Article September 5, 1988 Issue

POSITIVE PRESS

by Irina Ratushinskaya—(Keston College, Kent, England), March April 1987

Frontier

"I knew that there was support for me in the west by a process of deduction: the more the authorities try to convince you to yield your positions, the more they try to convince you that everyone has forgotten all about you, the more support that means you are getting from outside So I had reason to believe that I had a lot of support. Even so, it was not until I got out of prison, and then out of the USSR, that I realised just how enormous that support was. But even apart from that, while I was still in the camp we all—my fellow prisoners and I—were frequently aware, actually physically aware, of the support of prayer. It is very hard to explain, it sounds very mystical, but we all, at varying times, felt what could be described as an active flow of strength, a sort of warmth; and bearing in mind the icy conditions of punishment cells, this warmth could only have been the force of prayer, sustaining and protecting us."

Reprinted with permission.