www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Russian sect hiding in cave

Sect holes up in cave to await end of world
Thu Nov 15, 2007 3:36pm EST

By Tatyana Ustinova

MOSCOW (Reuters) - At least 30 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a remote cave to await the end of the world and are threatening to commit suicide if police intervene, officials and media said Thursday.

"They have covered the entrance and refuse to come out and are threatening to blow themselves up," an official in the local prosecutor's office told Reuters by telephone. "They threaten to detonate a gas tank and blow themselves up."

The cult members, who include 29 adults and four children, are hidden inside a snow-covered hillside in the Penza region of central Russia. A Penza police spokeswoman said they had moved into the dug-out on November 7.

"No one wants to take on the responsibility of provoking them ... because our information is that there are children among them," said the official.

They are thought to have taken food and fuel supplies in with them and Russian television pictures from the scene showed smoke or steam coming out of a hole in the snow-covered ravine where it was built.

A police patrol was guarding the area to prevent anyone provoking them.

"They are simple Christians," a local priest, Father Georgy, told NTV television station. "They say: 'The church is doing a bad job, the end of the world is coming soon and we are all saving ourselves'."

Media reports said the cult members believed the world would end sometime in May next year. Police expected them to emerge when their supplies ran out.

After decades of state-enforced atheism under Soviet rule, many Russians and other ex-Soviet nationals have come under the influence of homegrown and foreign sects.

Many Russians have refused new passports and taxpayers' personal identification numbers, saying the figures contained "satanic" combinations of numbers.

Izvestia newspaper said the leader of the cult, Pyotr Kuznetsov, had been detained by police. It said he was a 43-year-old who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and that in the last few months he had been sleeping in a coffin.

Police took Kuznetsov to the cave to persuade his followers to come out but without success, said the newspaper.

To quote a Boney M disco-sounding song about Rasputin (anyone ever heard of it?): "Ahhh, those Russians!"

Alexis

Are these the people who believe that there is another species of intelligent life that lives deep in the earth's crust?

Terry

Russia cult members in cave siege

Orthodox monks have been trying to reach the cave
Police and clergy in southern Russia are trying to negotiate with members of a doomsday cult barricaded inside a cave and threatening to blow it up.
The group calls itself the "True Russian Orthodox Church". Members are waiting for the end of the world, which they are expecting to happen next May.

They say they have enough food and water to last out the winter, as well as large quantities of petrol.

The cult leader did not join them, and has been arrested by police.

Russian television showed pictured of black-robed Orthodox monks scaling down into a snow-covered gully in a forest in the Penza region, about 650km (400 miles) south-east of Moscow.


Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov is undergoing psychiatric examination
They are hoping to make contact with the 30 cult members believed to have sealed themselves in the cave .

Those inside are believed to include four small children.

Cult members say they have hundreds of canisters of petrol and threatening to ignite them if the authorities try to force them out.

The group was founded by a former engineer, Pyotr Kuznetsov, who had fallen out with the Russian Orthodox Church.

He is thought to have ordered his followers into the cave but did not join them.

He is now in custody and is undergoing psychiatric examinations.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7098671.stm

So these people claim to be Orthodox?

Living near Washington, DC;

I used to believe this.


So, I began to dig.

One mile.

Two miles.

Over twelve miles now....


I have found:

Many Democrats; Many Republicans.

Many of their remains.

Many of their droppings.

Many pockets of their hot air.


But sadly, no intelligence !!!

I think Russia still has a way to go to catch up with such noted western wonders as David Koresh and Waco, Jim Jones and Jonestown and the lovlies up at Ruby Ridge!

Alexandr

Alexis,

I had almost forgotten that Boney M ever recorded anything, other than its wonderful rendition of Mary's Boy Child - my favorite Christmas carole of all time.

Alexandr, my brother,

Don't forget that Millinarianism had its own heyday in Russian history. There were various doomsday sects that arose contemporaneously with the Old Ritualists, some coming from the bespopovtsy ranks. A few of those engaged in mass suicide under the premise of effecting salvation as an alternative to the evils of a worldview that they perceived dominated by the AntiChrist

The Ognenniye Kreshcheniya (Fire-Baptizers) believed that "burning christening", as Blessed Avvakum had spoken of it, would cleanse them from all earthly transgressions and assure their salvation. They saw the fire in which they enveloped themselves as both their first and last spiritual acts, causing them, at once, to be both enrolled among the elect and entered into the presence of their Savior.

While Filipovtsy are now thought of as having been mainstream bespopovtsy, they hoed a much harsher path in their early days. As an 18th century off-shoot from the Pomortsy they were disturbed by what they perceived as heretical compromise on the part of the Pomortsy. Apparently influenced by historical accounts of the Fire-Baptizers, the Filipovsky revived the by-then dormant practice of self-immolation. Reportedly, the faithful threw themselves on human pyres and assisted one another to their fiery self-martyrdom by burning whole households, accompanied by prayers and chanting. It was some time before they mitigated such praxis and adopted a significantly less harsh theological outlook.

Then, there were the Brothers & Sisters of the Red Death. They were millenarians who originated in Japan in the late 18th century and, in the mid-19th century, appeared in Russia. Unclear in what I've read is whether members immigrated as a body or the cult�s beliefs were imported and superimposed on some one of the pre-existing extremist bodies. The adherents established a date in November 1900 for the Second Coming and committed themselves to self-immolation as a salvific measure. An estimated 100 of some 850 of the faithful went through with their religiously-inspired suicidal gesture before troops arrived and brought the ceremonies to a halt. The choice of self-immolation as a means to salvation (by then no longer a particularly common praxis among the various radical sectarian bodies) causes the group to occasionally be referenced as derived from Old Ritualist ranks. But, while there were probably individuals who moved between the two, there is no indication that there were any ties at the organizational level.

Many years,

Neil

Honestly, let's hope that they don't even try to catch up.

Since reading about this I have been praying that the Police just let them wait it out... Come the end of the supplies and no action I would hope they would peacibly return to the world.

Provided the world doesn't end before that, of course!

I pray saner minds will prevail and this will all end peacibly.

Russia has its own unenviable record of providing the world with crazies - Lenin, Stalin, to name a couple. Stalin, in particular, was probably the worst mass murderer in history. It's amazing Christianity has even survived in that country at all.

byzanTN,

Stalin was Georgian and no he was not from Atlanta.

His real name is Josef Dzhugashvili, not very Russian is it?

As far as Boney M goes, I'm more of a fan of 'Brown Girl in the Ring'.





Monomakh

Interesting. I had understood that Stalin ruled all of Russia and that Georgia was part of the Soviet Union. Was that not the case? You realize that to many of us non-Slavs, Russia and the Soviet Union were indistinguishable from each other. I repeat, however, it's amazing that Christianity survived at all in the Soviet Union. With so many priests and bishops murdered and with much of the hierarchy filled by goverment agents and appointees, the people themselves must have possessed a deep and genuine faith.

So true!!!

As Lent is approaching, I will forgive you!

Alexandr

Thank you, I suppose. Are you Russian?