Eye-Witness Report from a Soviet Court-room

This publication from Frontline Fellowship chronicles the two-day trial and sentencing of seven Ukrainian believers in 1969. Needless to say, it’s a timely read, considering Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the two-steps-back approach that China’s been taking in both their nationalism and closure to the world in response to COVID. “Soviet” might be an old term, but it’s not ancient, and it’s certainly not dead.

This book gives us a peek into how the Soviets handled Christians within their borders, not condemning them outright, but finding ways to call them “enemies of the state” or cults dangerous to the peace of the union. Because fellow-believers were allowed entrance into this particular trial for observation and support, someone in the group recorded the events in this incomplete transcript, a document that was eventually released to the West.

While this trial is less drastic and more humane than those we might recall from novels and films, it still gives us a glimpse of the blind injustice that comes through socialistic reform. The crimes are figments of the prosecutions’ imagination and the sentences are unreasonably harsh. The judges seek to follow the letter of the law as it changes, while the defendants quote the Soviet leaders themselves to suggest that the new laws are antithetical to what the founders had dreamed. There’s some interesting back-and-forth on these pages!

In the grand scheme of things, these events took place about half-way through the existence of the Iron Curtain, when it was shamelessly anti-God yet still semi-concerned about how it appeared before the people. You can get a sense of this mild concern in the voices of the judges and prosecutors, that they played a bit to the crowd, sought compromise, and were less forceful than they likely wanted to be.

I could quote several statements, but I will limit myself by relating only this statement from Svetlana Pavlovna Solovyova in her final address:

I don’t ask the court for mercy, because this is a human court. I am ready to bear any punishment with joy. Whatever path I have to tread, I shall be faithful to the Lord. But I must tell you, comrade Judges, that not a single tsar and not a single judge has remained unpunished for unjust judgments. I want you to think about this. Now is that acceptable time, now is the day of salvation, tomorrow your life is no longer in your hands. (47)

May today’s Ukrainian and Chinese believers bear such faith as they eventually face similar trials! May we here in the States do the same, as our own unchanging beliefs slowly morph us into enemies of this ever-changing state, dangerous to the peace of the union, as right turns wrong, black turns white, male turns female, and insanity turns normal. God help us.

©2022 E.T.