An audience of NIU professors, graduate and Russian culture and history students attended a one-hour, lecture/slide presentation on the plight of the Russian Orthodox religion in the U.S.S.R. and its churches last Wednesday night.

Marshall Winokur of the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, delivered a presentation titled, “A Retrospective Look at Russia’s Churches, Convents and Monasteries,” which featured rare slides of pre-revolutionary Russia. Winokur said the slides were from photographs taken prior to 1917, and the only ones of their kind. The slides gave the audience a rare “opportunity to see the country as only the oldest living inhabitants of Imperial Russia did,” he said.

Winokur lamented the fact that a majority of Russia’s churches and other religious buildings have been converted into storage buildings, recreation centers, libraries, schools and hospitals.

While the presentation was highly informative and featured many photographs of Russian architecture and religious life, the general focus was on the religious persecution of people of the Russian Orthodox faith.

“While the Russian people have had limited religious freedom since 1918, they are required to register with the government, and the parishes must submit a list of names,” said Winokur. These people are then discriminated against by the state, he said.

George Gutsche, a professor of Russian in NIU’s foreign language department, arranged for Winokur’s visit to NIU. Gutsche introduced Winokur by saying he has made twelve trips to Russia during the past several years while compiling research and is one of the foremost experts on the subject of Russian religious architecture.