THE SOVIET ATTACK ON RELIGION/A Focus OF THE SOVIET ATTACK

Attacks Are Initiated

Despite the relatively number of Witnesses in the Soviet Union, their zealous preaching activity soon came under attack by Soviet authorities. In Estonia the attack began in August 1948 when the five individuals taking the lead the work were arrested and put in prison.  "Soon it was apparent that the KGB wanted to arrest everyone," noted Estonian Witness Lembit Toom.  This was true wherever Witnesses were found in the Soviet Union.

The Soviets depicted Witnesses as the worst of criminals and as major threat to the atheistic Soviet State. So, everywhere, the were hunted down, arrested, and imprisoned.  The Sword and the Shield observed:  "The KGB's obsession with these Witnesses was, perhaps, the supreme example of their lack of any sense of proportion when dealing with even the most insignificant forms of dissent."

This obsession was dramatically evidenced by the well-planned attack carried out against the Witnesses. In April 1951.  Just two years ago, in 1999, Professor Sergei Ivanenko, a respected Russian scholar, observed in his book The People Who Are Never Without Their Bibles that in early April 1951,  "more than 5,00 families of Jehovah's Witnesses from the Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Moldavian, and Baltic Soviet republics were sent to 'a permanent settlement' in Siberia, the Far East, and Kazakhstan." 

Next time: THE SOVIET ATTACK ON RELIGION/A Focus OF THE SOVIET ATTACK - Worthy  of Remembrance 

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