Early in the morning of August 20, in the midst of the Communist hard-liners’ attempted coup, members of the one-year-old Bible Society of the Soviet Union were on the streets of Moscow, passing out small Russian New Testaments to soldiers and tank crews. Then, as their supply of pocket-sized New Testaments ran low, they offered copies of a Children’s Bible. But there was a problem—the Children’s Bible was too big to be easily hidden.
One soldier, however, discovered his uniform had one pocket large enough to keep his superiors from seeing his new treasure. The soldier hesitated for a moment, recounts Fr. Basil Moksiakov, distribution manager for the ecumenical Bible Society. Then he emptied his ammunition pocket and put the Bible inside. He went on to the barricades with a Bible instead of his bullets.
“There were many small miracles,” says Moksiakov, speaking through a translator. “And we believe God gave us one big miracle.”
Religious overtones in the new Russian revolution were hard to ignore. Many public appeals on behalf of Russian President Boris Yeltsin were printed on equipment owned by churches and a few religious publishing houses.
Today most people in the Soviet Union cannot be called “believers,” says Fr. Alexander Borisov, who is known as the “chaplain” of the Moscow city council, to which he has been elected. It was Borisov who wrote biblical references into a strategic anticoup statement signed by Moscow’s mayor, along with a warning that God sees all.
Like Yeltsin, many Soviet citizens were baptized as infants, “just in case the church is right and God is real,” says the priest. Now most say they are learning that seven decades of communism have left them ignorant of their heritage. They are beginning to realize how little they know about what it means to believe, Borisov says.
Yeltsin has said he believes Russia has much to gain from the return of religious faith. Most of his followers agree. “Everything is just under the surface,” says Borisov. “We have choices to make and they are not just human choices. We face spiritual choices.”
That is why Borisov and others placed such an emphasis on taking Bibles to soldiers. “In my heart, I believed that soldiers with New Testaments in their pockets were not going to shoot their brothers and sisters.”
