[3] 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.
[4] In 1969 Bourdeaux founded at Chislehurst the Centre for the Study of Religion and Communism[4] together with Sir John Lawrence, and with the help of Leonard Schapiro and Peter Reddaway, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University.
Later it broadened its purview to include former communist countries with its main concerns being the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc.
[1] Over the years it played a key role in the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church,[5] and has become a leading voice on religious freedom in former communist countries, with an emphasis on the former Soviet Union.
[7] The current chairman at the Keston Institute is Xenia Dennen.