In the 1950s, Michael Bourdeaux spent a year in
Moscow as a part of the first wave of British exchange students; he soon found only 41
Russian Orthodox Churches to still be functioning out of the 1,600 before the
Russian Revolution in 1917. This prompted him to take up the cause of those persecuted for their religious faith. together with Sir John Lawrence, and with the help of
Leonard Schapiro and
Peter Reddaway, later Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at
George Washington University. In the early 1970s it bought the old parish school on
Keston Common and the centre was renamed
Keston College. Later it broadened its purview to include former communist countries with its main concerns being the former
Soviet Union and the
Eastern Bloc. Over the years it played a key role in the revival of the
Russian Orthodox Church, and has become a leading voice on
religious freedom in former communist countries, with an emphasis on the former Soviet Union. Eventually the enterprise was relocated to Oxford at the urging of
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, after which it renamed itself to the Keston Institute (not being a college in the Oxford sense). In 1984 Michael Bourdeaux won the
Templeton Prize. Bourdeaux retired from Keston in 1999. The current chairman at the Keston Institute is
Xenia Dennen. Since 2007, the Keston Institute's archive and library have been under the care of the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, & Society at
Baylor University,
Waco, Texas. ==See also==