Faith on the Margins: Jehovah's Witnesses in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova, 1945-2010

Baran, Emily Bruderle

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March 20, 2019

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Baran, Emily Bruderle
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History

Abstract

This dissertation examines the shifting boundaries of religious freedom and the nature of religious dissent in the postwar Soviet Union and three of its successor states through a case study of the Jehovah's Witnesses. The religion entered the USSR as a result of the state's annexation of western Ukraine, Moldavia, Transcarpathia, and the Baltic states during World War II, territories containing Witness communities. In 1949 and 1951, the state deported entire Witness communities to Siberia and arrested and harassed individual Witnesses until it legalized the religion in 1991. For the Soviet period, this dissertation charts the Soviet state's multifaceted approach to stamping out religion. The Witnesses' specific beliefs and practices offered a harsh critique of Soviet ideology and society that put them in direct conflict with the state. The non-Russian nationality of believers, as well as the organization's American roots, apocalyptic beliefs, ban on military service, door-to-door preaching, and denunciation of secular society challenged the state's goals of postwar reconstruction, creation of a cohesive Soviet society, and achievement of communism. In this sense, the state's view of the Witnesses as a hostile political organization was not without basis. Soviet Witnesses demonstrate that, despite repression, believers could and did construct identities and complex community networks that challenged the state's control over its citizenry. In fact, religion was a powerful organizing tool for citizens to create meaning in their lives outside of, and in opposition to, the official ideology. In the post-Soviet context, this project takes a comparative approach by focusing on the three successor states with the largest long-standing Witness communities: Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova. The Witnesses emerged as one of the fastest growing religions in the region and faced growing criticism and hostility from the Orthodox Church and its supporters, expressed through an anticult discourse that framed Witnesses as a threat to democracy, state security, and traditional values. Through legal challenges to their right to practice, the Witnesses became a key player in debates over the limits of religious freedom. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates the centrality of religious pluralism to the region's shaky and incomplete transition from authoritarianism to democracy.

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