Abstract
On 27 April 1979, Georgi P. Vins, secretary of the Council of Churches of Evangelical Christians-Baptists and a leading religious dissident in the Soviet Union, arrived in New York City from his native land. Through the efforts of President Jimmy Carter and other officials, the American government had agreed to release two Russian spies for and four other Russian dissidents. It was an exciting event in Christian circles. Through years of suffering, Georgi P. had become for many a symbol of resistance to religious oppression.1 The religious saga of the family, however, begins many years before with Georgi's grandfather, Jacob Jacovitch Wiens (Vins). Few today remember his missionary career on three continents or his religious trials. Jacob was born in September 1874 in a German Mennonite home in Blumenau near Steinbach in Molotschna, a Mennonite colony in Taurida Province in the Ukraine in southern Russia. He was a great-grandson of Heinrich Wiensz (1774-1819), a pioneer settler in 1804 in the Molotschna. Wiens is a common Mennonite name of Dutch origin, transcribed as Vins in Russian but, in any case, pronounced as if it were Veens.2 In 1891 or 1892, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, Jacob professed faith in Christ.
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