Religious freedom in the Russian Federation and Jehovah's Witnesses

Anti-extremism legislation has existed in Russia for over a decade, but only recently has it been used to discriminate against, persecute, and eventually “liquidate” the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The article reconstructs the history of anti-minority legislation in Russia, from the Soviet Union to the liberal post-Soviet reforms of the 1990s and the retrenchment in the Putin era. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been the victims of a notion of the Russian nation granting a de facto monopoly to the Russian Orthodox Church, and regarding religious minorities, particularly those headquartered in the West and proselytizing among Orthodox believers, as a threat to national integrity