CULTIC TREND ALERT: December 17, 2007

Sect’s Standoff Reveals Rifts in Russian Orthodoxy

Dima Rozet, senior researcher at CFAR Russia, offers this overview and analysis of the ongoing dilemma posed by an apocalyptic cult

More than a month ago, a small group of people of Russian and Belarusian citizenship — mostly elderly women, but also a number of children — sealed themselves in a dugout roughly 40 feet underground near the Russian village of Nikolskoe (92 miles from the city of Penza, which is some 400 miles southeast of Moscow). The group took a supply of food and other living essentials with them, as well as several large propane tanks that they threaten to blow up if someone attempts to break into their compound.

These people are followers of a local “prophet,” Pyotr Kuznetsov, who taught that the end of the world is to take place sometime next spring (oddly close to the date of Russia’s presidential elections). Kuznetsov himself did not go underground but was arrested in a nearby town and placed in a mental institution, having been diagnosed several years ago as schizophrenic.

The situation has produced a stalemate: Psychologists and Orthodox clergy vainly try to persuade the cultists to come out while the government repeatedly promises that no attempts will be made to break into the dugout. Meanwhile, several other members of the group showed up at the spot — too late to go underground — and have settled in empty houses in the neighborhood.

Nevertheless, the events may take a dramatic turn: According to some press reports, Kuznetsov has drawn a map of the dugout, designating one of the compartments as a “cemetery.” Based on this, some government experts have already concluded that the group has no intention of coming out alive. Russian special forces are said to be planning a rescue operation of some kind.

This bizarre situation has triggered a very important conversation. Very early in the course of events, the local Orthodox hierarch admitted that the people underground are not members of some weird esoteric cult, but rather “normal” Orthodox believers led astray by a mentally unstable soothsayer. This admission, which on one level seemed unremarkable, sounded like a revelation: All of a sudden, everyone began talking about a multitude of sectarian groups that exist and function within the confines of the official Russian Orthodox Church. In fact, the situation turned out to be so alarming that one of the leading Russian Orthodox apologists, Prof. Deacon Andrei Kuraev, has admitted that the possibility of a new radical schism within the Russian Orthodox Church is very real.

Here are some of the best-known cultic movements within the Russian Orthodox Church:

• “Oprichnoye Bratstvo” (Brotherhood of Oprichniks) — a radical, nationalistic monarchist group that venerates the Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible, extolling him as a Christian saint.
• “Rasputintsy” (Rasputinists) — a movement that demands the canonization of the notorious Grigori Rasputin as a great Russian saint.
• Followers of Vyacheslav — a movement that venerates a boy named Vyacheslav Krasheninnikov who died in 1993 of severe illness. The boy is said to have received revelations from God, and people believe that dust and stones from his grave possess special healing force.
• Church of the Mother of God That Resurrects Russia — a group founded by “Mother Photinya” (real name Svetlana Frolova), formerly convicted of fraud. The group is notorious for venerating images of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Mother Photinya believes that Putin is a reincarnation of both the Apostle Paul and King Solomon.

For more information:

• Russian Orthodoxy wrestles with cultism within its walls
• CFAR Russia profile
• CFAR Russia homepage
• CFAR Russia news updates (in Russian)