To Make a Village Soviet: Jehovah's Witnesses and the Transformation of a Postwar Ukrainian Borderland

In June 1949 the Soviet state arrested seven farmers from the village of Bila Tserkva. Not wealthy or powerful, the men were unknown outside their community, and few had ever heard of their small, isolated village on the southwestern border of Soviet Ukraine. Nevertheless, the state decided they were dangerous traitors who threatened to undermine public order, and a regional court sentenced them to twenty-five years of imprisonment for treason.

In To Make a Village Soviet Emily Baran explore...