Date
Author
Александра Левинская
Preserved copy
Translated material
War of psychocults - 1: Mother Obsessed by grief
In Russia today there are about three thousand personal growth trainings - direct heirs of the legendary American company LifeSpring. The empire of John Henley promised her customers a deep personal transformation that will make them real leaders and will help achieve all their goals in life. In the nineties, the American company drowned in the sea of lawsuits on psychological violence and bringing customers to suicide. The Russian franchise was left to itself and, without experiencing any pressure from the state, grew into the entire post -Soviet space. For thirty years, trainings and their coaches have entered the world of Russian politics, show business and acquired such influence and resources that even the creators of LifeSpring could hardly dream of. About how psychocults mastered the market of physical, psychological and sexual violence in Russia and defeated all their enemies - from Muscovite, whose daughter committed suicide after training, to bloggers, the Russian Orthodox Church and Mizulina - in the second season of the investigation of Samizdat.
Table of contents
Part I: Mother Obsessed
The father of two children decides to become a real man, the pensioner goes to the war trail, the detective is introduced into training for women
A person from Ussuriysk breaks bones, people and believes in his invulnerability
Part III: Woman for a million
The detective undercover watches how naked women create happiness for themselves
Why Mizulin, bloggers and fighters with sects for decades fight psycho -kulti and always lose
In 2016, Roman Kaplan, a 44-year-old coach from Moscow, decided to go to Sparta’s training Anton Razdanov on the advice of a close friend. In the world of personal growth of Sparta, not only high psychological stress, but also an intensive program of strength training, sparring and a clear orientation to a purely male audience. The founders of the program promised to make their customers not just leaders, but “real men”, soldiers in life. Perhaps the novel wanted to go through just such a transformation, but partly they were led by professional interest: he himself was one of the pioneers of the personal growth industry in Russia and probably wanted to keep abreast of the latest trends. In the past, Kaplan took place on Lifespring, worked as a captain, was friends with many founders of the industry in Russia and himself conducted similar programs. In 2016, the novel led his own training company “Kaplan-Center of Management Decisions” and organized business training courses.
Kaplan lived in Moscow with his civilian wife, business trainer Olga Poleschuk, and also raised a 17-year-old son and a 15-year-old daughter from his first marriage. In 2016, Roman and Olga planned to sign and have already submitted an application to the registry office. The fact that Kaplan is going to take a course at Sparta, his wife found out the day before the training. Roman asked her to help: it was necessary to fill out the profiles.
Olga sat down to write under dictation. Kaplan indicated his chronic diseases: hypertension, arrhythmia and cardiosclerosis. On the morning of September 23, Olga conducted it on the first day of the training, and he herself, together with her mother and daughter, went to the Sportmaster store. There around noon, Poleschuk received an SMS message from her husband: “Buy me a kapu.” Olga asked why he had a cap, and Roman wrote that tomorrow they would have battles. “Why do you need this? You don’t know how to fight, ”said Poleschuk. The husband did not answer. She still bought kapa.
The 23-year-old Muscovite Alexander Panin was on the course “Guru of Feminine Happiness” Denis Baiguzhin in September 2017 is not of interest: she worked as a detective and received an order for implementation. A resident of the Russian region, concerned about the strange behavior of his wife, turned to the St. Petersburg detective agency “White Nights”. After the trainings of Baiguzhin, she began to call her husband a poverty and demand that he earn at least 100 thousand rubles. Without reaching the desired, the woman plunged into a depressive state and suicidal thoughts. Relations in the family deteriorated, and the husband began to look for the reason for the discord.
Alexandra took up this order, as she was the only girl-detective in the company. Panina did not doubt her abilities: she considered herself a man who could not be influenced and was not afraid of anything. Father, the famous stuntman Igor Panin, raised her so that at nine years, Alexander set fire on his clothes and drove a motorcycle. In addition, according to her, she has come to religion even in adolescence and has a special inner rod: “Nothing has no effect on me, because my values have been formed since childhood. I can’t lure me with anything. It is useless. Although dance around me, at least dance Lambadu, at least spray me with cocaine - I’ll go and get a shower, I don’t care, ”says Alexandra.
Like all trainings based on the transformational LifeSpring methodology, the Baiguzhin courses are divided into several stages - from the basic to the workshop. Panina decided that all of them would pass.
On the first of June 2015, the day before his own 28th birthday, Marina Rozhkova (the name changed at the request of her mother) stepped from the 13th floor of her apartment in Moscow. Marina did not leave a dying note. Her mother Valeria for hours checked the phone and laptop of her daughter, trying to find at least some information. From the correspondence, the mother found out that Marina saw demons. “Now I understand that these were hallucinations,” says Valeria.
In the Perovsky Investigative Department of Valery, crying, she said that serious changes in the behavior and state of Marina began after she went through personal growth courses in the Moscow training center (MTC) among the coaches of Roman and Natalia Tikhonov. During the training, the girl had problems with the menstrual cycle, because of which she turned to the endocrinologist. The doctor sent her to a therapist who wrote to Marina the antidepressants. The medicines did not help: the psychological state of the girl worsened for several months after the training - until she committed suicide. The investigator asked if the girl received any threats. Valeria did not hear anything about it. “Have you seen this in the cinema? Read the Criminal Code, choose an article for yourself, ”said the investigator.
In August 2015, Valeria was refused to institute criminal proceedings. Reading the text of the resolution, she noticed that the dates of contacting doctors were confused. According to the document, Marina first visited a psychotherapist, and then an endocrinologist. In reality, everything was the other way around. This error has changed the meaning of events. Today, Valeria believes that the investigator distorted the facts intentionally.
We write together that very history of the start of the course - January 18 Marina's parents went to the Perovsky Prosecutor's Office and wrote a complaint about an illegal refusal to institute criminal proceedings. It was there that Valeria first heard the word “sect” - from the prosecutor, who called this MTC. “What is the sect? We have a service for providing services, ”Valeria perplexed. It seemed to her that the sect could only be “in the backyards”, but not in the center of Moscow, at the Belorusskaya station.
Samizdat told in detail the story of the death of Marina Rozhkova in the chapter “People walk from the windows” of the previous season of the investigation. This story about what happened to her family after the death of her daughter. In 2015, Valeria was only at the beginning of a very long journey and did not yet know what and with whom she would have to face, going to the path of the war with the psycho -cult.
Valery Rozhkova, the St. Petersburg detective under the cover of Alexander Panin and the coach Roman Kaplan, who decided to become a real man at 44 years old, were not directly familiar, but were from each other at a distance of just one handshake. Their experience is the history of interaction with that huge, but, in essence, by their own organism, into which Russian personal growth trainings turned thirty years after the collapse of the LifeSpring empire.
One will see how twenty -five naked women are tied with island to teach them how to please them. Another - how huge men fall unconscious and how they take away young guys beaten up to the ambulance. Still others fit the very limit of their own strengths, despair, paranoia - and step further. Probably, the founders of Lifespring never dreamed of what their motivational business will result in the other side of the ocean.
The sucker is dead
The prosecutor's office appointed a second audit. Valeria continued to collect information, visiting the places where her daughter often visited. At the MTC office, parents wrote a statement with a request to compensate for 100 thousand spent by Marina on trainings. The center said that there was no reason for this, since the girl successfully graduated from all three courses. The MTC also emphasized that they already offered the Marina family to the family assistance in the amount of 20 thousand rubles, but they refused.
Valeria really transferred the money “for the funeral” through a friend of the family of Vitaly Sarygin, who also attended training at the MTz and was, in addition, the Sparta training captain. However, he brought not twenty thousand, but ten. They knew each other for many years, lived in the neighborhood, met and talked to families, but when Valeria made a question of a non -bid money, the man answered with threats. “He [said] that he would come with the guys and sleeping us a cottage,” says Valeria.
The second check ended in December 2015. The prosecutor's office again refused to institute criminal proceedings, since it did not discover the corpus delicti. The posthumous forensic psychiatric examination found that Marina had a bipolar affective disorder. In the resolution, the investigator wrote that suicide was a conscious decision of Marina, who was disappointed in life.
In September 2016, Valeria found out from the news that one of the wards of the course died at the Sparta training: the heart could not stand heavy physical exertion (read its story in the chapter “ die like a man ”). Valeria tried to ask Sarygin, who still worked in Sparta as the captain of what happened, but he only dismissed: “Yes, the sucker died. I diluted the suckers, divorce and breed. ” The woman did not pay attention to these words, as she always considered the neighbor a "near guy."
Since 2016, Valeria’s main task was to prove in court that the daughter died not because of her own conscious decision, but as a result of psychological violence at the training, where she was brought to suicide. Valeria tried to appeal the decision of the prosecutor's office, wrote to employees of the Investigative Committee, deputies, and the president to no avail.
Everything changed at the moment when Valeria remembered that in her daughter’s apartment there was still a laptop of her acquaintance in the training. In the hope of finding new evidence, she found a password from the device on her daughter’s phone and really discovered a lot of new things there.
It turned out that her daughter, together with other participants in the training, collected information about the victims in the courses of the MTC. They prepared an article about the experienced, but the deteriorated psychological state did not allow Marina to finish what he had begun. The assembled materials were stored on the laptop, among which Marina's correspondence also turned out to be. “After the training, I was on the verge of suicide,” the girl wrote. In Valeria, the correspondence of Marina and Natalya Tikhonova, her daughter asked the coach to soften the program, because the psychological load was unbearable. She refused and recommended contacting the therapist.
Attempts to contact the daughter of a daughter for Valeria ended in nothing: they were silent, or refused to cooperate, saying that Valeria does not understand who they are associated with. Nevertheless, she printed her finds and began to walk again to various instances - from the Investigative Committee to the Presidential Administration.
In 2017, Marina's parents managed to achieve a third audit. They attributed the investigator the phone and laptop of their daughter, as well as printed correspondence and documents from the MTC. The examination dragged on, and Valeria again began to overtake all the thresholds for weeks, from the Investigative Committee to the reception of United Russia, so that they would give a move.
On November 27, 2017, the prosecutor's office opened a criminal case against the Moscow training center under the article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Bringing to suicide”. This decision lasted three days. He was canceled due to lack of evidence. The prosecutor wrote that there were no new circumstances and there was no corpus delicti. The Marina family once again returned to the starting point, but Valery could no longer stop.
Allies
At the end of the summer of 2018, Roman Tikhonov, the founder and coach of the MTC, who studied with the very creator of Lifespring John Henley, went abroad. Against him and his wife, Natalia Tikhonova, they opened a case of illegal educational activities - upon request from the singer Lolita Milyavskaya, whose husband was on the list of the affected by the MTC (more about this case - in the chapter half a century of torture and suicide ” the previous season of the investigation). In the apartment of Tikhonovs and the office of the MTC, searches were searched, but the case was stalled again. But Valeria finally realized that she could have allies.
Thanks to the public speeches, the federal media began to pay attention to the situation around the MTC, and this allowed Valeria to start collecting evidence of other victims. With them, she appealed to the State Duma deputy Elena Mizulina, whose assistance partly helped Milyavskaya to achieve the initiation of the case. Again the collected materials went to the Investigative Committee, and again they were not enough to join the case.
Meanwhile, the Moscow training center continued its activities, and Marina's parents decided to independently collect information about him. In December 2018, they started a conversation with a girl leaving the center, who turned out to be a participant in the training. Valeria asked who the girl entered into an agreement with. “With IP Karabanova,” she answered. Valeria remembered that she had already heard this surname: lawyer Alexander Karabanov played in the NTV report, where a search was covered in a Moscow training center after a statement by Lolita Milyavskaya.
“I regard this exclusively as a ordered action aimed at undermining the business reputation of a normal enterprise that provides quality services,” Karabanov said on the camera. As it turned out in the future, Karabanov not only represented the legal interests of the MTC in a particular case, but was connected with the trainings industry much deeper. So, having gained new allies, Valeria gained new enemies.
Harring hunting
It is difficult to name a specific moment when Valeria finally turned into an open offensive, but by the winter of 2019 she began to pursue the MTC and its founders wherever she could find a way out.
In January, Valeria again came to the building of the training center. A man who introduced himself as a lawyer Vladislav Pakhomov came out of the door. He said that lawyer Alexander Karabanov wants to meet with Marina's parents. Valeria left the lawyer her number, to which messages from the Moscow College of Lawyers Karabanov and Partners began to receive, where Pakhomov works today. Marina's parents were offered to come to the company's office and discuss everything. The Rozhkovs rejected this invitation.
Soon the police arranged another search in the MTC. After these events, lawyer Pakhomov wrote to Valeria: "You bring us, you force us to act." During the collection of information about Tikhonovs, Valeria found out the address of their apartment and came there to chat with their neighbors and find out some new information about the whereabouts and plans of Tikhonovs.
On the street, she received a message from an unknown number: “What did you do now in the Tikhonov’s apartment? If you come again, we will take measures. ” The author of the message was Alexander Pavlenko, who at that time held the post of director at the MTC, as well as a relative of the family of lawyer Karabanov from his wife. Subsequently, he repeatedly contacted Valeria, trying to organize a meeting and “return the situation in the legal field”, but she refused over and over again.
In January 2019, the prosecutor's office of the Northern District filed a lawsuit with the termination of illegal educational activities of the Moscow training center. Valeria also insisted on the closure of the organization’s website, because it was he who attracted people. Then the prosecutor’s office filed a second lawsuit - on the recognition of the information posted on the website https://www.mtcentr.ru prohibited for distribution in the territory of the Russian Federation.
On March 27, 2019, the Simonovsky court decided to enter the MTC website on the list of prohibited Internet resources. The lawyer of the training center Alexander Karabanov did not appear at the meeting.
The lawsuit to terminate the illegal activity of the MTz for a long time was transferred from one court to another. On June 26, 2019, the philistine court finally announced the decision. At this meeting, lawyer Karabanov also did not come. The court forbade the Moscow Training Center LLC to conduct personal growth courses, but the decision did not affect MTC LLC and two other training companies own by Tikhonov.
Then the prosecutor's office of the Northern District launched a criminal case against the MTC on the death of Marina. The investigator charged under the 171st article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Bringing to suicide”). The consideration of the case was delayed again. Valeria continued to come to the building of the Moscow training center and observe its activities.
All this time she went to the prosecutor's office and sought to close the MTC. At the end of July 2019, a month after the court, the organization released the premises at the Belorusskaya station. The site continued to work at the new address: mtcentr.ru was replaced by Trencentr.com. Там по-прежнему висели фотографии Тихоновых и рекламировались тренинги — МТЦ перебрался в конструкторское бюро «Искра» на станции «Петровско-Разумовская». С сентября Валерия начала приезжать и туда.
Бесконечная осада
В то время там как раз проходила тренинг личностного роста Наталья Радиевская. В конце октября 2019 года Наталья вступила в жёсткий конфликт с тренером, чьи методы считала недопустимыми и абьюзивными, и ушла с «Продвинутого курса», не закончив его. Вскоре после этого Радиевская обнаружила у себя в крови амфетамин и решила предать дело огласке. Её история освещалась и в интернет-изданиях, и на федеральных телеканалах (подробно об этом можно прочитать в первом сезоне расследования ). В офис МТЦ пришла полиция с обыском.
Вскоре после этого адвокат Александр Карабанов начал угрожать Наталье, что передаст сведения об особенностях её психологического состояния, установленных в ходе тестирования в МТЦ, в психоневрологический диспансер. Учитывая, что в ходе тестирования у Натальи выявили только «лёгкую депрессию», она не испугалась угроз и не пошла на сотрудничество.
После скандала арендодатель расторг договор с МТЦ, и тренинг стал регулярно менять адреса, снимая залы в гостиницах на разных станциях метро: на «Войковской», «Новослободской», «Таганской», Ленинградском вокзале. Валерии удавалось отследить все эти перемещения. До весны 2020 года, когда Россия перешла в режим самоизоляции из-за пандемии коронавируса, МТЦ продолжал проводить тренинги личностного роста. По адресу рутренинг.рф запустился новый сайт — уже без фотографий Тихоновых и вообще без какой-либо информации о тренерах.
Место Романа Тихонова занял его ученик Григорий Соколов , который вёл занятия в группе Радиевской. «У нас сейчас Гриша за главного. Я наслаждаюсь творческим отпуском…» — сообщал основатель МТЦ Роман Тихонов в своём инстаграме год назад. Валерия писала участникам тренинга, и они с радостью делились успехами, приглашали её на курсы, уточняя, что их ведёт в онлайне сам Роман Тихонов. «Говорили, что он лучший в России тренер и один из лучших в мире, а всё, что происходит с ним, — это гонения нашего нехорошего государства», — рассказывает Валерия.
«ВЫ ОТ КАРАБАНОВА?»
В марте 2020 года Валерия Рожкова связалась с Радиевской, увидев её в репортаже, и теперь Наталья должна стать ещё потерпевшей в их коллективном иске. Именно благодаря Радиевской я смогла выйти на Валерию и рассказать историю гибели её дочери. 23 марта 2020 года Наталья прислала мне номер Рожковой, но Валерия опередила меня: её звонок раздался через двадцать минут после сообщения Натальи.
«Вы считаете, что это секта? Я уверена, что это ОПГ», — так звучали первые слова 60-летней Валерии Рожковой. Следующие три часа она излагала мне свою историю — сбивчиво, эмоционально, то задыхаясь от негодования, то едва сдерживая слёзы. К концу разговора я окончательно запуталась в деталях и предложила созвониться на следующий день.
То же самое произошло следующим вечером. Наше общение растянулось на недели и месяцы, Валерия продолжала присылать информацию о деле Марины и устройстве МТЦ, пока в какой-то момент не запросила мои документы. Я объяснила, что сотрудничаю с самиздатом как внештатный автор, и уточнила, что именно нужно предъявить, но женщина не ответила.
Потом она попросила меня составить текст письма для Татьяны Москальковой — уполномоченного по правам человека в РФ. Я посоветовала обратиться к юристу, так как не обладаю необходимыми знаниями. «К Карабанову?» — спросила Валерия. Мой вопрос о том, какое отношение к разговору имеет адвокат Александр Карабанов, снова остался без ответа.
Валерия согласилась опубликовать свою историю только на условиях анонимности, хотя ранее не раз открыто выступала на федеральных каналах и давала интервью интернет-изданиям. «Мы даже очно не знакомы, и на кого вы работаете, не знаем. Так что без фамилий», — написала мне женщина. Я прислала всю информацию о себе и самиздате и как могла объяснила, что это журналистский проект, который пишет о различных общественных явлениях.
Валерия разразилась негодованием: «Какое общественное явление? Это устойчивая преступная группа, против которой идёт уголовное дело, есть признаки коррупции, экстремизма, с вовлечением детей, людей разных профессий, со связями в высших органах власти. Нас не устраивает такой подход и формат статьи. Мы не согласны!!! Вы сами похожи на секту, „моя хата с краю, ничего не знаю“». Я прочитала это сообщение, отсчитывая пятьдесят капель валерьянки.
Спросила, почему всё-таки Валерия запрещает называть в статье своё настоящее имя. «Потому что это пустозвонство, и боюсь, что за вами стоит Карабанов или ещё кто-то… — ответила женщина. — У нас ещё есть дети и родственники, упоминание фамилии может им навредить. Для людей, кто попадает туда, это никакой помощи не несёт. А кто оттуда ушёл, может нести репутационные потери».
Позднее я просила Наталью Радиевскую успокоить Валерию и помочь уговорить её на рассказ от своего имени, как она уже делала для других журналистов. У Радиевской ничего не получилось. «Она вся на нервах сейчас. Нам очень тяжело», — призналась Радиевская.
При этом Валерия продолжала отправлять мне ссылки и документы, как будто ничего не произошло. «А нам что-нибудь покажете из своего расследования? А где ваше расследование?» — несколько раз интересовалась женщина, пока шла работа над текстами первого сезона. Потом Валерия обвинила меня в том, что я получила от неё много сведений и не дала ничего взамен. Я во второй раз предложила ей обратиться к социальному психологу Михаилу Вершинину, который изучает психокульты более двадцати лет.
«Да их запрещать надо, а не изучать. Is it really incomprehensible? Пусть даст показания в СК», — потребовала Валерия. Я сказала, что ей стоит обсудить это с самим Михаилом. Сейчас Валерия считает, что первый следователь намеренно уничтожила доказательства. Сотрудники Перовского следственного отдела не реагируют на её жалобы. По закону они должны провести проверку действий следователя, но это невозможно, поскольку она перешла на работу в центральный аппарат СК.
25 июня самиздат опубликовал первую часть расследования о психокультах, и я отправила Валерии ссылку на тексты. Через полчаса женщина позвонила мне в истерике. Она кричала, что я работаю на Карабанова, что я специально назвала ОПГ психокультами и сектами, что из-за таких публикаций у неё никого не получается привлечь к ответственности, ведь при слове «секта» следователи разводят руками. Разговор кончился тем, что она бросила трубку. Позже Валерия спросила меня в переписке: «Вам Карабанов заказал статьи?»
О том, сколько выдержит Роман Каплан на тренинге «Спарта», читайте во втором тексте расследования. В третьем мы расскажем, что увидела детектив Александра Панина, внедрившись в секту последовательниц Дениса Байгужина. Историю адвоката Карабанова мы приберегли для заключительного эпизода. Но лучше читать по порядку.