Fr Dimitry Dudko was a popular preacher and catechist in Moscow, who prepared hundreds of adults for baptism. He began to hold question-and-answer sessions instead of regular sermons at this church, and this made him very popular among people but very unpopular among the authorities. He was one of the most influential religious dissidents of the time. Under their pressure he was forced to be removed in 1973 to the rural parish of Kabanovo, eighty kilometres outside of Moscow. Foreigners who visited his church in Moscow could not go to that area, but many people began flocking to his new church. In December 1975 the local soviet forced the church council to dismiss Fr. Dimitry from this parish, and thereafter he was transferred to another rural parish in the vicinity of Moscow. At that parish he began to create a well-knit church community and published a mimeographed bulletin (the first time this was used in Russia since the 1920s). In his writings and sermons he attacked atheism and blamed it for moral decline and rising alcoholism. In January 1980 he was arrested and within six months he appeared on state TV with a speech of apology wherein he condemned his past behaviour. The state magnanimously forgave him and allowed him to return to his pastoral duties, and much of his previous following deserted him.Pospielovsky (1988), p. 171.
