Comments on: An Apostle’s Testimony in Soviet Russia, 1959

By: Posts You Might Have Missed 3 | Times & Seasons

Posts You Might Have Missed 3 | Times & Seasons — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:24:43 +0000

[...] At KPI, Elder Benson’s finest hour. [...]

By: bbell

bbell — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:44:21 +0000

This is a great story. ETB really threw it down.

Like #15 I have encountered many people in academia who consider negative stories about the defunct Soviet Union to be merely US propoganda aimed at bolstering US civilian support for the Cold War.

#19 hear hear

By: David R

David R — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:00:08 +0000

I add my thanks to the others that appreciated this story of then-Elder Benson. It is also appropriate to remember that the Berlin Wall came down and missionaries entered the Russia during President Benson’s administration as president of the Church.

By: john f.

john f. — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:56:19 +0000

Ardis, thanks for this vignette from the ministry of Apostle Benson. Although my understanding is far from perfect about life behind the Iron Curtain, some of my own experiences have given me perhaps more insight than most people, and on that background, this testimony of ETB was very moving.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:46:43 +0000

Non-Arab Arab, I really try to be hospitable here at Keepapitchinin — however, I will not provide a platform for any guest’s off-topic, private political agendas, which is what I consider your comment to be. My comment did not pair Isrealis with Arabs nor express any approval of murder or other non-Christian behavior, or make any statement about Middle Eastern controversies. My comment paired the annihilation of Jews under Nazism with the suppression of Christianity within the Soviet Union — on-topic, and expressive of disapproval of oppression, murder, and everything both regimes stood for.

You are welcome to read and comment in the spirit of articles posted here, but no further commentary on your pet topic will be permitted.

By: Non-Arab Arab

Non-Arab Arab — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:56:22 +0000

Ardis, I was actually talking the other way around as that is what the comparison to Israel suggested. In a hypothetical world where if after the collapse of communism the underground Russian Christian minority had emerged to slaughter and ethnically cleanse the vast majority of Russians who were atheist, would we talk of that approvingly? The evil treatment Christians received under Communism would of course never justify such an evil counter-action. Nothing of the sort happened in Russia of course I know. That is however the founding story of the state of Israel – a group of fanatics who slaughtered and ethnically cleansed the vast majority of the population of the country and then have gone on to demand the world claim it was a righteous action and to claim that their now institutionalized extreme fanaticism is somehow now the acceptable moderate middle ground.

Per Russia though, don’t worry, I am fully aware of the brutality in the suppression of religion in the Soviet Union. While living in Jerusalem in the mid-90s, I was given a gift of a book of stories of Russia’s “new” martyrs under the Communist reigns of terror by a group of Orthodox nuns (is that the right term in Russian Orthodoxy?) from a White Russian convent. Besides for my own study of history, their vehemence certainly ensured I remain aware of the dire situation Christians behind the Iron Curtain lived and died under.

By: Ivan Wolfe

Ivan Wolfe — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:14:21 +0000

I think it’s not just the Soviet suppression of religion – quite a few Americans don’t realize just how bad it was in general under the Soviet Union.

I’m hardly and expert, and doubt I have anywhere near a full picture, but I’ve read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago, as well as a few general histories.

Yet, when it comes up with my students, they mostly shrug – “I thought all that stuff about the USSR being horrible and repressive was just US propoganda. I’m sure things were probably just fine and most people enjoyed living there” or “I bet Stalin wasn’t so bad. Those rumors about his mass killings are likely government lies to make excuses for military spending.”

Even among my own peer group (graduate students), I find similar attitudes.

By: Ray

Ray — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:54:54 +0000

“I’m getting very strong indications that many bloggernaclers have zero awareness of what life was like in the Soviet Union insofar as religion was concerned. This is alarming.”

Ardis, this is true of Americans (and people almost everywhere else) in general. Few people realize how systematically and brutally Christianity was suppressed in Russia.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:54:33 +0000

I don’t know what you mean, NAA — by 1959, atheist Soviets pretty much *had* systematically destroyed religion throughout the USSR, imprisoning Christians, impounding virtually all church property, melting down all but one set of Orthodox bells, confiscating Bibles and prohibiting the importation of others, removing icons, criminalizing the teaching of religion, removing children from religious parents, and doing in every other way everything they could do to annihilate faith.

(I’m getting very strong indications that many bloggernaclers have zero awareness of what life was like in the Soviet Union insofar as religion was concerned. This is alarming.)

But I’m glad you appreciated ETB’s statement.

By: Non-Arab Arab

Non-Arab Arab — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:24:25 +0000

“It may not be too much of a stretch to say that an apostle speaking to a religious gathering in Moscow in 1959 was as unimaginable as it would have been for Heber J. Grant to go to the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and preach that less than 15 years later, the Jews would be in possession of a recognized nation of Israel. (Let me stress that HJG did no such thing — I mean only that ETB testifying in Moscow was no less extraordinary than that would have been.)”

Urgh, bad comparison. To the best of my knowledge, Russian Christians in 1990 hadn’t systematically ethnically cleansed 80% of all atheist Russians from the country and declared it God’s will and an act of supreme righteousness.

But I digress on a tangent. I too found this statement by then-Apostle Benson incredibly moving and a real example of him using his mantle for supreme good.