History of Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses originated as a branch of the Bible Student movement, which developed in the United States in the 1870s among followers of Christian Restorationist minister Charles Taze Russell. Bible Student missionaries were sent to England in 1881 and the first overseas branch was opened in London in 1900. The group took on the name International Bible Students Association and by 1914 it was also active in Canada, Germany, Australia and other countries. The movement split into several rival organizations after Russell's death in 1916, with one—led by Russell's successor, Joseph "Judge" Rutherford—retaining control of both his magazine, "The Watch Tower", and his legal and publishing corporation, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.
Christianity in Russia
"Zion's Watch Tower" (now called "The Watchtower", the primary journal of the Watch Tower Society) had subscribers in Russia as early as 1887. In 1935, the Watch Tower Society unsuccessfully attempted to establish a branch office in the Soviet Union to support members already there. By 1939, thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses were residing in the Baltic states when the Soviet Union absorbed those formerly independent countries. In the 1940s, the Soviet government forcibly dispersed thousands of Witnesses, in a program named Operation North, later described by Dr. N. S. Gordienko, a professor at Herzen University as having "just the opposite of what was expected; they wanted to weaken the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses in the USSR, but in fact they only strengthened it". In the 1950s and 1960s, Jehovah's Witnesses were tracked, infiltrated, harassed, and persecuted by the Soviet government. By 1971, there were more than 4,500 Witnesses in the Soviet Union. When the denomination was formally recognized in March 1991, the organization reported 15,987 members in Russia. Beginning in 1993, Witness missionaries from Germany were assigned to Russia to support the local members. By 2014, Jehovah's Witnesses reported over 170,000 members in Russia.