Father Dmitri Dudko was a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church in the late twentieth century. He was arrested in 1948 for poem he had written which criticised the destruction of Russia's holy places, and was subsequently sentenced to ten years hard labour. He was released in 1956 and was ordained in 1960.

During the 1970s his teachings inspired thousands. He tried to make religion less abstract, dealing with the everyday problems of life in the Soviet Union and stressing that atheism had no answer for the social and moral disintegration that was occurring around him.

However his work attracted the ire of the anti-religion Soviet Union authorities and in 1980 he was arrested and forced to recant. He died in 2004.