Izvestiya
05.01.2002
The X-Files of Victoria Averbukh
In the Altai region, a verdict was delivered to the head of a religious sect Yuri Usov. According to the decision of the court, he will spend six years in the general regime penal colony. The expert committee decided that the new cult he had created was of “satanic-mystical character.” Below is Victoria Averbukh’s story about satanic sects in Russia.
49-year-old resident of Barnaul Yuri Usov does not agree with the decision of the court of Oktyabrskiy district of the city of Barnaul, and this week he filed an appeal. Vera Svirina, the Secretary of the Criminal Court, told “Izvestia” that Usov was awaiting the final decision in the city jail but the result was unlikely to be in his favor. The case of the “new school” created by Usov shook the entire city of Barnaul.
Back in 1995, Yuri, fascinated by the methods of the Russian revolts and various esoteric religious literature, created an experimental family survival school “Rossichi” in his apartment. He found his disciples on the street, in the yards, in the transportation; he was telling the adolescents about his privity with the higher mind. High school girl students were the ones to visit him most frequently. Usov charged a monthly fee from his novices and forced the girls to sleep with him. He instilled in them that parents, school, and friends – that is, everything except him – affected them negatively. The children defended Usov even in court; they were telling how he had helped them “to improve spiritually.”
According to the expert committee, “Rossichi” was “a religious group set up by the type of non-traditional religious worship, and it has a pronounced satanic-mystical character.”
– There are more than twenty purely satanic sects currently active in Russia, – a Russian FSB officer Evgeny Karpuhin says. – Over the past five years, they have been responsible for the murders of monks in the Optina Hermitage, of a minister in the Krylatskiy temple, of a 16-year-old girl in the Krasnoyarsk region, and for the desecration of graves, not to mention burned churches.
According to the civic organization “Committee for the Salvation of Youth,” 3 to 5 million of people are involved in various cult organizations, more than several tens of which have been created in Russia; five hundred thousand of these people are younger than 18, and more than a million are from 18 to 25. For example, there are 2,500 to 3,000 cults in the US, in which 5 to 15 million people are involved.
The most famous cults operating in Russia today, include the Unification Church (Moonies); Church of Scientology; Transcendental Meditation (TM); Jehovah’s Witnesses; Church of Christ (“Boston Church”); “Aum Shinrikyo”; “White Brotherhood”; “Marian Center.” As for purely satanic sects, the most common are “Black Brotherhood” and “Green Order.” The ministers of the “Green Order” call themselves “white environmentalists of the spirit.” The order is preaching racism and demands the protection of “pure blood.” The sectarians are practicing scourging and psychological humiliation “to surpass their own limits.” Exactly the same “Green Order” existed in Nazi Germany and Japan.
– There are no organizations with clear satanic bias (as could be judged by the name or the statute of the organization) that have been registered in Russia, – the spokesperson of the FSB in Moscow and Moscow region Sergey Kravtsov says. –”Aum Shinrikyo” was the only one acting officially, but after the gas attack in the Japanese subway, a decision on its registration was cancelled. However, the satanists do not require official registration. They “recruit” young boys and girls at the Moscow market “Gorbushka” and in the stores that sell so-called black metal symbolics.