KIEV, Ukraine — The LDS Church's Kyiv Ukraine Temple is hailed as the church's first dedicated and operating in the former Soviet Union.
And celebrating its silver anniversary this year is the Freiberg Germany Temple, which 25 years ago became the first temple behind the Iron Curtain for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Both are considered sacred landmarks, the results of years of considerable effort and preparation.
But do the Mormon faithful also see the Kyiv Ukraine Temple as a starting point for future events and developments?
Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander, emeritus LDS Church general authority, is one who points to the Freiberg Temple as the catalyst for not only spiritual opportunities but what he calls "cataclysmic change across Europe."
All in a half-dozen years.
And the result: "Communism overthrown without war, without destruction, without bloodshed, really," he said.
The four key dates he lists:
June 29, 1985, the dedication of the Freiberg Temple in the German Democratic Republic, the result of nearly two decades of efforts in East Germany by President Thomas S. Monson, then a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
July 1, 1987, the creation of the church's Austria Vienna East Mission, with its missionaries not serving in Austria but scattered throughout neighboring countries where Mormonism and most other religions had been quashed
Nov. 8 and 9, 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the symbol of Soviet authority
Throughout 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union following Mikhail Gorbachev's push for glasnost (Russian for "openness" or "transparency") and perestroika ("restructuring") in the USSR.
"Not many people think of that incremental development, but for me it's quite fascinating," said Elder Neuenschwander, a former BYU and University of Utah professor of Russian languages who was later hired by the LDS Church to assist in arranging the microfilming of genealogical records in central and Eastern Europe.
In 1985, the Berlin Wall and the area's communist-dominated powers seemed absolute.
Elder Neuenschwander said the introduction of the temple coincided with increased information flowing to previously isolated and closed-off European countries, an increased desire by the people to have the freedoms they were just then learning about, and grass-roots developments striving for more political and religious freedoms.
"But the temple became a standard, a light," he said. "And whenever there is a temple, there is additional power and enlightenment and spirituality."
Called to be the president of the new Austria Vienna East Mission, Elder Neuenschwander said the mission was the vehicle to expand the gospel into countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia at first, followed by the likes of Ukraine, Russia, Romania and Bulgaria.
"Two years later, the Berlin Wall collapsed," he said. "Many people feel that was the opening of Eastern Europe — really it was the beginning of the end."
Two years later, in 1991, came the fall of communism in central and eastern Europe with the fall of the Soviet Union.
"So every two years, there was a major development," said Elder Neuenschwander, who after his tenure as mission president was called to the church's Quorums of the Seventy.
"And each time, the Lord had people in place to assume responsibility in order for the church to take advantage of political freedoms and the curiosity of the people and their desire to learn more about spiritual things and about the West, to have free association with people from the West."
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the First Presidency, grew up in Germany and was a pilot by profession and longtime church leader there. He echoes the sentiments about such a timeline.
"I think this is key to the changes in Europe and in the world," he said in a recent interview in his Salt Lake office. "The Cold War ended because of that — we cannot say the world is much better now than then, but it has changed in this part of the world.
"I have personally seen the change because I was in the Air Force in the Cold War and I know exactly what was going on then," President Uchtdorf continued. "Later, as a stake president, I traveled over to East Germany after the opening of the wall — everything was beautiful and open to us, we could come and go as we pleased.
"Later as a general authority as I traveled to these countries, I saw the result of the inspired and wonderful impact President Monson had because of his willingness to do the Lord's will and only that."
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