuanian Brethren expressed joy at the occasion and a desire to unite into one church. In 1918, the Warsaw Brethren allowed women full voting rights in church assemblies, congregations and synods. Until the 1930s both churches grew rapidly. The Warsaw Brethren organised new congregations in Toruń, Poznań, Lwów (today Lviv in Ukraine) and Kraków. Due to missionary activity, a few thousands of Ukrainians were converted to Calvinism from Eastern Orthodoxy and organised into a semi-independent synod within the Warsaw Brethren. In 1926, the church started to publish a two-weekly church newspaper "Jednota" (Brethren) which still exists today. The Lithuanian Brethren suffered huge loses, when the Lithuanian parishes formed themselves into a separate church in independent Lithuania, as well as they lost to Soviet Russia the old church centres such as Słuck, Kojdanów, Minsk etc. The Brethren, now left with only 4 congregations (Wilno, Izabellin, Niepokojczyce, Michajłówka) rebuilt itself by incorporating Polish Anglicans (mainly converts from Judaism) into a separate synod, as well as by mission to Ukrainians and Belarusians. Despite repeated attempt to unite themselves, the two churches remained separate, and in the 1930s even hostile after the Wilno Consistory engaged itself into a lucrative yet dubious business of granting easy divorces. Union talks were resumed in 1939 but were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. By 1939, the Warsaw Brethren had over 20,000 members, and the Lithuanian Brethren ca. 5,000 members. Apart from these two churches, the United Evangelical Church in Poland (Kościół Ewangelicko-Unijny w Polsce), which had assumed independence from the Church of the old-Prussian Union, had ca. 3,000 Calvinists, and the Evangelical Church of Augsburg and Helvetian Confession in Lesser Poland (Kościoł Ewangelicki Augsburskiego i Helweckiego Wyznania w Małopolsce), having emerged from