Cults have come to Russia—in a big way. So much so that the Russian Orthodox Church has set up a department to monitor the situation.
After the Soviet Union dissolved, Russians flocked to foreign religions like the Church of Scientology or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But for the past 10 years, Russia has seen a rise in domestic sects. The Orthodox Church—which has also grown and built 22,000 new monasteries over the past decade—estimates that 4,000 cults and religious movements, comprised of 800,000 people, exist in the country today. In one sect, the Church of the Last Testament, 4,500 followers of Vissarion Christ live in a group of villages in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, where they avoid consuming alcohol or meat and don’t smoke cigarettes while they hope to survive the coming apocalypse in arks. In the community’s capital, Abode of Dawn City, all money brought from the outside goes into a communal budget; polygamist relationships, known as triangles, are common— they help increase the community’s population.
Photographer Yuri Kozyrev captured images of the region for Newsweek. Here, the settlement of Abode of Dawn, east of Abakan in Siberia, houses several cult members.
