The Keston Digital Archive is a collection of materials documenting religious persecution under Communist regimes. It contains rare and one-of-a-kind photos, books, journals, transcripts, and documents. Collected and held by the Keston Institute at Oxford, the collection was donated to Baylor in 2007 and is now housed in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, & Society.

Baylor’s Keston Center is home to the world’s most extensive collection of underground dissident publications (samizdat) relating to religion and liberty. It consists of more than 4,000 items including correspondence, petitions, news sheets, symposia and memoirs and represents diverse religious groups including Baptists, Adventists, Jews, Pentecostals, and Roman Catholics. The Keston Digital Collection will hold several selections from the samizdat collection.

In addition to printed and manuscript material, the Keston Center also holds more than 150 videotapes, 500 sound recordings, and in excess of 3,000 rare and one-of-a-kind photographs. There is also a collection of 50 original Soviet anti-religious propaganda posters. Much of this material will be selected for inclusion in the Keston Digital Archive.

Using This Resource In Your Research?

If you're a researcher or scholar and you've found a use for our materials in your work, email us at

digitalcollectionsinfo@baylor.edu and tell us about it! We may feature your work on our Digital Collections blog or work with you to promote your work via our other social media outlets.

Activity Note

This collection is considered an active collection. Items will be added periodically as they are acquired by Baylor University and processed through the Digital Projects Group.