ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The idea for this book began long before the recent publication in Moscow of three books on Fr. Gleb Yakunin. I owe, however, a large debt of gratitude to their authors for their contributions to parts of Fr. Gleb’s story that, previously, were obscure to me. All three scholars, Elena Volkova, Sergei Bychkov, and Georgii Rovenskii knew Fr. Gleb for many years, witnessed personally his accomplishments and misfortunes, and fervently believed that his significance for the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Soviet Union, and postcommunist Russia remained unrecognized. The near simultaneous publication of all three works in 2021 is curious. As a partial explanation, the passage of time since Yakunin’s death in 2014 allowed adequate opportunity for reflection and perspective. Additionally, the political turmoil in Russia in the second decade of the twenty-first century made it difficult to write about contemporary history. Yet Yakunin’s life and the subjects that concerned him speak directly to some of the most contentious issues of the present, especially the meaning of truth and the growing threat of authoritarianism. Fortunately, the publication of the three books took place only a few months before the Russian military assault on Ukraine, which would have made their issuance difficult to conceive.

My gratitude extends especially to Volkova, who many years ago introduced me to Fr. Gleb. After his death, I was fortunate to have had several interviews with her on various aspects of his life that helped shape the beginning of this book. She shared his political views with me, but it was her openness about him as a person, his ideals, and his commitments to serving persecuted members of Russian society that I found most informative.

Similarly, I wish to thank Canon Rev. Michael Bourdeaux (d. 2021) for his passionate interest in the Russian people and Russian culture. Like Fr. Gleb Yakunin, whom he admired, he gave voice to the persecuted, as well as those who, under great pressure from the authorities, held fast in their ideals. The numerous books and articles that Canon Bourdeaux published revealed layers of Russian society that remained hidden to outsiders.

I appreciate the opportunity to work in the Keston Archive, housed in the Center for Religion, Politics, and Society at Baylor University and its vast holdings of primary source materials. The archive’s stimulating atmosphere adds to its charm and to the benefits of doing research there. I thank Larisa Seago, the archive’s curator, for her extensive knowledge of its holdings and for help in assembling many of the documents for this book. Even from afar, Ms. Seago assisted in locating rare materials relating to the Russian intelligentsia and to Yakunin’s Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights in the USSR. I thank Kathy Hillman, the director of the Keston Center, Tanya Clark, the associate editor of Journal of Church and State, and Jeffrey Archer, the dean of University Libraries, for their assistance in various ways to my work on this book.

Parts of the present book were presented at the international conference on “Reinventing Religion: The Rise of Religious Sensibility in the Late Soviet Union (1960s–80s),” hosted by the University of Basel, June 10–12, 2021, and at the annual meeting of the Keston Institute in London, November 5, 2021. I greatly profited from the discussions at both events. The international conference organized by Barbara Martin offered an opportunity to consider Yakunin’s relationships beyond Russia, which, in the end, proved important in developing his connections to the American entrepreneur and publisher Henry Dakin. Xenia Dennen, the director of the Keston Institute in Great Britain, and the Keston Council hosted the latter presentation, which encouraged me to think more broadly about Gleb Yakunin’s global significance. In 2018, an informal conversation with Ms. Dennen about the need for a biography of Yakunin inspired the earlier conceptualization of this book. I thank Xenia Dennen, Barbara Martin, Nadezhda Beliakova, and participants at both events for the contributions they made to this book. I am grateful to the late Jane Ellis for her work on the Russian Orthodox Church and on Fr. Gleb’s activities, which provided extremely helpful background for this study. In addition, Alyona Kozhevnikova’s personal knowledge of peoples in the human rights movement enriched my understanding of the opposition to Soviet power.

I thank Mariia Glebovna Yakunina, Fr. Gleb’s oldest child for her insights into Fr. Gleb as a person and as an Orthodox priest. I shall not forget the long conversation we had, midway through my research, about her father, his activities, and their impact on her family. The conversation took place in her studio, surrounded by large, brilliantly colored icons that she and her husband, Andrei Belov, painted. She and her husband are generous and open people, and she provided details about her father that I could not have known otherwise. During the COVID-19 pandemic and afterward, Mariia Glebovna responded by email to many queries concerning her father. In Moscow, other people too offered insights into Fr. Gleb’s activities, the political and social context in which he operated, the Orthodox Church, and the former Soviet state. Thanks to:

• Viktor Popkov and Tat′iana Lebedeva, who operate an impressive bookstore and coffee shop in central Moscow and who, in the 1970s, were active members of the Christian Seminar in Moscow;
• Pavel Men, the brother of Fr. Aleksandr Men, who has a vast store of knowledge about his brother, Fr. Gleb, and their associates;
• Sergei Filatov, a distinguished sociologist of religion, whose studies of politics, religion, and society are invaluable sources of information about post-Soviet Russia; and
• Grigorii Kliucharev of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Sociology, who specializes in the study of Russian youth, education, values, and literacy, and with whom I have had many discussions about recent trends in Russian society.

Despite various newspapers and articles and a large book of reminiscences, a biography of Henry S. Dakin, the American entrepreneur and publisher, does not exist. I am grateful to Dakin’s wife and daughter, Vergilia and Adriana Dakin, for their help in reconstructing his life and accomplishments, and to his associates, Jim Hickman and Anya Kucherev, for a series of interviews that elaborated on Dakin’s interest in Russia. Hickman and Kucherev are key sources on Henry Dakin’s efforts to forge connections between the American and Russian people outside the official channels of their governments. Although essentially a nonpolitical person, Dakin’s publications of Russian samizdat materials led him eventually to Gleb Yakunin and the documents of the Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights in the USSR.

I thank Christine Worobec, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita and director of the NIU Series on Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at Northern Illinois University, for her interest in and encouragement of this book on Yakunin, which came at an important time in my research. She read every page of my monograph and offered extremely helpful suggestions that greatly improved the analysis. Similarly, Dominic Erdozain of King’s College London also read every page, and his recommendations proved invaluable for the focus and organization of the book. Amy Farranto, the senior acquisitions editor at Northern Illinois University Press, is a superb editor and consultant, whose professional and personal gifts go far beyond the merely academic. An expert stylist, she is a strong advocate for clear, concrete writing. Her editorial skills are impressive, and the interest she has demonstrated in my subject has been a constant source of inspiration.

Librarians at Mercer University, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina have made research for this book a pleasurable experience. I thank especially Cecilia Williams, the interlibrary loan supervisor, and Adam Griggs, the research services librarian, at Mercer; my sister Linda Daniel, Duke Libraries’ teaching and learning Strategist; and Abbey Allred, library staff at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for their selfless service and expertise in locating sometimes obscure titles. These people have significantly enhanced the quality of the research for this book. In addition, research assistants, particularly Olivia Joyce Pakele, at the Hoover Library and Archives at Stanford University so willingly gave me the benefit of their knowledge and experience. My thanks to Karen M. Laun, Kristen Gregg, Cheryl Hirsch, and copyeditor Therese Malhame for their expertise and dedication to this book.

I want to express my gratitude to William D. Underwood, the president of Mercer University, for his emphasis on the relationship between teaching and research and for his personal interest in my work. I thank my colleagues in the history department at Mercer, as well as Deneen Senasi, the director of the Faculty Research and Writing Colloquium, and faculty colleagues in the colloquium whose suggestions and criticisms have strengthened my work. I thank Mary Pearson and Joseph Payne for their close reading of the manuscript and their extremely helpful critiques, Jerome Gratigny, the director of Academic Technology Services and Matt Adams at Information Technology Services at Mercer for providing the technological assistance that I needed at several important junctures of this work.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Clifford Foust, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who introduced me to Russian history and remained a mentor throughout my graduate school study and afterward. At his insistence, I applied to the IREX exchange program with the Soviet Union, and the year of living in Moscow and the enriching experience of working in the archives have had a major impact on my teaching and scholarship throughout my academic career.

I owe my largest debt to my wife Karol for her interest in my manuscript. She read each page numerous times and her comments strengthened the clarity and straightforwardness of my writing. Most of all, I am thankful for her creative and sustaining presence in my life.