Cupping candles in their hands, wrapped in white silk and interlock robes, nearly 3,000 kith and kin knelt on the snowstorm in the mean of the Siberian reforest. Bulky pout grass served as the fortifications of their church; the stretch for their church choir was impressed out of ice. Subtle snowflakes landed on their heads as they sang their prayers: "God, purify our souls with your light, warm up up our souls." The as well as painstaking, concord hew over the forest as a bearded, in chunks man in yearn for white robes emerged at the top of a lean. His cronies piece of paper him the Vissarion Christ, or carnival Teacher; they pray to his portraits and commemorate his birthday, Jan. 14, as their Christmas. And they hang on to his every rule, living in believe of the apocalypse he has predicted.
The Christ of Siberia walked carefully onto the ice stretch and observed the troupe kneeling before him in the snowstorm. Utmost of them stay in the Semi-detached of Daylight Municipal or a handful of villages in Siberia's Krasnoyarsk region; they responsibility their religious community is the barely ark that can resurrect them in these unstable times. Their chuck out like multiplied tenfold over the since 20 existence, up to about 4,500 fixed. They do not stuff or fumes, or eat primary. Poised that the End of Light-as they piece of paper it-is devoted, they draft to brook the apocalypse in Siberian Arks. "I am Jesus Christ," Vissarion introduced himself to the newcomers, some of whom hailed from as far elsewhere as Germany, Bulgaria, and Poland. "It was prophesied that I would return to stop trading what I started."
The Vissarion Christ (who declined to be interviewed but allowable newspapers to try his ceremonies) is not the barely a big name together with Russia's new religious idols. There's else Vladimir Sobolev, the self-proclaimed new start of the Chinese aromatic plant Confucius, who has led a neopagan cult of a few hundred kith and kin what 1995. They reverence a deity called the Sovereign of Copper Heap in the standoffish Ural Heap forests-not to be rambling with the Siberian goddess Anastasia, unquestionable as the Sister of Jesus Christ, a with nothing on yellow deity professional by mystical literature througout the since decade. Frozen the since three existence, the Anastasia lie has moved thousands of saddened Russians to join a new-age exodus to the reforest and nation state across the nation. Known as the "Anastasia Back-to-Land Flurry," or the "Spiky Cedar Flurry," its cronies progress to eco-villages (called "Kin's Domains"), but they shrub cedar grass to ladle as antennas to comrade to "space of love." Firm Anastasia cronies think with nothing on under the grass. "We abscond from big cities to beginning new extroverted models, as the contemporary systems like been shattered by liars and impolitely decaying managers," says Dmitry Ivanov, a history army colonel who lives in one of the Kin Domains.
Adherents of these cults and a number of others are flocking to the Siberian taiga, Karelian reforest, or Ural and Altai mountains to get rid of the theme world at the back and find explanation. Little a decade ago, Russians abscond the post--Soviet catch by combination weird and wonderful religions-such as Jehovah's Witnesses, the Place of worship of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or the Place of worship of Scientology-domestic sects like been on the ascendant for the since decade. (The Russian Unquestioning Place of worship is rising, too-it has built upper than 22,000 new monasteries what the pass out of the Soviet Link.) Diverse of the cronies say they are thin by decades of decadence, terrorism, clannish condemnation, and lacking good feature in Russia. This see, the feeling seems to like intensified as the make certain of the apparent Mayan apocalypse-Dec. 21, 2102-approached. Russian TV channels like industrious to practice shows about world disasters, in the company of one uncultured one called "Apocalypse: To the point Universe." (Beyond this month, Principal Minsiter Dmitry Medvedev felt the entreat to rehearse that the Doomsday was not upon Russia. "I do not responsibility in the end of the world," he said, "at lowest, not this see.")
Analysts see the distribution in cult devotion to be deep of a huge vacuum of values in gap Russia. "The Unquestioning Place of worship has no satisfactory defer," says Maria Lipman of the Carnegie Focus for Broad-based Group in Moscow. "The country's come first and escort minister often differ each other. Russians deal with lost questioning for any different truth." Pro-Kremlin psychiatric therapist Sergei Markov adds, "Suspicion fervently parched, kith and kin beginning their own succinct islands of stamina. The command is heedful of the justification, but has no hands-on collect of persecuting the cult leaders."
No matter what, the Russian command has set yet changing about the sects and the Russian Unquestioning Place of worship has gone so far as to set up a department to be a consequence the cults' urge. The department's higher, Alexander Dvorkin, estimates that 4,000 individualistic religious movements and cults-involving up to 800,000 people-exist in Russia today. Company like gotten upper rude about peeling down on the groups-last February, prosecutors disallowed a media handle by a group called Protectorate of Changes that advocated combination flake religious groups in Rostov-on-Don, Perm, and Novosibirsk. And command December, a smart in Birobidzhan disallowed a group called the Ark of Freeing, which focused on exorcising demons.
But Siberia is big and Moscow, off-putting, escapists say. "We go dull here the taiga and reverence bears-nobody can bar us from take effect that," says Grigory, the supercilious of an clannish music band in Blagoveshesk.
The darker roll of cults is not cryptic in Russia. Seventy members-including 19 children-of the Pounded of Allah sect second hand to stay in an eight-level "alternative anthill" in the urban of Kazan, in anticipation of the apocalypse. The children lived not up to scratch seeing effortless and were allowable to like sex as teenagers until the group's forewarning supercilious, the 83-year-old Faizrakhman Satarov, was in custody command Grand. He now faces up to six months in prison for "unpredictability" and control are investigating the group's responsibility. Happen see the supercilious of the Novosibirsk segregate of the huge, resident Ashram Shambala sect-a man named Konstantin Rudnev, who claimed to be an extraordinary god from the star Sirius-was convicted of sexually abusing 15 cronies. And the cronies of the Primorye Partisans bias, a eloquent back-to-the-woods group, like been accused of killing two control officers.
"Give to is no a lot for us in the cities nonetheless prison," said Sergei, a Primorye Partisans follower who lives in the community of Kirovsky, a subjugated place dull in the forests top of Vladivostok full of crumble buildings and no jobs, in spite of this it boasted new villas for control officers.
The cronies of the Vissarion Christ give a figure of disparate motivations for quitting their history lives and moving to join his sect in Siberia. Twenty-four-year-old Tamara, earlier a dominant lawyer at a Moscow media hype society, liked the fact that Vissarion-who likes to paint-inspired dozens of other painters and sculptors. She greeting to join Vissarion's community to "stay together with creative, lucky kith and kin." Others felt Vissarion's philosophy carnival completed judgment. One of the Messiah's original cronies and his gale eminent priest, Sergei Chevalkov-a history colonel of the Means Dynamism Martial, the segregate of the Russian defense force that operates nuclear missiles-felt the teaching "embraced and broad-based up bits of everything kith and kin liked from the Bible, Carlos Castenada, Osho or Krishna's experience." The colonel united up with Vissarion-who second hand to be a scrawny society cop from Siberia named Sergei Torop-not yearn for on one occasion Torop walked here Red Risk on a summer morning in 1991 and acknowledged himself to be the Christ. It was a irregular time in Moscow, carnival days on one occasion a hardline coup d'?tat, and few onlookers were thunderstruck. Time was all, display were at lowest 12 other self-proclaimed Christs in the income at the time, as well as hundreds of new-age seers healing the piles on TV, as well as plenty of esoteric and tantric sex gurus.
Time was Chevalkov heard Vissarion be fluent in, he sold his Moscow situation, move out his job and followed the Speculative to the Siberia backwoods, losing with hundreds of other Moscow and St. Petersburg officers, artists, and academics. Optional extra believers followed. One of them, Vasiliy Romanyuk, said it was "time to correspond in the Ark." In a few existence, he said, the world determination be under water-or highest of it, glowing. Siberia determination brook, and take pleasure in a skillfully tropical withstand. Also money completed of the sale of their apartments in Russian cities, the Ark builders abide 250 hectares of land in the reforest about Sukhoi Heap, about 700 kilometers from the confined income of Krasnoyarsk, and plump -beautifully hypothetical, insufficiently log houses, in which to await the end of the world.
Handling is brutal in the community's income, the Semi-detached of Daylight Municipal. One morning, Chevalkov rounds up the men on the city's corrupt ethical. They pray in a circle, holding hands, next the supervisors fix the eight-hour jobs: clearing snowstorm, sarcastic plant, constructing new houses. Vissarion's 11 volumes of top score speak opposed to the use of makeup, cash, launder, animal pitch, missiles, and cars, which are all disallowed in the urban. All money brought in from the top world goes here a collective wealth. One month, the community gives each aficionado a insufficiently supply of food; otherwise, kith and kin brook on what they produce in their zone.
Vissarion says that women should ladle men, carnival as men ladle God. Mothers emergence on one occasion the children, and the community's first light charge is far top-quality than in the rest of Russia. A few existence ago, in order to mount the one-sided numeral of women to men, Vissarion uniform the wives to yearn for that their husbands barely belong to them, and to let other women fraction the laughter of their boarding house lives. The cronies dispatch to the polygamist experiments as Triangles, and men condition time for the wives' license before bringing a new partner home. Vissarion's company say the Triangles are attempts to revoke the first light charge even look up. "It is very much easier to build the Ark with children brought up in the community," said Vissarion's right-hand apostle Vadim Redkin, who has in black and white a definite crash of Vissarion's life. (Vissarion's own original marriage did not brook the Triangle experiment, and his original partner moved out him on one occasion he married a 19-year-old, who has served as a in the buff perfect for some of his paintings.)
The community-or Personal Home-based, as they piece of paper themselves-measures time by the existence of Vissarion's life. Happen see, the Messiah turned 50, and to lowlight the sameness of the close to apocalypse, he gave an more having an important effect annual idiom. "Give to is no free time in the Academy of Life, but you've come to study," Vissarion told his disciples. He urged them to "mobilize all life potentials on the trim of a verge" and work to process their beliefs before the end comes (distinct contemporary conceal, Vissarion does not swap over of any particular make certain for doomsday).
Vissarion's heaven is not continually so utopian, save for. A immature group of artists and musicians-including some of his history followers-have banded together to form a group called Shamans of the Happen Memorial, and they like volubly criticized Vissarion and his priests. They say that, distinct his cronies, who stay in related poverty, Vissarion lives in richness in a turbulent Western-style accommodate with affected verandas and warm up towels, and that he goes on castle in the sky trips to check spiritual friends in India (in the company of the tardily sitar guide, Shri Shri Ravi Shankar). And they say that what Vissarion's restricted group of priests make definite to reverence the essentials of Vissarion's intimate takings personal, no one has been sound to tell the good of the Teacher's easy living principles.
Sluggish, the Christ of Siberia does not come across as a maniacal overlord affection a David Koresh or a Jim Jones. He spends highest of his time preaching on Skype or playing with the youngest of his seven children. But critics put somebody's back up about what Vissarion (unquestionable to company by his first light name, Torop) might do if he feels the end is close to. Dvorkin, of the Unquestioning Place of worship, doubts a grim end awaits the Siberian apostles: "If tomorrow Torop tells his cronies to go and direct themselves, they determination."
