Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's classic, Gulag Archipelago, recounts the horrors of the Soviet forced labour camps where "political" offenders (referred to as "politicals") were imprisoned and subject to brutal forced labour on account of various "political" offences which ranged from the ridiculous to absurd, as were other prisoners who were jailed for other offences.
Among those imprisoned for "political" offences were Christians. In Solzhenitsyn's book, he records the best and worst of their responses to persecution. Of these were a group of believers, simple people with a simple faith, that shone in the darkness of the Soviet Gulag:
And not only socialists were now politicals. The politicals were splashed in tubfuls into the fifteen-million-criminal ocean, and they were invisible and inaudible to us. They were mute. They were muter than all the test. Their image was the fish.
The fish, symbol of the early Christians. And the Christians were their principal contingent. Clumsy, semiliterate, unable to deliver speeches from the rostrum or compose an underground proclamation (which their faith made unnecessary anyway), they went off to camp to face tortures and death - only so as not to renounce their faith! They knew very well for what they were serving time, and they were unwavering in their convictions! They were the only ones, perhaps, to whom the camp philosophy and even the camp language did not stick. And these were not politicals? Well, you'd certainly not call them riffraff.
And women among them were particularly numerous. The Tao says: When faith collapses, that is when the true believers appear. Because of our enlightened scoffing at Orthodox priests, the squalling of the Komsomol members on Easter night, and the whistles of the thieves at the transit prisons, we overlooked the fact that the sinful Orthodox Church had nevertheless nurtured daughters worthy of the first centuries of Christianity - sisters of those thrown to the lions in the arenas.
There was a multitude of Christians: prisoner transports and graveyards, prisoner transports and graveyards. Who will count those millions? They died unknown, casting only in their immediate vicinity a light like a candle. They were the best of Russia's Christians. The worst had all... trembled, recanted, and gone into hiding.
For these blessed believers, perhaps "the world was not worthy of them" (Hebrews 11:38), and certainly "God had planned something better for [them]" (Hebrews 11:40).
They may have died silently, unknown and unrecognised by the world; but on the side of eternity awaits a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to them on that day of His appearing (cf. 2 Timothy 4:8).
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