Bible Is Real Page-Turner at Soviet Fair

Two lines of eager Soviet citizens stretched on either side of famous American atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s booth at the Moscow International Book Fair, but no one stopped to browse through her anti-religious literature. O’Hair herself, in fact, was taking a snooze.

In one queue, about 75 people waited for their turns to flip through Jewish religious and cultural books. In the other, about 150 people stood, hoping to get a free New Testament Bible.

It was a turn of events in this officially atheistic state that did not please O’Hair, a flamboyant 70-year-old non-believer who took her views to the Supreme Court and in 1963 won a decision eliminating obligatory prayer in public schools.

“I am completely stunned to find out the U.S.S.R. is absolutely indifferent to atheism,” she said, shaking herself awake to talk to a journalist and quickly warming to her subject.

“They seemed to think here that if you just leave religion alone, it will go away. But that’s ridiculous,” she fumed, slapping her knee. “The Pope is never going to call me up and say, ‘Madalyn, I give up.’ No, he won’t do that. You have to fight religion, actively show people why religion is so dangerous.”

It was a message preached with feeling, but there were few takers at the book fair. O’Hair’s Russian-speaking translator, intended to help Soviets with questions, sat idly on a chair and listened while O’Hair talked.

Nearby, Soviet police helped control crowds at the Jewish and Christian literature booths.

The 7th Moscow International Book Fair--which opened this week and is traditionally monitored by foreigners looking for Soviet trends--was as clear a sign as any of the revival of religious freedom and interest in the Soviet Union.

It is a revival tolerated and even encouraged by President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, whose mother is said to regularly attend church and who has publicly acknowledged that he was baptized as a child.

Glasnost, the Russian word for Gorbachev’s policy of permitting greater openness, was in plentiful evidence at the fair, which will close Sunday after a five-day run.

Among the books on display from 65 countries was one by former Soviet Jewish dissident Natan Sharansky about his years in Soviet prisons, and one by American hard-liner Zbigniew Brzezinski called “The Great Failure--Birth and Death of Communism in the 20th Century.”

But the religious booths drew the biggest crowds, and it was there that the sense of new possibilities was the greatest.

The distribution of 10,000 free Bibles at the Moscow fair was a first. “We finally felt the time was right and no one would get in trouble for it,” said Doug Ross, executive editor of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Assn., based in Tempe, Ariz.

And even though the Assn. of Jewish Publishers, based in New York City, has had a booth since the first fair in 1977, “this time the crowds are larger than ever,” said the group’s president, Charles Donald Lieber. “I guess people are less afraid with every passing year to be seen demonstrating an interest in religion.”

Both Ross and Lieber said Soviet customs officials, who in the past have carefully inspected and often confiscated their religious literature, this time generally let whole cartons of books pass unexamined.

Most of the books were not for sale to individuals but instead were intended to attract publishers and distributors. People still stood in long lines just for the chance to finger a book.

The Bible giveaway was the fair’s biggest draw. Vera Kaprolov, 69, was among those who stood in line for more than two hours but still missed out on a chance to get a free Bible. She handed in her name and address, hoping to get one of the 15,000 Bibles the evangelical publishers have promised to mail.

“I’m Jewish, but the New Testament is better than nothing,” she explained. “In the past, I’ve been able to read a few fragments of the Bible, but that is all.”

“The Bible is the best-selling book in the world, and this line convinces us that if it were available here, it would be the Soviet Union’s best seller,” Ross said.

“One man begged me for a Bible, but I didn’t have any more for that day, so I had to say no,” he said. “He looked me in the eyes and said, in English, ‘Maybe you will remember me.’ ”

“I think that’s important,” Ross added. “We should all remember him. We in the United States, where everybody has got a Bible on the shelf, have got to remember that in the Soviet Union, there are many people who can’t see a Bible, hold a Bible, read a Bible.”