Persecuted Church

"The stories narrated by eyewitnesses help us to learn about the past without nostalgia, enabling us not to confuse or forget the true history and thus preventing us from falling back into dark times. Hundreds of thousands, millions of believers from the territory of the former Soviet Union became martyrs and confessors for the Christian faith. Of 50,000 churches that existed before 1917, a mere 1277 of them were left standing in the all of the enormous country by 1937. In its range and its cruelty, the persecution of the Church carried out by the Communists was unprecedented in its scale in all of world history. Both clergy members and ordinary village dwellers will share with us their recollections about the repressions they suffered. The reel will be concluded with an excerpt from a sermon of the famous priest, theologian and preacher, Father Aleksandr Men. "