Moscow • Russia’s campaign against Mormonism and other “new religions” is not unlike the devastating blockade of Leningrad during World War II, which killed 800,000 people trapped in that port city.
At least that’s how Latter-day Saint general authority Seventy James B. Martino described it this spring to a band of believers during worship services in St. Petersburg (known as Leningrad during the Soviet era).
The Texas native, who served as the church’s area authority, had visited the nearby Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad, which honors those who mostly starved to death during the Nazis’ 900-day siege of the historic city, barring any food or goods from entering.