Slavery in Lithuania Lithuania would sell slaves to foreign countries for the income. In 1383 Jogaila was accused of selling German slaves to Russian lands. In 1588 the third Statute of Lithuania was signed, which finally completely abolished slavery, but still promoted serfdom (see Serfdom in Poland#15th to 18th centuries for details). Only Emancipation reform of 1861 abolished serfdom in Lithuania, with exceptions of Palanga (in 1819) and Suvalkija (in 1807) where serfdom was already abolished earlier. According to the Walk Free Foundation's research done 2013 there is about 3,000 people in Lithuania suffering from contemporary slavery. Slavery in Lithuania Slavery in Lithuania
Christianity in Russia subscribers in Russia as early as 1887. In 1935, the Watch Tower Society unsuccessfully attempted to establish a branch office in the Soviet Union to support members already there. By 1939, thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses were residing in the Baltic states when the Soviet Union absorbed those formerly independent countries. In the 1940s, the Soviet government forcibly dispersed thousands of Witnesses, in a program named Operation North, later described by Dr. N. S. Gordienko, a professor at Herzen University as having "just the opposite of what was expected; they wanted to weaken the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses in the USSR,