KYIV, Ukraine — It is noteworthy that two of the great early "pioneers" of the Church in Ukraine are full-blooded Jews.

Vyacheslav (Slava) and Zoya Gulko, now in their 50's, are descended from Jewish ancestors who lived in Ukraine for hundreds of years — Jews having first arrived in that region in the 9th century. They know little of their ancestry, however, inasmuch as Jewish genealogical records were mostly destroyed when the synagogues were burned by the Nazis during the Second World War.

Slava and Zoya Gulko as a young married couple in Kyiv.

Slava's paternal grandfather, a village harness maker, was devoutly religious and very strict. It happened, though, that he fell in love with a girl whose father didn't approve of them marrying. The couple had to flee by train to Kyiv (formerly "Kiev"), where they found a rabbi who married them in the synagogue. The runaway bride was 14 years old, which was then not an uncommonly young age to marry.

The grandfather, being a Jewish Cohen — a direct descendant of Aaron — had been intent on his son becoming a rabbi. But the son, Slava's father, was not religious and didn't go that direction. At age 19, at the outbreak of World War II, he volunteered in Kyiv to go to the front in Russia. His unit was decimated in the first battle, and he was wounded terribly and left to die on a gurney in a hospital corridor. But he didn't die, and after several years in Siberia, Slava's father made his way back to Ukraine and his young family.

Zoya's parents were also not religious. Her paternal grandparents had come from Chernobyl, where the nuclear accident of 1986 left the area an uninhabitable waste land. Her grandmother had been 16 when she married in Chernobyl.

Their Early Years

Anti-Semitism was very strong in the Stalinist era after the Second World War, and Jews were severely restricted as to education and from entering the professions. But Slava, then a young man in Kyiv, had a strong personal vision and will, his aim being to become a nuclear physicist. He studied hard and did well, and on his second attempt to win admittance to the National University he was accepted. Five years later he received his diploma.

He then served his required time in the Soviet Army, spending two difficult Cold War years atop a snowy mountain in the Caucuses watching for feared U.S. attempts to invade by air from a base just over the border in Iran.

At age 25, Slava returned to Kyiv to find a wife and pursue his nuclear profession. He found and married Zoya. And he began research on neutron sources. All contact with foreigners was forbidden him.

Their Conversion

Zoya studied languages in Kyiv — English and French — and taught them in high school. She and her students were frustrated because they wanted to talk to people in those languages, but there were few foreigners in Kyiv, and those that were there were watched by the KGB (secret police). The Ukrainians lived in forced isolation from the rest of the world.

As time went on, Slava and Zoya developed a yearning for religion. They first turned to their ancestral Judaism, but not finding satisfaction there they investigated Christianity (having met some members of The Campus Crusade for Christ). The Gulkos began to read the Bible, and at one point Slava said inexplicably: "To become a complete Jew you have to believe in Jesus Christ."

Late in the 1980's, a new era of glasnost and perestroika — "openness and renewal" — began under Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1989, while cleaning out some old papers at her school, Zoya found an unopened letter from a middle school teacher in Riverton, Utah. She answered it and soon received a box containing more than 100 letters from American students, eager pen-pals in an 8th grade geography class there.

That began a happier time of communication and relationships for Zoya and her students in Kyiv. Slava, though, worried greatly because of the commitment he had signed as a state scientist not to have any communication with foreigners.

One of the Riverton letters included a Joseph Smith brochure, which Zoya looked at. Then, in the early fall of 1991, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and just after the Church had begun missionary work in Ukraine, Zoya saw an announcement pasted on a metro bridge inviting anyone to come to LDS Church services being held in a Kyiv theatre hall. She recognized the Church name as the same she had seen on the brochure, and she persuaded Slava to attend the Sunday services with her.

There were about 15 people in attendance at the theatre, including the missionaries who were conducting the meeting. Slava and Zoya particularly appreciated the hymns that were sung. But after a while they got up to leave.

A beaming-faced young missionary who had been out only a week intercepted them and asked if they would allow him and his companion to visit them at home. Slava and Zoya consented, and that began a series of weekly meetings. Although they liked the spirit of the Elders, Slava searched the Bible to try to prove them wrong. The missionaries were not able to answer him scripturally; they asked him to pray instead.

Toward the end of November the missionaries invited Slava and Zoya to attend a baptismal service at a rented swimming pool. Slava remembers the strong impression coming to him during the service that he needed to be baptized and become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. Afterwards, he confessed his feelings to Zoya, who began to cry, saying that the same impression had come to her. Brother and Sister Gulko were baptized several weeks later.

Slava and Zoya Gulko in Kyiv today.

Church Pioneers

In 1993 Slava became one of the first three district presidents of the Church in Ukraine. He is now a ward bishop in the Kyiv Stake. He was required to leave his nuclear physicist profession and now works for the Church as Ukranian translation supervisor.

Zoya, soon after their baptism, was appointed to translate the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price into Ukrainian. Her excellent translations are still in use today.

It is a marvelous and wonderful work, the gathering of the scattered remnants of Israel in far-off parts of the world. A temple is to be built in Kyiv.