Following an agreement between Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Vins and his family were expelled from the Soviet Union in 1979 with a group of other dissidents (Alexander Ginzburg, Eduard Kuznetsov, Mark Dymshits and Valentin Moroz) in exchange for two convicted spies, Rudolf Chernyaev and Valdik Enger.
Peter Vins was the son of Mennonite Brethren leader Jacob J. Wiens born in Borden, Saskatchewan.
As Nikita Khrushchev's anti-religious persecutions began in 1959, the state imposed new regulations on the Baptist church that drastically curtailed the small measure of independence they had enjoyed.
As the Baptist movement split acrimoniously, Vins became one of the leading figures in the campaign to resist state pressure.
In a dramatic protest, Baptists converged from all over the Soviet Union for a mass demonstration outside the Central Committee building in Moscow.
Vins and the Chairman of the Council of Churches, Gennady Kryuchkov, went on trial in November 1966 and he was sentenced to three years imprisonment.
Prodded by the human rights campaigner Andrei Sakharov, the World Council of Churches joined the international protests at Vins' arrest.
It was not until the plane landed in New York City that they learned they were being exchanged for two convicted spies, and the handover took place in an isolated hangar at Kennedy airport.
Joined in the United States six weeks later by the rest of his family, Vins made the town of Elkhart, Indiana his home and learned English.
In 1990, President Mikhail Gorbachev revoked the decree that had stripped Vins of his Soviet citizenship, thereby allowing him to revisit his homeland.