Odintsov M. The Council of Ministers of the USSR decides: "evict forever!": Collection of documents and materials about Jehovah's Witnesses in the Soviet Union (1951 - 1985)

Religious publications

The collection is devoted to the history of the religious organization Jehovah's Witnesses. It traces the path of its formation from a small circle of like-minded people devoted to the study of the Bible, to one of the largest international religious organizations operating in more than 200 countries and numbering over 6 million people.

The book tells in more detail about the appearance of this religion in the Russian Empire at the end of the XIX century and its subsequent spread in the Soviet Union. The main attention is paid to the period of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 and after the war decades, up to the era of "perestroika and glasnost" in the USSR, as well as the state and activities of Jehovah's Witnesses associations in the Russian Federation in the 90s of the XX century.

The collection includes more than 60 documents and materials from various state archives of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Moldova. First of all, they concern two sad dates in the post-war history of Russian Jehovah's Witnesses – the mass deportations of believers in 1949 and 1951 to Kazakhstan, Siberia and the Far East. Archival documents enable readers to come into direct contact with the history of the life of believers in places of special settlement and in those areas where they were allowed to live after the end of exile, and in addition, learn about the Soviet policy towards believers, religions and religious associations.

The book will be of interest to members of Jehovah's Witnesses associations and believers of other religious associations operating in the Russian Federation. It will be of interest to historians, religious scholars, students and pupils of schools that learn the national history of the XX century.

It will be extremely useful for state and municipal employees who practically implement the religious policy of the state and maintain relations with religious associations.