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Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I'm very proud to have been associated with Keston College, or as it was first known, Center for the Study of Religion in Communist Lands, right from the start, indeed before the start. As you may be interested to know how it all started, it started, of course, in the mind

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of Michael Bordeaux, who is the inspirer of it at every stage, but it started at the London School of Economics towards the end of the 60s. Michael was anxious, was pregnant with this idea, anxious to put it into operation. We were fortunate in being able to offer him a fellowship, and it was in fact at the School

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of Economics, with the cooperation of some of my colleagues, that the idea took fruit and the Center started in a very modest way, and over the years grew under the inspiration and drive of Michael Bordeaux. One can't stress too much what the Keston College is just today owes to the inspiration

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and the energy and drive and initiative of Michael. Now one of the first problems with which the Center, as it was, had to contend and still has to contend is something about which I want to say a few words, and that is the charge which is paid against it, not only in the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern

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Europe, but by fellow travelers and indeed many liberal-minded but misguided people in this country. The charge that the work of Keston College has the effect of stimulating and encouraging the Cold War.

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Now of course it's perfectly true that if one deals with communist countries and the state of religion in those countries, one is bound to be critical if one has any kind of feeling that all of us have that the freedom to worship and to propagate religion in one's own way, different faiths and different countries, is part of the heritage of mankind.

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Now the communist countries are opposed and have always been opposed to religion. This isn't new. This is something that stems right from the beginning of the communist regime in Russia. Actually during the rise to power of the Bolsheviks, Lenin was very careful what he had to say

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about religion, although he was an implacable enemy of the church and faith. But he was very careful what he had to say because he realized that in a country where the church was so much part of national life, to be too outspoken would have been bad propaganda from the Bolsheviks.

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Of course, when once they came to power, the open hostility to religion became only too obvious. Now there is a very simple reason, two simple reasons. One is that a materialist faith such as communism, because it is a faith of a kind, a materialist

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faith, is totally incompatible with the spiritual values which religion presents. There is an essential conflict between the two which is not capable of compromise. In the case of Poland, for example, which is a communist country, the existence of the church has, and the strength of the church, enormous influence which the church has, has

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simply been tolerated because there was no alternative. But there is no compromise between the tenets of communism and materialism and the tenets of the church. That's one reason.

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It's a basic fundamental reason which nothing will alter. And attempts which one sometimes sees to disprove the contrary dialogue between communism and the church, dialogue between religion and Marxism, hasn't really got any conceivable foundation in logic or in fact.

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It's eye wash from beginning to end. Now the second reason why it is, why the two are incompatible is that it is the essence of a totalitarian regime that it wants to control as much as it can of the life of the inhabitants of the country.

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And one of the methods of control is the elimination of any alternative focus of allegiance. Now the church or indeed any religion whether it be Islam or Buddhism or Judaism, all of which exist in the Soviet Union as well as Christianity, whether it be any of those religions is something which offers just such an alternative focus of allegiance and as such is something

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that the authorities are bound to oppose. Now I come to this charge of Cold War that is leveled against Keston College by the whole propaganda apparatus of the Soviet Union and by the myriads of fellow travelers and supporters in the West who preach the Soviet line.

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Now we took the view from the start that whatever we did, if we were to do our job of trying to tell the world, tell anyone who would listen to us what we thought the truth about the state of religion in the communist countries was, whatever we did, we would be accused of fomenting the Cold War.

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Because you recall that it is the essence of the whole Cold War propaganda that the communist countries are allowed to say anything they like about us. That is understood. Nobody ever objects to the torrents of abuse that are poured on the imperialists, on America,

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on this country, on colonialism, to say nothing of countries like Israel and the Middle East generally. That is all right. The moment we on our side attempt even to in a moderate way to criticize any aspect

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of a communist country, that's called war. But the other way around is perfectly all right. This is the kind of pattern that for years, for many years, for generations, the Soviet Union succeeded in imposing on an over-trusting West.

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And it's when that changed and the West began to realize the essential, illiberal, tyrannical nature of some of these communist regimes that the charge of Cold War began to be made. So we knew from the start that we would be faced with this constant charge and indeed we have been and we shall continue to be.

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Now one method of defense is to allow oneself to be muzzled, to moderate the facts that were actually presented for fear of offending the communist regimes. Now that is totally incompatible with academic principles. The academic principles demand quite simply a complete submission to truth.

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Nothing must be allowed to interfere with what one regards, what in one's honest investigation one regards as truth. And therefore, we set ourselves from the start the objective of making quite sure that to the very best of our ability, what we put out to the public was true, true and put out

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in moderate language. We don't seek to engage in propaganda. We do seek to portray as much of the truth to the public about the state of religion in communist lands as we are to the best of our ability able to do.

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And this has been our principle. This is the academic principle on which the center, and then Keston College, has always acted and this is the principle on which we shall continue to act. And if we are faced with accusations of Cold War, so be it.

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Those of you, and I hope that includes everyone in this room, who realize the importance of the work of the college will realize that this is the only way in which one can honestly proceed. So much for this vexed subject of Cold War, which I thought it's important to mention

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because it is very important. Now the Soviet Union has always, right from the beginning, from the time of Lenin, has combined two policies, open hostility to religion, quite open hostility, quite open propagation of atheism, with the pretense, because it is a pretense, with the pretense that there

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is complete tolerance for those who nevertheless wish to practice their particular faith. No persecution of religion exists in the Soviet Union. This is repeated again and again. You just heard the methods by which an evangelical pop singer is treated by the regime.

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He's not treated as a, he's not penalized for being Christian, oh no. He's put in a lunatic asylum and subjected to torture there on the ostensible grounds that he needs this medically. The depth of the hypocrisy is difficult to exaggerate, but that is typical of what has

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been the practice of the regime since its very inception in 1917. Religion is not persecuted, the story goes, when criminal proceedings are taken against members of this or that faith, the reason for it is purely criminal. And in recent years, we've had the additional embellishment that there is this pretense

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that it's necessary medical treatment. That has been the characteristic of the system from its very inception. Now that being so, Keston College and the center before it set itself what is essentially a dual function.

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It's very important to remember that the function is dual and that each side of it is of equal importance. On the one hand, Keston College is of course a religious center with a spiritual mission with the object of giving voice to those who are silenced, to giving publicity as we are

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trying to do in this most recent case that's come to our notice, in publicizing cases that otherwise might remain completely silent, in publishing a great deal of material that comes out of the Soviet Union and the countries of other communist countries, and by so doing to provide some kind of spiritual sustenance to people who live in terrible isolation.

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I mean the isolation of this unfortunate young man incarcerated in a loony bin is difficult to imagine for those of us who live in a civilized country. That is the kind of spiritual sustenance that Keston College exists to provide. I don't know how far it succeeds.

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I'm very skeptical about the extent to which one can succeed, but what one can say is that if it weren't there it would be a good deal worse. It does do some good in the long run. Now the second function is a purely academic one.

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Of course the two to some extent coincide, but the second function, which is the academic one, is the importance of making available, studying, collecting material, and as you probably realize Keston College is a very important center for scholars working on the problems of religion under communism.

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The second function is the academic one of collecting and distributing and making known and making available material on this question. Now this is of very great importance purely academically. I'm not talking now of the spiritual or political side at all.

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Only academically for the study of totalitarianism as a political system, for the study of communism as a political system, it is enormously important that this information should be available. And it's only since Keston has come into, since the center followed by Keston have come into existence that it has been possible or at any rate that it became possible to study

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with academic precision and with academic standards this all-important aspect of politics. Just think what our study of Poland would be without knowledge of the state of the church in Poland. Now Poland is an extreme example.

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As I said before, it's a paradoxical case of communists pretending the church doesn't exist when whatever it is, 75, 80% of the country are known to be believers. But that's an exceptional, very exceptional case. In the case of the Soviet Union, it is also of importance.

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In the case of China, which unfortunately Keston is unable to study as much as it would like for lack of resources, these questions are of enormous importance, enormous importance for assessing the strength or weakness of the regime concerned and for understanding how communism works, the limitations there are upon it because, you know, we speak fairly

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glibly of totalitarianism. But total control by a government is something that has never existed in any country of any size. It may be possible in small countries run by a really energetic talent but in large

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countries it is really impossible. There has to be delegation. There has to be subordination. There have to be alternative centers of allegiance and this is provided by religion.

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So the study in itself is of the greatest importance. Now why is it important? It's important for a number of reasons. First of all, it is important because it is a corrective.

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The knowledge of the survival of religion for whatever it is, 67 years in the Soviet Union is evidence of the fact that the claim which is being made to total allegiance, to total control is untrue. This is not what in fact the facts suggest and one of the ways in which this has been

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shown to be untrue is through study of the survival and indeed revival of faith in particularly I'm thinking now of the Soviet Union but the same is true of other communist regimes. That's one reason. The other reason is that the claim of allegiance to the materialist faith which communism claims

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is accepted by the great majority as communist spokesman will tell you, religion is just a matter of some old women, some grannies who still keep to the old faith but otherwise it means nothing. We have shown that this is totally untrue.

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It's a false picture of the nature of the country and it therefore belies the claim of this total allegiance and total control. And thirdly, it is an index of the failure of the totality of control which totalitarianism claims.

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You see the basic claim of a totalitarian regime is unity. We in our primitive liberal democratic way, we pride ourselves on diversity. We think diversity is the greatest achievement of human existence. We like to think that if everyone thought the same way, it would be very dull indeed.

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And we know of course that free human beings never do think all in the same way. There has to be diversity wherever there's life, there's diversity. Now that is totally opposed to the communist pretense. I think it's pretense because they must know it's untrue.

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But the communist pretense is that there is complete unanimity, that there is no diversity of opinion, that everyone is agreed. It's symbolized in their fake elections when the list prepared by the party returns 99.9% in its favor.

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Obviously if there were a free election, this return would be very different indeed. They'd be lucky to get 30, 40% or maybe 50 or 60% but certainly not 99. 99 is in itself proof of a fake. It can't be anything else.

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Now they're proud of that. They regard that as evidence of the support which they have achieved through their regime in the course of years. Or anyway, that is the way it is presented.

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Now the study of the growth of religion, the making plain the cases, individual cases of suppression of religion, making known the extent to which religious convictions are growing or if that be the case, these are instances which belie this claim. And that is very important because in my old-fashioned way, I still think that one of the probably

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the only thing that matters in social life is truth. Unless you start with truth, you get nowhere. Now in the pursuit of truth, this knowledge is of enormous importance and to that I think Keston College has contributed a great deal.

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I wish I could give you statistics, maybe others can know the material better, of cases of individuals who have been helped by campaigns which Keston initiated. I can't do that. I don't know if anyone can.

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But the fact remains that communist regimes, in spite of belief to the contrary, are very cheery of their reputations. They know they have to put up with a great deal of criticism and abuse, but they are very cheery of their reputation becoming too much tarnished.

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They believe that they ought to do what they can to preserve a tenuous sum of the facade. They're not particularly concerned about truth in the sense of what they say corresponding to reality because the essence of ideology on which the state is founded is in fact that truth is immaterial.

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Ideology is a method of expressing what you want to express without regard to truth. You use, as we come across it in our daily life, for example, the way in which the concept of peace is used for a war-like policy, the way in which democracy is used for a system which does its best to prevent democracy from emerging, and so forth.

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That is the function of ideology. And in the pursuit and development of this ideology, the only weapon against it is truth, and it's a fragment of that truth that Keston College strives to present. Finally, I would say that perhaps the most important fact that emerges from the work

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that has been done here over the years is the proof which it provides of the indomitable nature of the human spirit. Here we are, we are told again and again that you can achieve anything by propaganda, that you can indoctrinate people to the extent to which they cease to know the difference

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between truth and falsehood. We've heard this again and again, it's totally false. Experience shows again and again that the human spirit is indomitable. We see this in the secular field, in the vast amount of dissident literature that comes

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out of the Soviet Union. Those people know perfectly well, in spite of indoctrination, the elementary facts of political and social life. So it is with the survival of the church.

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It proves that the indoctrination and propaganda are ineffectual, and it proves once again, that proof is required that the human spirit is indomitable. Thank you. you