In the 1980s, the Soviet Union was engulfed by a multitude of problems. The economy began to fall apart. To reform a broken Soviet Union, the democratisation of the Communist Party was promoted through Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost.’

For me, Moscow held a mystical air over it with the underground metro stations looking like palaces, with beautiful ornate ceilings, marble everywhere and chandeliers so grand they wouldn’t look out of place in the finest stately home.

Praying silent prayers we approached the fearsome looking Russian customs, and I thought my heart was about to burst out of my chest. Naturally, we were posing as tourists, and once through the dreaded customs, we would distribute our Bibles to a secret network of couriers, who in turn took them round to various underground groups of believers.

The first time we went to Russia in 1989, soldiers guarded the main doors leading into the Cosmos hotel where we stayed on all of our trips to Russia. Just getting past these armed guards felt like I was living out some role in a crazy James Bond movie. And learning to meet total strangers who would be wearing a certain colours and holding a newspaper, just seemed crazy, and yet this actually happened... welcome to the Russia House...