Cult Cracks

[Ron Caliburn]

Fri Mar 28, 7:31 PM

By Mike Eckel, The Associated Press

MOSCOW - Seven women who had holed up in a cave for months with other members of a Russian cult awaiting the end of the world emerged Friday night and were being treated by emergency workers, regional officials said.

More than two dozen others remained behind but were expected to come out as early as Saturday, the governor's office said.

About 35 members of the Christian cult entered the cave near the village of Nikolskoye, about 640 kilometres southeast of Moscow, in early November to await the end of the world, which they expected in May. They threatened to detonate gas canisters if police tried to remove them by force.

The deputy-governor of the Penza region, Oleg Melnichenko, said in televised comments that the seven women came out voluntarily, carrying satchels with their belongings. He said the cult leader, the self-declared prophet Pyotr Kuznetsov, was brought from a local psychiatric hospital to help persuade the women to leave.

He said the women walked on their own nearly two kilometres to a prayer house, where emergency workers were talking with them, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported.

"There is no reason to urgently hospitalize any of them," Melnichenko was quoted as saying.

Another official in the governor's office, who gave only his first name, Alexander, said the other cult members still in the cave were expected to give up their vigil, perhaps by Saturday. He said four children, reportedly under age two, were among those in the cave.

Melnichenko said officials feared that melting snow could eventually lead to the collapse of the cave, but there was no immediate threat to those who remained behind.

Officials had repeatedly enlisted the help of priests from the Orthodox Church in an effort to persuade the group to leave, communicating mainly through a small chimney pipe that poked up through the snowy hillside.

Earlier this week, Melnichenko told reporters that some of the cult members had indicated they might leave the cave on Orthodox Easter, which is April 27.

Kuznetsov has been charged with setting up a religious organization associated with violence. Earlier this week, officials said they had seized literature that included what appeared to be extremist rhetoric. He has been confined to a psychiatric hospital since November.

An engineer from a devout family, Kuznetsov, who goes by the title of Father Pyotr, declared himself a prophet several years ago. He left his family and established the True Russian Orthodox Church and recruited followers in Russia and Belarus.

He reportedly told followers that, in the afterlife, they would judge whether others deserved heaven or hell.

Followers were not allowed to watch television, listen to the radio or handle money, Russian media reported.

Keep coming out.

[KonThaak]

Amen, Ron...

[GhostSpider]

Idiots.

Um, that was directed at the cult members.

[Ron Caliburn]

By Chris Baldwin

NIKOLSKOE, Russia (Reuters) - Fourteen members of a Russian doomsday cult on Tuesday abandoned the remote underground bunker where they had been hiding for nearly half a year awaiting the end of the world.

A local official said the cult members believed God had sent them a sign to come to the surface when part of their dugout collapsed. Another 14 people were still underground but officials were hopeful they too would come out.

"All are in good health, considering they have spent half a year underground," said Oleg Melnichenko, deputy governor of the Penza region where members have been holed up since October.

"They have refused medical attention and are now in a house, praying, where they say they will stay until Orthodox Easter (on April 27) ... They said that God had given them a signal to leave after the fourth partial cave-in."

The group that emerged from the bunker on Tuesday included two girls aged eight and 12.

Melnichenko said the remaining 14 members were in another chamber that had been cut off from the exit by the cave-in and that negotiations were continuing to persuade them to leave.

A Reuters reporter who crawled down into the now empty section of the bunker found a makeshift kitchen and sleeping space hollowed out of the earth. Among the belongings left behind were a chess set and pages from a children's book.

The cult members had been refusing to come out of their bunker before the apocalypse, which their leader Pavel Kuznetsov -- now undergoing psychiatric treatment -- had predicted would happen in April or May this year.

They threatened to blow up gas canisters in their bunker if police tried to bring them out by force.

Seven female cult members left the dugout at the weekend after meltwater caused part of the earth structure to collapse.

All the cult members who have emerged from the bunker were being kept in cottages owned by their group in a nearby village. Police were preventing reporters from speaking to them.

WORK OF SATAN

The sect is a splinter group of the Russian Orthodox church. They reject processed food and say bar codes on products are the work of Satan.

Officials had for weeks been trying to persuade the cult members to come out, negotiating through a ventilation shaft. They brought self-declared prophet Kuznetsov, and an Orthodox priest, to help with negotiations.

Kuznetsov did not join his followers in the bunker, saying God had different tasks for him.

To get into the part of the bunker not cut off by the cave-in, the Reuters reporter crawled on hands and knees through a muddy tunnel that stretched about 5 meters (16 ft).

The tunnel opened out into a chamber large enough to stand upright in. Somebody had carved out large images of flowers and plants on the walls and cardboard covered the floor.

When the group of 14 emerged on Tuesday they took some of their supplies out with them, including jars of pickled tomatoes and mushrooms, plastic containers of cooking oil, dried pasta and a large band-saw.

[Ron Caliburn]

Finally it's over.

MOSCOW (AFP) - Toxic fumes from rotting corpses drove the final members of a Russian doomsday cult from the cave where they had been waiting six months for the end of the world, officials said Friday.

Eight women and one man emerged from the muddy bunker outside a village in the region of Penza, 560 kilometres (350 miles) southeast of Moscow, said Tatyana Ostrovskaya, a spokeswoman for the local prosecutor's office.

"The last nine people came to the surface after the bodies of two women were found," Ostrovskaya told AFP.

Interfax news agency quoted local official Vladimir Provotorov as saying that everyone left because there was "a real threat of poisoning from toxic corpse fumes" from two deceased cult members rotting in the cave.

"We could smell it through the ventilation shaft," he was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying. "When the specialists took out the dead hermits, we asked the others if they would like to leave, and they agreed."

The cultists were part of an ultra-Orthodox Christian splinter group, led by bearded guru Pyotr Kuznetsov, who reject the modern world and believe that bar codes on food products are a symbol of the devil.

In November, 35 members followed Kuznetsov's orders to take refuge in the frozen underground labyrinth as he predicted the world would end on Orthodox Easter Sunday, April 27.

Taking candles, icons and headscarves, they threatened to blow themselves up with cooking gas canisters if authorities interfered.

After surviving the bitter Russian winter, fourteen emerged on April 1, including all four children, when part of their subterranean shelter collapsed in what they took to be a sign from God. Officials blamed water from melting snow.

Several others abandoned the cave in the following weeks as more chunks of the mud roof collapsed.

Kuznetsov himself waited above ground in a nearby wooden shack before he was committed to a psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

After the world failed to end on schedule, Kuznetsov was found trying to commit suicide.

No journalists appear to have been present on Friday when the cult members left their cave or to have had contact with them since.

On Thursday night journalists were kept away from the cave as several cars arrived at the site, NTV television reported.

A sound engineer for the station who was keeping watch was beaten by members of the security forces, NTV said.

Those who emerged from the cave alive "are now being looked at by a doctor," Penza's deputy governor Oleg Melnichenko told the TV station. Three are citizens of Belarus, RIA Novosti reported.

Later, television pictures showed the mangled remains of one of the two dead women caked in mud and decomposing body parts wrapped in sheets after their excavation.

A member of the cult who had emerged earlier told ITAR-TASS that one had died after a severe fast, the other from an unknown illness.

"We are examining the bodies to see if we will open a criminal case," said prosecutor's office spokeswoman Tatyana Ostrovskaya.

Most of the sect members who left the cave earlier continue to await the end of the world at Kuznetsov's wooden cottage in the nearby village of Nikolskoye.