Missionary Work in Eastern Europe and the CIS

Most countries in Eastern Europe have been Communist countries which have not acknowledged God for a long time. Missionary work in this area had to be done very carefully, and it was difficult sometimes to the extent of staking one's life. Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, the former Yugoslavia, the former Czechoslovakia, and the former USSR are included in those categories. They are the places where the official records of missionary work cannot be made known to the public yet.

However, in the 1990s, with the gradual collapse of Communism in accordance with God's will, the freedom of religion is gradually being recovered, and thus missionary work is steadily proceeding. For all of that, its situation is not so favorable because civil war and fighting are frequently breaking out due over national interests. But in some countries the work is being developing very briskly.These include Hungary, Poland and the Czech and Slovak republics, where underground activities have been ongoing since the 1970s, and Armenia and Uzbekistan among others that have become independent from the former Soviet Union.

The Unification Church of Poland received formal approval from the government on January 12, 1990. Following this, people could work officially in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. That was a precious gift for the many missionaries who had invested devoted themselves, fighting cold and hunger and risking death. These breakthroughs were realized as a result of Reverend Chung-hwan Kwak's meeting and negotiation with top leaders in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union from October 11 to November 3, 1989 under the guidance of Reverend Moon.

At present, missionary work is being carried out briskly in Russia. After Reverend Moon held the World Media Conference in Russia and met Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, he promised to directly educate Russian leaders and university students. Consequently, ten-day Principle education seminars were held at the World Mission Center in New York from July 1 to August 17, 1990 attended by 28 professors and other researchers and 351 students from forty-six universities from the USSR Genuine missionary work for the Communist bloc thus finally began. It is historically significant that the Communist world has completely surrendered to Unification Thought. Those who attended the seminars are supporting CARP and PWPA activities in Russia.

From April 30 to May 2, 1991, a Unification Principle seminar for Russian political leaders was held in Baltimore, U.S.A, sponsored by CAUSA. About two hundred people including the vice-presidents of both Kazakhstan and Kirghizstan, ten cabinet members, twenty-six representatives of the Russian Supreme Council and sixty representatives of the Supreme Councils of other republics, attended the seminar and listened to Reverend Moon's thought and achievements.As Russia has accepted the Principle increasingly rapidly, on October 30, 1991, the World Mission Department reached the point of officially dispatching missionaries to Russia. As of 1994, many missionaries are conveying God's word in the CIS.