"They came to us"

On September 22, six FSB helicopters went down to the valley of the city of the Sun by the Sukhoi Mountain. The security forces took with them the whole leadership of the Church of the last covenant, the community of Sergei Torop, now better known as Vissarion. A week before that correspondent for such cases visited the community

In the early morning, thick fog scattered, soft golden light flooded the roofs of wooden carved houses, gardens in autumn colors, sculptures, ponds with water lilies, fountains and silk green lawns of the city of the Sun. Unlike the classical utopia, Thomaso Campanella, this city really exists in the foothills of the Sayan, near Lake Tiberkul, and a half thousand kilometers from Krasnoyarsk. Here is the abode of dawn , the center of the Vissarion community, the founder of the new religious movement in post -Soviet Russia. The authorities prefer to call the Vissariones a religious association and are sure that they act illegally.

The city is small, there are only three hundred inhabitants, but about five thousand live in the surrounding villages. Everything is unusual for the taiga village - from strawberries and watermelons on the beds at the end of September to the number of happy people. Smiles on their faces are the first thing that catches the eye, and also children - there are almost a third of the population here. They are beautifully dressed, go to school with a bizarre roof like the hobbits wider, and after school they are engaged in gardening, music, ballet, draw, play in children's musical ensembles or simply chasing the streets on great tires. In the community, no one curses obscenities, does not drink, does not smoke, does not eat meat, but for three decades everyone believes that a tall bearded man in a red velvet chiton, in a past life, policeman Sergey Torop, their teacher, Vissarion, the Messiah, a new incarnation of Christ.

Storm

On September 22, early in the morning, six FSB helicopters went down to the valley of the city of the Sun near the Sukhoi Mountain. Law enforcement officers arrested the head of the community and his two closest friends, Vadim Redkin and Vladimir Vedernikov.

Children play on one of the streets of the Odolnot monastery photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

A resident of the abode of dawn Elena Plotnikova calls me on Feima, her voice trembles:

“A column moves here, about thirty cars. The military with weapons arrived about 6.40, set up a camp in the center of the monastery, took the teachers and Vadik by helicopter ... They brought cages for the mentally ill. I am scared for children! I tell my husband: “Zhenya, what will happen to the children?”

Misha Plotnikov sleeps in the house of his parents in the monster monitor photos: Sergey Karpov for TD

We saw with 48-year-old Elena a week before the assault, when he had no longer portended him in the monastery. Lena showed me an album with photographs of her parents, disabled childhood.

Evgeny Plotnikov on the shores of Lake Tiberkul, which is considered sacred to the followers of Vissarion.
Follower of Vissarion Elena Plotnikova in the kitchen in her house in the monastery of Vissarion photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

- Why are you here on the mountain, in the taiga?

Polina and Misha Plotnikov photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

- This is a long story. I was born in the house of the disabled in the family of two stroller -shots. Tamara's mother stopped walking in three years after poor polio vaccination. My father Boris was born without legs, in his arms only one finger. Mom and dad got married in the house of the disabled. During the first pregnancy, the doctors did an abortion, because the disabled was not supposed to have children. They hid my pregnancy. They took me from them, sent to an orphanage, where I grew up for several years. Then dad learned to knit with two fingers to take me from the orphanage and provide for his family. My parents raised me in a tiny room in the house of the disabled. Somehow my friend, when I was 17, called me to meet with the teacher. Then I brought him to our house of the disabled, introduced him to both him and Vadik Redkin with my parents. Everything in my life has changed when I moved here to the monastery. I gave birth to seven children, I have a beloved husband, we are happy here.

Lenin’s husband Zhenya played that evening with the little two -year -old son Misha, their ten -year -old daughter Polina swayed on a swing. Elder sons helped parents with repairs, their daughters lived in the city - like most children who grew up in the community, the older children of Lena chose worldly life.

Dawn monitor photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

When Lena called me on Tuesday, she tried to smile, but it turned out badly.

“I went through fire, water and copper pipes in childhood, grew up in an orphanage, in a boarding school with two childhood disabled parents. I found peace here, and now they came to us and turned here literally a military operation, scared our children. Against whom the operation? "

Favorable conditions

A few days before the assault, I talk to the leader of the community. Sergei Torop, and now Vissarion, speaks slowly, muffled in a muffled voice, smiling:

“And in this time, favorable conditions have developed in Russia in order to realize what is necessary here for the good of the whole human race. We wanted to live in peace with everyone, it didn’t matter to us who was some religion, it was only important that we will live together, and then time will show who understands what and how. The main thing was to come here, to be inside the friendly environment. The constant feeling of the presence of good next to you is the most valuable. Please, in Siberia in bulk, let him come and try to live like us. He will immediately feel friendly contact, sincere, human relationships. ”

Vissarion, in the world Sergey Torop, during an interview with reporters photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

It is unlikely that the best time is now moving to the Vissarion community. Searches and interrogations began in December last year, a few days before the detention, the “organizer” of the community Vladimir Vedernikov, broad -shouldered, tall and swift, in a hat, similar to a tunnel, tells me. He arrived in the Krasnoyarsk Territory almost three decades ago from Chisinau, for eighteen years he worked responsible for seven temples, cultural centers, schools of masters in fifteen taiga villages, where the followers of the Church of the last covenant live.

Climbing on a felled table in the monster monitor. All the furniture and most utensils followers of Vissarion produce with their own hands photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

“Representatives of the FSB in civilian clothes came to our private school with searches, and they came to my house several times. Without a warrant, they seized all the equipment, documents, literature, archives. Eight bags were taken out! The local Major of the FSB interrogated me, interested in how we supposedly oppressed people by force, extorted money, acting on the consciousness of believers with psychotropic substances, ”says Vedernikov. - During the interrogation, they asked me where the community members who died of hunger, cold or torture were buried, whether we use in the temples of incense - I quote you verbatim - or other psychotropic drugs, whether we are raping minors. They told me directly that since such people came to interrogate us, they will not leave. This is our house, we will not leave it anywhere. And if teachers make a great martyr, faith will only intensify. ”

Last Testament

The resettlement, and for someone, the flight began more than a quarter of a century ago. Dreamers, escapeists, seekers of spiritual enlightenment, urban intellectuals who were binge read Daniil Andreev, Carlos Castaneda, Roerichs and Blavatsky, the sacred texts of the Bible and Trital, rode to build a dry religious Ashram, a new society, a new ark on Mountain. We drove from all over the country after the high blue -eyed Sergey, Christ of Siberia, the teacher, daddy, Vissarion. In 2000, they were officially registered by the Ministry of Justice as the Church of the New Testament, with their unique life lifestyle and strict rules in all areas of personal and public life. The land was leased for 50 years.

Followers of Vissarion on Temple Square during the Sunday Liturgy in the monster monkey photo: Sergey Karpov for TD The follower of Vissarion Ekaterina Palkina came to the dawn in 2018 from Novosibirsk after a long spiritual search for photos: Sergey Karpov for TD

The founders of the community love to talk about the construction of the first houses in the taiga in the early nineties, as they lived in tents for years, covering them with polyethylene. In the morning, the water in the bucket froze, I did not want to get out of the sleeping bags, to whom the first would be to drop in the frost, to melt the stove. They are sure that they survived, strengthened and stood on their feet thanks to prayer and teaching. The words of Vissarion, even his interviews became the texts of the last covenant. Today, the doctrine has eighteen volumes, dark red books with gold letters on the covers stand on the shelves in each house of the followers of Vissarion.

The follower of Vissarion Vladimir came to the dawn of the dawn in 1994 from St. Petersburg, where he was a street musician photo: Sergey Karpov for TD The followers of the Vissarion rise to the heavenly monastery to continue Sunday liturgy photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

On Tuesday, after the arrest of the three leaders of the community, the adherents sent each other the last chapter of the annals:

“Vadim (Redkin) has seen in recent months, in the last days that the teacher’s feelings, changing, allowed him to feel the pain of the world and pain, brought to him more and more, brought by the mistakes of those who stepped after him. Why, of course, the demand of Christ for the world, for believers, increased. ”

Meeting of the followers of Vissarion with a teacher in the confluence of the photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

“Any wild, unreasonable manifestation spoke in it with increasing flashes of pain and indignation on how unreasonable children turn their father’s house into an obscene place, which is even difficult to give a name.”

The community says that even if they ban their faith, they will destroy their literature, they will find all volumes on the Internet.

Live according to the written

The personal life of Vissarion is under the close attention of journalists, local authorities, as well as investigative bodies.

“He's all in the palm of his hand,” says Marina Pyatakova, a school teacher from the city of the Sun. “Everyone knows his wife, beauty Sonya, all his children,” they grew up, played, studied with our children. ”

The followers of the Vissarion rise to the heavenly monastery to continue Sunday liturgy photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

Now Vissarion is 62 years old. His first wife, Love Torop, left the community after a heavy experiment for many women with polygamous marriages.

Read also Vissarionian path: there and back

Like throughout Russia, there were more women in the community, and Vissarion, taking care that his people were breed and propagated, try to convince women not to be jealous, and men are not afraid of the two -wire. But even his own wife did not succeed in withstanding this, and love left the founder of the community. Following this, other triangles broke up.

During interrogations, investigators call the community a “totalitarian sect”, however, settlers say that all key decisions are made together, in the veche. Unresolved questions are asked by the teacher - now that he is behind bars, community members are going to live "by what has already been written." His followers say: “In your world, politicians are shot, poisoned, and we live in the world and harmony for more than twenty -five years.”

The followers of the Vissarion rise to the heavenly monastery to continue Sunday liturgy photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

In the world, Daria worked as a teacher of Russian and literature in St. Petersburg, was read out by the lyrics of the Silver Age. We are sitting in her spacious house, where Daria canned vegetables for her husband and two children for the winter.

“Most of the teenagers leave the community, someone goes to universities, someone goes to the city to work. Here they never see quarrels at home - in our faith we cannot think badly about another person, ”says Daria.

Children participate in a quiz after the holiday of the first school day photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

I ask Daria if there is a Vissarion in the cult of Johnstown , a sect that has ended mass suicide. She looks at me absentmindedly, listens to her husband, continues to list the fruits of happy coexistence in the community. The husband of Daria Alexander, also a former Petersburger, sits and cuts a sculpture of a bear made of wood. Then she will go for sale.

Extremist organization

In mid -September, everything was still safe in the community. We went to the rehearsal of the orchestra - we played Vivaldi, Handel, Bizet, accompanying the two former voices of the Stanislavsky and Bolshoi Theater. After the rehearsal, the two musicians of the orchestra discussed things far from art. Colonel Maleck says that in a past life he worked as a lawyer in the GRU, and now plays a bass in the Siberian orchestra. And Colonel Aleksakhin, in the subordination of which in Chernobyl there were almost a thousand liquidators, plays on a clarinet.

Maleki says:

“We were not touched for almost thirty years, although there were checks, but to so intensively - this is the first time. They came to us from the FSB, interrogate people in villages with special diligence, obviously looking for something negative. They asked me something ridiculous: questions are related to our nutrition, with the way of our life, with faith. ”

The followers of the Vissarion at the temple peak pray near the altar of the Earth during the Sunday Liturgy Photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

Alexander went to the taiga in 2004, completely disappointed in his Moscow life.

“In the world, I had a negativity to everything that I was doing inside. Although at first the jurisprudence fascinated, the very essence of this process did not like. Then I realized: people simply do not know how to negotiate, solve ordinary life tasks with each other, to concede, agree - how wrong, immediately flee to court. No one at work could understand why I decided to leave here. He tried to explain, just as in recent days he tried to explain to investigators why I believed. I was told that they were interrogated as a witness in the case of the creation of the Church of the Last Testament, an “extremist organization”. It seems that there is an intention to ban our faith. ”

Followers of Vissarion Oleg and Vladimir restore the dome of the Church of the Church of the Last Testament in the village of Petropavlovka Photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

As far as the community is known, five believers pass on charges of extremism, including “Teachers of Vissarion” and his closest friends. The former colonel of the Ministry of Emergencies Vladimir Aleksakhin shares his thoughts about this. He worked as a rescuer in Chernobyl and in the Far East, accepted the faith of Vissarion and moved here to the Krasnoyarsk Territory, in the last year of the last century: “He learned gardening, leased land in the center of Abakan, defeated the parks“ Gardens of Dreams ”and“ Inspiration ”, business brought a good income, I donated millions of rubles for equipment, for seeds, seedlings - seedlings. Everything is good. And then he and his family moved to the mountain. I can’t say that I consider the teacher Christ, he is primarily for me an dear friend. We trained families to Thailand, to Italy, I paid for our trips. ”

One of the last reasons for the investigation was the visit of the REN TV group and the conflict during the traditional Sunday meeting of Vissarion with followers.

What happened to the crew, Ren-TV calls the attack, and the followers of Vissarion-a provocation. Now in the city of the sun you can only work with accompaniment. Three children, the ten -year -old Polina Plotnikova, her two -year -old brother Misha and a friend Polina, eight -year -old Sveta, took me around the community.

Temple Square in the monster monitors photo: Sergey Karpov for TD

For years, the Vissarionians spoke, argued, wrote, removed television, and at the beginning of this year, not only journalists became interested in the activities of Vissarion. Seven criminal, four administrative and two civil cases were brought against his followers. When you ask what is happening with you, they answer briefly: "They came to us."

Vissarion community of Vissarion Religion Sect Church of the Last Testament