They Rejoiced in Eastern Europe

THIS past summer tens of thousands of people flocked to major cities in Eastern Europe. The streets of beautiful Budapest, Prague, Zagreb, and more than 20 other cities were crowded with people wearing blue and white badges. These identified them as lovers of godly freedom attending conventions of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

For the first time ever, conventions were freely held in European republics of the Soviet Union, as well as in faraway Siberia and the Soviet Asian republic of Kazakhstan. Altogether, more than 370,000 conventioners enjoyed warm fellowship in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland, Romania, and the Soviet Union.

For those not present, it may be hard to imagine the rejoicing when 74,252 met in the Soviet Union to worship Jehovah God openly and without fear. Yet, their sheer joy could hardly have exceeded that of the 74,587 in Prague and 40,601 in Budapest who assembled in the largest stadiums in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, or of the 14,684 who met in Zagreb, Yugoslavia.

This is so remarkable because just a couple of years earlier, Jehovah’s Witnesses were under ban in most countries of Eastern Europe. They were cut off from the West during the Cold War. Even to meet in small groups to worship God was illegal. No wonder there was such rejoicing at being able to meet freely in large conventions!

A 59-year-old Czech Witness, who had spent eight months in solitary confinement about 40 years ago because of her faith in God, said: “Many of us who lived in Prague dreamed about a big convention that could be arranged in this stadium, but never did we believe that this dream would come true in such a marvelous way.”

Two weeks before the Prague convention, August 9 to 11, a city newspaper, Večerník Praha, noted: “Charged with high treason and with disrupting socialism, Jehovah’s Witnesses were put in Communist jails for many years.” After explaining that the city would soon be host to tens of thousands of Witnesses, the article concluded: “You are not likely to meet so many kind and smiling people in Prague at any other time than during the second weekend of August.”

However, you may ask: ‘Were Jehovah’s Witnesses once persecuted with just cause? Were they ever a threat to the political authorities of the countries in which they lived? From where did the hundreds of thousands of convention delegates in Eastern Europe come? Suppressed and isolated for 40 or more years from free contact with the Western world, how were they able to grow to such numbers?’