Authors

Miriam Dobson¹;  ¹ University of Sheffield, UK

Discussion

In April 1979, the USSR and USA agreed on a high-profile prisoner exchange. In return for two spies, the Soviet government set free five political prisoners: alongside human rights activists and dissidents, was Georgii Vins, a Baptist pastor. This paper explores the mechanisms by which Vins’s case came to the attention of the outside world and suggests the pivotal role of the Council for Prisoners’ Relatives (CPR). By the 1970s the CPR samizdat publication Bulletin had become a key source of information about religious persecution in the USSR.  Georgii Vins’ mother, Lidiia Vins, was the leading force behind the CPR, and herself a prisoner of conscience. In focusing on Georgii and Lidiia, this paper explores not only dynamics within the Vins family, but also more broadly the role of mothers and wives in the unofficial networks of communication which became so important in the late Cold War.