Peter Thwaites reads a book charting the change of heart which led to the end of the Soviet Union.

Few countries have seen more changes in the last century than Russia. Anastasia Stepanova traces its history through the lives of three generations.

An unexpected chance to study in Russia led to Michael Bourdeaux becoming an authority on the Church under communism. Mike Lowe meets the man who founded the Keston Institute.

Six days of the summer at Caux were devoted to a conference on 'The life of faith', which was addressed by the Russian poet Irina Ratushinskaia. She told the conference why she had felt closer to God in a Soviet labour camp than she did in freedom in the West.

Ernst Neizvestney—carver of Khrushchev's tombstone and sculptor of two massive memorials to Stalin's victims—talks to Peter Thwaites.

'Invisible Allies' by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Harvill Press, 1997, £9.99

What the dissidents say

You will see a wall filled with light and colour, the pattern resolving into the vast hand of God giving to humanity the gift of himself.