|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
Millennial Propaganda Hides Soviet Repression
| Article
# : |
14402 |
|
|
Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
|
| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1988 |
3,097 Words |
| Author
: |
Andrew Sorokowski
Andrew Sorokowski is a writer who specializes in Soviet
religious history and current affairs. |
It was Christmas eve in Kalynivka, a village in the Lvov region of the southwestern USSR. The church was packed with some 250 worshipers attending the midnight service. Father Petro Zelenyuk, a Ukrainian Catholic priest, celebrated the mass long into the early morning hours as the congregation sang the responses. At about 3 A.M. there was a commotion. Someone began shouting to the people to disperse. Several men made their way to the altar and tried to stop the service. The parishioners recognized them as local Communist Party officials, schoolteachers, and antireligious activists, led by the regional plenipotentiary of the state Council on Religious Affairs. One of the activists started trying to jostle people out of the church. A young man pushed him, and a scuffle broke out. The activists called the police, who reportedly made several arrests.
One morning a month later Nijole Sadunaite, a well-known Lithuanian Catholic and former prisoner of conscience, was trying to make a call at a telephone booth in Vilnius. She was planning to attend a service that day in memory of Fr. Juozas Zdebskis, a priest who died two years ago after being hit by a car. Suddenly a man came up and began to abuse and threaten her. Sadunaite walked away, but later that morning two men attacked her companion. One of them punched her hard in the stomach. Passers-by intervened, but Sadunaite suffered ill effects for some time after. Official involvement is suspected.
Such scenes hardly enhance the liberal image that the Soviet government is so anxious to project. It is particularly inappropriate this year, when massive celebrations of the millennium of Christianity in the East Slavic lands are to be held in Moscow and other Soviet
... (1972 of 20081 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
