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The Image Of Jehovah's Witnesses In State Publications In The Ussr, Roman Orlovskyi

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The paper presents a description of the image of Jehovah's Witnesses in the anti-religious books of Soviet authors. A comparison is made of anti-religious books from the times of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. The main points that Soviet authors drew upon when describing the Religious Organization of Jehovah's Witnesses and its adherents in the Soviet Union are described. Under Khrushchev, anti-religious texts were imbued with offensive rhetoric in an attempt to humiliate members of this denomination in the minds of Soviet society. In turn, during the Brezhnev era, there was a significant decrease in the emotional and offensive coloring …