Word: augustina
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...outside world as "the Siberian Seven," they are Russian Pentecostalists, revivalist worshipers who want to emigrate to the U.S. with the rest of their families. Thus far, the Soviet Union has blocked their efforts. Last week, in the most dramatic in their 20-year battle, two of the seven, Augustina Vashchenko, 52, and her daughter Lidiya, 30, were on a hunger strike and failing fast. "Lidiya is down to her last reserves," said visiting Pennsylvania Congressman Bud Shuster. "It could become a life-threatening situation...
Back in June 1978 the seven crashed past Soviet guards and into the U.S. embassy, seeking to go to the U.S. Pyotr Vashchenko, now 55, Augustina, and their three daughters, Lidiya, Lyubov, 29, and Liliya, 24, along with Fellow Believers Mariya Chmykhalov, 59, and her son Timofei, 19, had traveled 2,000 miles by rail from the Siberian town of Cherno-gorsk. Thwarted by Soviet intransigence since then, the dispirited Augustina and Lidiya have now stopped eating in a desperate bid to win world attention and shame the Soviets into relenting...
Their plan was inspired by Soviet Dissident Andrei Sakharov's successful hunger strike late last year. Augustina started taking only juice and water on Dec 25, despite the opposition of Pyotr and the Christian teaching against suicide. Lidiya joined her three days later. When Historian Kent Hill of Seattle Pacific University flew to Moscow, Lidiya told him, "Here I am with no end in sight. I can't bear it. If I can't have a normal life, I'd sooner...
What they do mostly, though, is hold prayer meetings and silently hope they will eventually win the right to emigrate to the West. All of them-Pyotr and Augustina Vashchenko, their three adult daughters, and a mother and son, Mariya and Timofei Chmykhalov-are Pentecostalists, a handful of the millions of Christians who have suffered religious persecution in the Soviet Union. For the Vashchenkos, the struggle to emigrate began 16 years ago in the grim mining town of Chernogorsk after the government seized children from supposedly "unfit" Pentecostal parents and sent them to be reared by state agencies...
Name Sleeper. The most notorious demimondaine of the era was a statuesque Spanish gypsy who is reputed to have amassed $15 million during an active career that spanned five decades. Her name was Augustina Otero, and her origins were humble to the point of bleakness. She was born in 1868, the second of seven bastards of a village prostitute. At the age of eleven, she was raped and rendered infertile for life. At twelve, she left home and wandered through Spain and Southern France, sharing bed for board before becoming a cabaret dancer. It was not long before she discovered...