A Momentous Week

THE world was shocked on Monday, August 19, 1991, when coup leaders took power in the Soviet Union, and President Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest in the Crimea. Not many miles away, in beautiful Odessa, final preparations were under way for the weekend convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in that city. Sadly, the Odessa convention was canceled by local officials.

Yet, the Witnesses did not give up. They continued their preconvention preparations and pleaded with a city official to do all that he could to reverse the cancellation. Representatives of Jehovah’s Witnesses were told to return Thursday, August 22. On that afternoon, after a meeting of the city council, the Witnesses were handed written permission for the convention and were wished the best. In Moscow, coup leaders had been forced to surrender that very day!

How fast it all happened! And how marvelous it was to see over 12,000 assemble that weekend! On August 27, two days after the Odessa convention, representatives of Jehovah’s Witnesses called on Mr. V. K. Simonenko, chairman of the City of Odessa Executive Committee, thanked him for allowing the convention to be held, and presented him with a copy of the new book The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived in the Russian language.

Mr. Simonenko expressed appreciation for the gift and said: “I was not at the convention, but I know everything that took place there. Since the beginnings of Odessa, I have never seen anything better than this . . . I promise you that whenever you need permission to hold your meetings, I will always be willing to grant it.”

Rejoicing in the Soviet Union

THIS little girl in Lvov has reason to rejoice. She is one of 74,252 people who met freely in the Soviet Union to enjoy a Christian convention and receive in the Russian language a copy of this beautiful new publication The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived. Although Jehovah’s Witnesses had never before been permitted to hold conventions in the Soviet Union, last summer they held seven. The attendance figure for each location appears on the previous page.

One of the convention cities was Alma-​Ata, Kazakhstan, where conventioners also came from the Soviet republics of Russia, Uzbekistan, Kirghizia, Tadzhikistan, and Turkmenistan. In Alma-​Ata over 6,000 were delighted to receive the new book. When the more than 4,000 attending in Usolye-​Sibirskoye, Siberia, each received a free personal copy, the stadium manager exclaimed: “This is a miracle!”

In Kiev, when a number of policemen and firemen saw the book, they begged for a copy, saying: “After all, we protected you; we were with you at the convention.” A police captain wanted to know, “Where was it edited? How many copies have been printed?”

Thus far, over 12 million copies have been printed in some 60 languages, including lesser-​known ones such as Bislama, Efịk, Ewe, Ga, Igbo, Rarotongan, Sepedi, Shona, Tsonga, Tswana, Twi, and Venda.