Authors

Zoe Knox¹;  ¹ University of Leicester, UK

Discussion

This paper will consider the place of religious samizdat in the pioneering work of Michael Bourdeaux and Keston College. It will consider how Keston personnel researched and wrote their accounts of religious persecution in the Soviet Union. It will consider the range of materials which informed Keston’s analysis, official and unofficial, and examine how Keston personnel solicited, collected, selected, and archived these research materials, and how the information within was verified and corroborated. The paper will explore the methodology behind Keston’s work in bringing Soviet religious persecution to world attention. It will argue that through their approach to sources and evidence, Keston personnel were practitioners of a particular research methodology which was by necessity innovative in its use of sources and centred oppressed religious communities.