Baha'is in the former Soviet Union:

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A summary of how the Baha'is fared in the Soviet Union:


For the first few years after the Bolshevik revolution, the Bahá’ís, although attacked in the government press (BW 2:35), benefited from the easing of some restrictions and were able to convert a few Russians to the Bahá’í Faith. Local spiritual assemblies were formed in Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and a few other small communities arose in such places as Oryol (Russian: Орёл, some 350 km to the South from Moscow), where Hasan Bayk of Burdá in Russian Azerbaijan taught the Bahá’í Faith and succeeded in converting eight families.

Eventually, however, the pressures against the Bahá’ís and all religions intensified. In 1926, a Bahá’í visiting Moscow to give a public lecture was arrested and a printing press used for the publication of Bahá’í materials was confiscated. By 1928, there were extensive moves against all the Bahá’í communities in the Soviet Union. The Bahá’í communities made many representations to the government against these persecutions but to no avail. Publications appeared attacking the Bahá’í Faith: I. Darov, Bekhaizm: Novaia Religiia Vostoka (Leningrad: Priboi, 1930); and A. Arsharuni, Bekhaizm (Moscow: Bezbozhnik, 1930); while the Small Soviet Encyclopaedia published in 1933 denounced the Bahá’í Faith for camouflaging itself as "socialism" and stated that it was one of the "fashionable religious philosophical systems which the bourgeoisie uses in its fight against the ideas of Socialism and Communism" (Kolarz 472).

In 1938, numerous Bahá’ís were arrested and some of the Bahá’ís from Ashkhabad and other areas of Central Asia and the Caucasus were exiled to Siberia and elsewhere. All communal Bahá’í activity in the Soviet Union ceased from this date, although many of those remaining at home or in exile continued to hold firm in their faith. Another wave of persecutions and imprisonments occurred in 1948.

Throughout these years, the few remaining Bahá’ís in Russia were isolated from the rest of the Bahá’í world. Mr. Bakhadin Orudzhev (d. 1989) of Baku lived in Moscow from 1973 and isolated Bahá’ís were reported in Penza and in a town near Leningrad, but there is little information about such individuals. Although there were occasional Bahá’í visitors to Russia such as Lorol Schopflocher and Muzaffar Namdar, they did not attempt to contact the Bahá’ís there.

Russia - Bahaikipedia, an encyclopedia about the Bahá?í Faith

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Some more information that hadn't occurred to me before that Esperanto conferences in the Soviet Union were a vehicle for disseminating Baha'i ideas..

"A major event in the Bahá’í opening of the Soviet Union at that time was the International Meeting of Esperantists which took place near the city of Minsk in March 1989. Like in many other lands of Eastern Europe, Esperanto played an eminent role in the dissemination of Bahá’í ideas in the USSR. During this meeting the a public lecture about the Bahá’í Religion was delivered by Bernhard Westerhoff of Germany which was the first open public presentation since the prohibitions of the Stalin era. From the audience present there the majority became Bahá’ís if not immediately, then over many years."

Russia - Bahaikipedia, an encyclopedia about the Bahá?í Faith

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Resurrection of the Russian Bahá’í community
[edit] 1980s

From 1979] onward, a small number of Bahá’í pioneers managed to settle in Russia. Paul Semenoff and his cousin Kathryn Soloveoff, two Canadian Bahá’ís of Doukhobor origin, arrived in Ivanovo to study Russian on 21 August 1979. Soloveoff had to return after four months because of her mother's illness but Semenoff stayed until 1981. At about the end of 1981, Mr. Muhammad Nur at-Tayyib from the Sudan came to Leningrad, where he remained until 1988. In 1986 - 1987 resp. 1988 Friedo and Shole Zölzer and Karen Reitz from Germany also came to stay in Leningrad. Mr. Leif Hjierpe of Sweden lived in Moscow in 1980-81. In 1982, Richard and Corinne Hainsworth from the United Kingdom settled in Moscow, where they remain to the present, and where they were joined by Andrew Bromfield and Vivienne Bogan from Ireland who remained from 1987 to 1993. Riaz Rafat from Norway pioneered to Moscow in February 1990. The Local Spiritual Assembly of Moscow decided to send him further as a pioneer to support the small group of newly declared Baha'is in Kiev, the Ukraine, moving there from June 1990. Mr. Zaffarullah Nassim, a Bahá’í from Sri Lanka, opened the city of Krasnodar to the Bahá’í Faith in 1987, and was joined by Mr. Fondem from Ghana in 1989.

http://bahaikipedia.org/Russia

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The first Russian to become a Bahá’í in this new phase of growth was Ms Katya Zalenskaya (Russian: Екатерина Заленская) in Leningrad in 1982. Anna Skrebtsova (Russian: Анна Скребцова) became a Bahá’í in Moscow in 1984; Dr. Natalya Konstantinova Belisheva (Russian: Наталия Белышева) in Leningrad in September 1987; and Mrs. Irina Skladnova (Russian: Ирина Складнова) of Novgorod in 1987.

In July 1989, Bahá’ís took part in a Peace Camp at Murmansk resulting in five new Bahá’ís. Among others who became Bahá’ís in that early period were Stanislav Koncebovski (Russian: Станислав Концебовский), who was the first to translate Bahá’í books into Russian in recent times, and Maria Skrebtsova (Russian: Мария Скребцова). By the end of 1989, there were already dozens of Bahá’ís in Moscow and Leningrad, over twenty in Murmansk as well as isolated Bahá’ís in Krasnodar, Petrozavodsk and some other cities.

In March 1990, Abbas and Rezvanieh Katirai from Japan became the last Knights of Bahá’u’lláh to be named when they pioneered to Sakhalin Island.

Russia - Bahaikipedia, an encyclopedia about the Bahá?í Faith

Can you believe that! The last Baha'is to be designated Knights of Baha'u'llah!