The Bible in the House of the dead in Dostoevski and Jehovah's witnesses.

 The Bible in the House of the dead in Dostoevski and Jehovah's witnesses.

In the film The Demons of St. Petersburg by Giuliano Montaldo, in a scene from the film, Fd While the other fellow prisoners watched indifferent, the writer with considerable effort stretched out his hand and pulled up the comrade saving his life. The latter, in a rare act of gratitude, will return to him the Bible that he had taken from him a few days earlier and that from there he would have resold for a few copies.

Yes, because the Bible was the only book allowed by the authorities to prisoners in the Omsk fortress in Siberia, where the Crime and Punishment writer was serving his sentence. Conviction came for participation (marginal) in the meetings of the petrasevski circle con Dostoevski himself narrates this in his “Michelangelo fresco " as the critic Herzen called it, or Memory of a House of the Dead published in 1857.

The writer describes theological debates between Jews, Muslims and Christians within the penitentiary. Once he regained his freedom he would draw heavily from the gospels for his novels (like his twin and literary counterpart Tolsto Tol He would never hide his dislike of the Church of Rome in his novels or in his journalistic writings, not caring about Tsarist censorship which, however, was always very vigilant .

In April 2024, as for seven years now, in the Russian Federation it is forbidden to read the Bible and pray even inside one's own home. At least for some citizens.

Thousands have broken into the private homes of Jehovah's Witnesses, a Christian denomination proscribed in 2017 by the Russian Supreme Court. The witnesses investigated are 804, those imprisoned 423; 127 are in penal colonies and 534 included in the list of extremists like neo-Nazi groups, Islamic extremists or violent terrorists. Some witnesses were subjected to torture by law enforcement. These include older people, 18/19-year-olds, the sick and even the disabled.

Russia recently issued some of the harshest prison sentences since the 2017 ban. For example, on February 29, 2024, Aleksandr Cagan, 52, was sentenced to eight years in prison, a sentence typically reserved for those found guilty of grievous bodily harm. Cagan is the sixth Witness to receive such a harsh sentence simply for peacefully professing his Christian beliefs. To make a comparison on the severity of the punishment it can be noted that under the law of the Russian Federation, kidnapping can be punished with imprisonment up to 5 years and rape up to 6 years.

Some of the religious publications including the version of the Bible used by Jehovah's witnesses have been considered “extremist”. This is based on some "expertise" of a sociocultural Specialist Study Center. The expert opinion was adopted by the Supreme Court as the motivation and basis for the prohibition of publication and dissemination of the biblical version. Practically a theological and doctrinal decision has become a judgment against a religious confession. As if biblical exegesis, in itself a subject of in-depth and even complex studies in some ways, can be solved simply by the work of a group of religiously aligned people, who without contradiction, decree a wrong and “extremist”sacred text. In some cases it was the Russian police forces themselves who hid banned publications in places of worship and then accused the same witnesses of crime. Some break-ins were filmed by agents and posted on government websites. In these videos you see soldiers armed to the teeth like Rambo, breaking in at night and pointing their weapons at the unfortunate who in pajamas and underwear are forced to stand for hours on the ground or with their hands behind their necks. Everyone knows that the searched have no weapons or warlike intentions towards anyone. Some of the witnesses reported being brutally beaten, which obviously does not appear in the footage.

One of the witnesses in prison, 63-year-old Igor Kletkin, issued this peculiar and surprising statement: “I do not think of my life as if there were a “before” and an “after” persecution. Rather, I view all the difficulties I am experiencing as part of the service I render to Jehovah. I always try to keep in mind the words of John 15: 20: “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you”. So the idea of giving up doesn't even touch me. If I were defeated, I would betray Jehovah, Jesus, the brothers and sisters. I want to do everything I can to be a good example for others.

In some poetic compositions some great Russian authors such as PukinKin, Saltikon Scedrin, GonarArov and Dostoevski us used the name Jehovah, a trait that is characteristic of the religious minority in question. Dostoevski afferm will affirm in some famous reflections, that he would follow Christ independently of everything and everyone. Curiously, the same intent that Jehovah's witnesses in prison have repeatedly stated that they are pursuing in this, for them, difficult juncture.

https://www.la-notizia.net/2024/04/29/la-bibbia-nella-casa-dei-morti-di-dostoevskij-e-i-testimoni-di-geova/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3l0vBC4lV8iO-oc--Fnk9KWMXFREOxn8mPzVBN7YyBl7X-8-sZY1UQpC4_aem_ATxYqG-uhKurByPMi-xgpgxbUCTErCE6B3qyEy-c7BvU_otONz4y9SwOfrd2fNnhKyUl15sx-k_NOPz_KgSHuIyH