John P. Burgess

On a summer afternoon at the southern tip of the Crimean Peninsula, I shield my face from the blazing sun as I watch archaeologists dig amid the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Chersonesos. Soon I retreat beneath the canopy of a reconstructed rotunda and unexpectedly encounter the remains of a . . . . Continue Reading »

On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Orthodox Church had 50,000 parishes, a thousand men’s and women’s monasteries, and sixty theological schools. By 1941, Stalin had nearly succeeded in eliminating the Church as a public institution. Perhaps only a hundred and fifty to two . . . . Continue Reading »

It has been more than two years since that fateful Thursday evening in East Berlin. At a press conference, Gunter Schabowski, one of the Communist leaders in the new generation that came to power after Erich Honecker’s removal, unexpectedly announced his government’s intention to allow . . . . Continue Reading »