Lyubov Korol, Russian Mormon

This is the story of Lyubov Korol, daughter of a Russian Mormon who joined the LDS Church in 1996. Korol knew little of the Mormon faith of her parents and joined the LDS Church believing them to be one and the same. The author of the article also makes this assumption, but Korol’s parents were likely Mormon refugees from Samara Oblast. Korol was originally from Omsk, not Minsk as the article states.

Russian Saints: Mormon communities in Russia thrive amid economic hardship and spiritual hunger; Russian Mormons Cling to Faith Amid Hard Times

The Salt Lake Tribune Published 12/19/1998 Page: B1 Paul Rolly

Editor’s note: Tribune columnist Paul Rolly recently traveled to southern Russia to pick up his daughter, Amy, who had just completed a Mormon mission in Rostov. This story is the result of his conversations and experiences with LDS members in Russia.

KRASNODAR, Russia — Lubov Sergeyvna Korol remembers peering from the hallway of her family’s small apartment in Minsk, Russia, as her father conducted secret Mormon church meetings in their living room.

“I loved the songs,” she said. “I was just a little girl. But the songs were beautiful.”

LDS Church activities had gone underground since the Russian revolution of 1917, a year after Korol’s birth, and the subsequent iron-fisted rule of the atheist Bolsheviks.

“In 1929, when I was 13, the leader of our branch, the bishop, was jailed,” said the 82-year-old “babushka” (old woman) from her meticulously kept third-floor walk-up apartment in downtown Krasnodar.

“My father fled because our friends said he might be jailed too,” Korol said.

Korol would not hear those cherished hymns for 67 years. And she never could have dreamed the illegal church would be in her life again.

After fleeing Minsk, her family settled in a region near Azerbaijan, by the Caspian Sea, and Korol’s father found work on the Turkish railroad. They lived in a boxcar.

The secret Mormon meetings ceased. The missionaries, who had proselytized in Russia since 1895, were gone. Her parents, who were baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1910, would soon be dead from disease.

“I never again heard about the Mormon church. There were no books. There were no lessons or discussions. But I held the religion inside of me. My temple was here,” Korol said, pointing to her heart.

As she grew into an adult, Karol lived a relatively good life in Communist Russia. She moved to Krasnodar, several hundred miles south of her native Minsk. She became a doctor, married and had three sons.

The country was officially atheist, but Christianity persisted among much of the population.

Many of Korol’s friends were Russian Orthodox and they urged her to be baptized. She refused. “I knew I was something else.”

Two years ago, a friend told Korol in passing there were Mormon missionaries in Krasnodar. She sought them out, read Mormon scriptures for the first time, and was baptized at the age of 80.

She is one of about 8,000 Mormon converts in Russia since that country, under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, officially recognized the LDS Church in 1991 and opened the borders to what began as a trickle but has grown to about 800 proselyting Mormon missionaries.

The document making the LDS an official national religion was presented by government leaders to Apostles Dallin Oaks and Russell Ballard during a banquet in June 1991, in front of about 100 influential Utahns brought to the USSR by industrialist Jon M. Huntsman.

The group also attended a performance of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which happened to be touring eastern Europe at the time.

That performance, at Moscow’s historic Bolshoi Theater, became a story in Russia for more than the musical renditions of the choir. The audience broke into long, seemingly unending applause after each song.

At the conclusion of the performance, the clapping-in-cadence continued for more than 10 minutes. Observers later speculated the unusually enthusiastic response had been planned and was sent as a message to government authorities that suppression of western Christian religions like Mormonism would no longer be tolerated by the masses.

The Mormon spirit first implanted with that visit continues to spread.

“This still is a largely atheist country, but there is a spiritual hunger among the people here,” said Robert Schwartz, president of the Rostov-Russia LDS Mission, which includes Krasnodar.

“Some people, when we begin spreading the message of the church, sop it up like a dry sponge.”

Other Western religions also have made inroads in Russia, and the Eastern Orthodox Church’s strong protests have persuaded lawmakers to curtail the activities of outside faiths.

But the law has not slowed the growth of the Mormon church.

In the Rostov mission alone, which includes the southern Russian cities of Rostov, Krasnodar, Volgograd, Sochi, Taganog and parts of Armenia, 1,500 people have joined since 1994.

“There is a different relationship between the federal and local governments here than there is in the United States,” said Schwartz. “The federal Duma can pass a law, but if local authorities choose not to enforce it, it doesn’t mean much.”

Indeed, in most communities with active LDS missions, Mormons practice their religion unmolested. One missionary, a Utah native, reported being threatened by some strident nationalists. It was only talk.

“I don’t know why they pick on me,” he said. “I must look like a smart alec.”

Until 1917, Russia was devoutly Christian, a tradition that began in 988 when Vladimir, “The Prince of Kiev,” was baptized and the entire Russian population was simultaneously converted along with him.

Nearly 1,000 years later, it became an atheist nation the same way — by government decree.

The Mormon missionaries say they have found a deep curiosity among the Russians for an American church that emphasizes an individual’s “free agency.”

But it’s the women of the families, said Schwartz, who usually lead the way toward conversion.

“The men, quite frankly, had their family responsibilities taken care of by the communist government for 70 years,” he said. “The women were the backbone who kept the families together. They were the ones who provided the spirituality in the homes.”

In Volgograd (the old Stalingrad), the site of one of World War II’s bloodiest battles, some of Russia’s most famous patriotic monuments stand boldly in the frigid air above the imposing Volga River. There, members of one of two Mormon branches converged on a kiddie pool at the local YMCA on a Saturday morning last month for a baptism. Suited Mormon missionaries stood in the warm, humid room and bore their testimonies in Russian as the congregation of about 40 members sat in folded chairs. Outside the room, reserved for an hour by the Mormons, normal recreational activities continued.

After the baptism, the members scurried off in car pools to a large building where the branch rents an eighth-floor apartment for church activities.

It was a typical Mormon potluck party, with each member contributing a homemade dessert.

The party also provided a glimpse of the Russian spirit, both hardened and wounded by a stagnant, dying economy in which much of the work force hasn’t received a paycheck for several years.

As with every Russian Mormon get-together, whether a branch party or small family gathering in a private home, Mormon hymns were sung.

(A few days earlier, a group of young Mormon women in Rostov had quietly sung a hymn at a downtown cafe before eating a meal with their American visitors. The peculiar ritual seemingly went unnoticed by the other cafe patrons absorbed in their own discussions and thoughts.)

Some of the men at the party wanted to talk to the Americans about ways to get a work permit to come to the United States. Their questions were met with resistance from other branch members who insisted the local Mormon converts need to stay put and help build an LDS foundation in Mother Russia.

One of the branch leaders, an older gentleman considered one of the region’s strongest pillars of the church, spoke longingly of the days of communism. Life was better then, he insisted. The two doctrines — Mormon and communist — could co-exist in his mind.

For Sunday services, the members of that Volgograd branch meet in a wing reserved for them once a week at the Volgograd Hospital.

“It is probably the only place in the world,” said one member, “where the sayings of Joseph Smith and the sayings of Lenin are displayed on a wall side by side.”

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