Vitaly Kondratjev (center) - the manager of the Russian office - with the St. Petersburg's study group
By Michael Hanian, France and edited by Andrei Reznikov, Russia
The first Russian translation of The Urantia Book was published in France in 1997. The trust and efforts of Trustees Tom Burns, Seppo Kanerva, Richard Keeler, Georges Michelson-Dupont, and Pat Mundelius helped materialized this printing. Tom and Georges took copies in suitcases to St. Petersburg, and they donated the books to a study group.
Since then the Russian translation has undergone four printings in two different formats. Georges Michelson-Dupont has supervised the formatting of the last 3 printings.
One might wonder about the owners of the 15,000 Russian books sold to date? Where do these readers live?”
The geography of the Russian translation is as wide as Russia itself. The text of the Urantia Revelation is perused in almost every region of the former Soviet Union, from the Baltics in the West to Siberia in the Russian Far East. And since the Russian Diaspora has spread over all continents, the Russian translation of The Urantia Book has settled virtually all over the globe.
The impact of the Russian translation is still mostly a personal matter to its readers. It is not so easy to socialize on a big scale in an immense country with modest standards of living. With the exception of Moscow and St. Petersburg, where readers meet on a regular basis, friends of the fifth epochal revelation try to make good use of the internet. Apart from forums and blogs, there is a Skype study group which “meets” every Saturday. This group consists of five readers who discuss the book in Russian and reside in 3 different countries – Russia, Finland, and France.
But who knows, perhaps in the near future new “space broadcasts” will connect us on a different scale? After all, everything is possible on this amazing realm – the rapidly changing Urantia.