Book Description

The history of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Europe has always been one of persecution. This third volume documents this history, turning eastward. For the first time, the circumstances of a religious minority under different political systems can be compared across the continent. The studies gathered here provide insight into the methods of repression used by governments and mainstream churches, the survival strategies of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and their various experiences under Eastern European dictatorships. The initially cordial relationship with Jehovah’s Witnesses that developed after 1990 has steadily reverted to religious discrimination, culminating in Russia’s renewed ban of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2017 and the confiscation of their properties. By violating the universal human right of religious freedom, the same conditions that prevailed in the Soviet era have now returned to “modern” Russia: With severest discrimination and abusing jurisdictional procedures to reach their political aspirations, the State tries to crush a religious community. Against this background, it is all the more important not to turn a blind eye to the situation of religious minorities in Eastern Europe, but instead to take an honest public stance against it.