LDS official calls German temple catalyst for 'cataclysmic change' in Europe

KIEV, Ukraine — The LDS Church's Kyiv Ukraine Temple is hailed as the church's first dedicated and operating in the former Soviet Union.

And celebrating its silver anniversary this year is the Freiberg Germany Temple, which 25 years ago became the first temple behind the Iron Curtain for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Both are considered sacred landmarks, the results of years of considerable effort and preparation.

But do the Mormon faithful also see the Kyiv Ukraine Temple as a starting point for future events and developments?

Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander, emeritus LDS Church general authority, is one who points to the Freiberg Temple as the catalyst for not only spiritual opportunities but what he calls "cataclysmic change across Europe."

All in a half-dozen years.

And the result: "Communism overthrown without war, without destruction, without bloodshed, really," he said.

The four key dates he lists:

 June 29, 1985, the dedication of the Freiberg Temple in the German Democratic Republic, the result of nearly two decades of efforts in East Germany by President Thomas S. Monson, then a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

 July 1, 1987, the creation of the church's Austria Vienna East Mission, with its missionaries not serving in Austria but scattered throughout neighboring countries where Mormonism and most other religions had been quashed

 Nov. 8 and 9, 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the symbol of Soviet authority

 Throughout 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union following Mikhail Gorbachev's push for glasnost (Russian for "openness" or "transparency") and perestroika ("restructuring") in the USSR.

"Not many people think of that incremental development, but for me it's quite fascinating," said Elder Neuenschwander, a former BYU and University of Utah professor of Russian languages who was later hired by the LDS Church to assist in arranging the microfilming of genealogical records in central and Eastern Europe.

In 1985, the Berlin Wall and the area's communist-dominated powers seemed absolute.