Fifteen years ago “The White Brotherhood” was getting ready for the end of the world

I am a schoolgirl, and I am running to buy an ice with my friends. When we are half way from the shop, some smiling women are stopping us. They give us “Jusmalos” newspapers and tell us a good news: “Children, the God has incarnated on the Earth. This God is a lady, her name is Maria Devi Christ” then they say that we may take these newspapers for free or give them the money, we have so that they could buy flowers for the Living God Maria Devi Christ. We give them all our old cheap money which was meant for ice-cream, we take the posters and at home we tell our parents that the end of the world would be soon in November.  My parents look at the papers distrustfully and in some time put them on the mezzanine to the pile of newspapers. Maybe the portrait of the lady dressed up in white, who is standing with raised hands has been being there for all these 15 years. And there are the other papers, with the description of the events, that took place in Sofia Cathedral on the 10^th of November, on the first pages. About one thousand members of the brotherhood came there to commit a suicide in order not to wait for the end of the world, which was claimed to happen on the 24^th of November. The police arrested about 616 people. 137 of arrested members of the “White Brotherhood” went on a hunger-strike but they were fed by force after all. Their leaders, Yuri Krivonogov (religious name was Youohann Svami) and Marina Tsvigun (Maria Devi Christ) were quite honest during the trial. And as the result they got a seven and a four year-old sentences.

DOOMSDAY CHRONICLES

At first Yuri Krivonogov, the lecturer of “Znaniye” community, was searching in Ukraine for the people with non-conventional abilities in order to make his non-conventional idea true. During his lecture in Donetsk Marina Tsvigun, who was a journalist, a poet, an instructor of the Youth Communist League city committee and the deputy of the council of district. In three days she came to Kiev and soon became Krivonogov’s wife. Later on, during the court, she told that Yuri promised her wealth and fame. He didn’t cheat anyway, as Marina got it after all.

Krivonogov used the Hare Krishna doctrine as a base for his combinatory doctrine and added some specks of other religions. Later on it started reminding more of Christianity, as Marina persuaded Krivonogov that Hinduism just seems to be highly appealing, yet it will never be popular in our country. But it was Krivonogov who invented Mariya. There were some evidences in the materials of the investigation that he had proposed some other woman to act the goddess but she didn’t agree. Anyway, in some time Marina Tsvigun became Maria Devi Christ and claimed that she had survived apparent death during the operation and the essence of Jesus Christ entered her body. It was not mentioned that the named operation was an abortion and it went on without any complications (besides, this was not the first operation of the kind for Marina). So, she started preaching some specific religious feminism, claiming that the God is the Mother and that only women should be the priests.

The housemaid girl, who was serving the Krivonogovs slept on the rug near their room. Lt was that girl, who was sitting later on in the conference hall and I have communicated with her, Ganna Mulyun, the defence, who was the state prosecutor during the Jusmalos case (“Jusmalos” is another name of the Great White Brotherhood). In order to recollect all the details of one of the most difficult in Ganna Leonidovna’s cases, we met in one of Kiev courts. This case really lasted longer than nine months of public hearings – Ganna Leonidovna was a head of “Poryatunok”, the parent association for those who had become the victims of the “white brotherhood”. And the members of brotherhood remembered her as well. “Wherever I went, they did some provocations”, she tells. And they also bullied Victor Shohin, the investigator of the prosecution office – they made ads about buying the gold or selling a cheap flat and wrote his phone number …

One of the brightest examples of those, who have suffered from the membership in this brotherhood, was Stanislav Bazhan, a military man from Vinnitsa. Evidently, he was prone to be dependent from the other people’s influence (and there were an awful lot of methods of influence in the “White Brotherhood”). He has visited the lecture and after a 40 minutes of conversation with the lecturer he joined the sect. he was given a new name, documents and sent him preach. In some time the victim had a post-suggestion genesis – the harm that was caused by repeatedly used hypnosis. He was in such a bad state that he was unable to tell where he was from and what his name was.

It became evident that Marina Tsvigun was guilty only thanks to an occasion. The defense told, that according to her words, she was making experiments on the people, who were in the prison cell with her. She used to wear only white clothes, so the women in the  СІЗО laughed at her. Once, Marina lost her temper: “Don’t you believe that I am a goddess? I will prove you” – she told. She had chosen one of the women from the prison cell – the one, who must have been the most vulnerable and told her “You come up here”. The girl came up. Then Marina started stroking her head and ears and telling something to her in a whisper… In twenty minutes the girl fell down, she had convulsions, her skin covered with red spots, the froth started coming out of her mouth. The women, who were in the same prison cell with Marina, were taken away and the guards were scared as well. This case helped to prove that Marina knows the methods of influencing the human mind and can use these methods.

“She had very strong character, she douched herself with cold water and always looked perfect” – Ganna Mulyun.  – “Yet, she was absolutely merciless person. Regardless of all her beautiful appearance, I have never met any woman, who could be worse than she. During the accident in Sofia cathedral, after her order, people started hurting themselves, they hit their heads against the wall till the blood came. I was interested, just as a woman, why she didn’t stop them. So I asked Marina. Tsvigun answered: “I came here to die too, just as they did. But they came to die at my feet”. The investigators told that when they brought Vitaliy Kovalchuk, who was called Johann Peter the Second in the brotherhood, for the identification parade with Marina (as he also got his six years of imprisonment), he fell on his knees as soon as he has seen her and crawled to her from the elevator throughout the corridor of the prosecutor’s office. She liked this lot”.

WHAT WAS LATER

 After breaking with Marina Yuri Krivonogov never denied that she was a goddess. While being in Sokiryanska prison, which is in Chernovetskaya region, he wrote a book on the clean pages, torn out of the library books, where he still admitted that he was devoted to Maria Devi Christ. Now he got married and he took his new wife’s surname. He works and he does not want to remember the past. “Do know, that I have quite another life now, and I have other opinions” – this was how Krivonogov addressed his ex-wife in all the newspapers –“and I feel ashamed for all the nonsense, I had written before”.  

After imprisonment and renunciation from Krivonogov  Marina Tsvigun married Vitaly Kovalchuk, started practicing painting and tried to revive the business, after changing it a little bit and giving the brotherhood traces of some family religion. In its base there was a blessing of the married couples or the “Unions of the Holy Love that created the Golden Ring, which is the way of transformation of the divine Love power of Maria Devi Christ and Johann Peter the Second”…

Several years ago Tsvigun and Covalchuk left Kiev and moved to Russia. This latest information about them was told us by the person, whom Marina communicated with a lot. This person is Anatoliy Kolodniy , the head of the department of religious studies of Grigoriy Skovoroda Philosophy Institute of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences. On the wall in his office there is a poster of Julia Tymoshenko, dressed up in white clothes and wearing corals. Opposite to the portrait of the Prime minister there is one more calendar with the picture of the angel – a blonde with white wings wearing white clothes. He remembers “the White Brotherhood” unwillingly. Yet, he shows the pictures of Mar5ina and Vitaliy visiting him. “They often visited us. They lived not far, in Troeshchina, I guess. Before the visit they phoned me and asked if we had anybody at home. If there was not, they came in 10 minutes. I used to wonder if she was pretending that she’s a Goddess or she did really feel that she’s a god. She was always so tender, and this was highly appealing to people. She used to come up to every person, say him something good, caress him. And she looked very attractive, it was a pleasure to look at her and this also made people believe her. History calls such a movement “cenosystic”, from the Greek word “cenosys”, which means the God’s coming to people; this is when one person is worshipped by others. This trend was quite spread in Ukraine on the beginning of the previous century. In Balta, which is in Odessa region there was a monk, Innokentiy Levisor, who claimed himself to be the third of the Holy Trinity in 1908 as he had swallowed a dove, that was actually not a dove, but a Holy Spirit. In 1930s in Rovno region there was Ivan Murashko, who was considered to be the god and who was worshipped, there were also the followers of Leontiy Gritsan. There still are some of his disciples in Rovno region who consider him to be a saint. In Kirovograd region there were mithrophanians… Yet, there were no examples of deifying phenomenon except for Maria Devi Christ. To some extent, it was the church that gave birth to this phenomenon. The point is that traditional religions do it after the person’s death, while sects do it when the person is alive. However, deifying is quite an individual thing. I remember that when Marina came to visit us, my wife always escaped to the kitchen. I asked her: “What’s up? Why don’t you stay with us?” and she used to answer: “You know, she affects me somehow. She looks at me and I feel this. This doesn’t work with you, you’ve got strong energy”. 

BOHEMIAN HAPPINESS

Looking for the modern followers of the “White Brotherhood” or, at least, those, who claim themselves to be the ones, Tyzhden went to Dnepropetrovsk. The citizens mostly don’t even guess about the park of sculptures, built in Amur-Nizhnedneprovsk district, which is on the outskirts of the city. Raisa Kuznetsova, the head of the private enterprise “Yusmalos” and the bohemian music group with the same name, built it on the territory of the abandoned ground on her own initiative. Using the other name and the symbols of the Great White Brotherhood is not just a coincidence, as, according to the legend, the singer was often visited by Maria Devi Christ and she taught Raisa the basis of her religion.

I went through the park to the neat house with a time-table of reception hours on the doors – Mrs. Raya Kuznetsova tells fortune only to those, who had been christened. Unfortunately, I failed to know my fortune or the new date of the doomsday as Raya wasn’t at home. Yet, it can be clearly seen that the “White Goddess” brand  still has a great potential in our country.

THE WORLD EXPERIENCE FRIEDRICH GRIESS (specially for Tyzhden)

The president of the European Federation of the Centers for Research and Informing about the Sectarianism (FECRIS),

To break the barrier

The sect problem appeared in Europe at the beginning of the sixties, most of these organizations came from America and Far East. First they were treated like churches. Yet, a bit later it became clear that this problem is more social than religious. Nowadays there are three countries in Western Europe, which regulate this problem on the level of state legal level. They are France with the best anti-sectarian legislations and special organizations in Europe, Belgium and Austria, where the federal department for the cult-related affairs was established.

My daughter joined the religious group 25 years ago. And my public activity led to her sending a letter to my wife in 1995. In that letter she wrote that I am worse than Hitler, as I persecute the Lord’s people. In the sect my daughter was told that the woman should not have a professional education, so she didn’t work for two years, thus, required the financial help from the family, which she luckily accepted. Now she doesn’t speak to me, though we don’t even touch religious topics, as this is useless. She is still in the sect, yet, she communicates with us. The sect, our daughter has joined, is coming from Netherlands and is called Smiths Freunde, as it was founded by Johann Smith. Nowadays its official name is “Christian community” or “Christian church”, it has branch offices in 60 countries of the world. This church also exists in Ukraine; it has the large center in Ternopol.

Criticizing religious beliefs is not our aim, what we want is to understand what the new sects, which are constantly appearing, do. Their violating the human rights, and controlling all the spheres of the adepts’ lives is what makes us most anxious. They tell adepts what they should wear, eat, read, watch or listen to, whom they should communicate or marry with. They also discriminate all the other people from outside the group, as they consider themselves to be better than other people; they use to say that they will be saved, while other people will go straight to hell. The leaders of some cults prove that a great battle or a catastrophe will take place, all the people will die and only the adepts of their group will stay alive. This is destructive both for the personality and for the society as a whole.

It is hard to break with the sect, as it sets the psychological barriers. It restricts the communication of its members, so they become more and more dependant and lose independence in their own lives. If you break up with the sect, soon you’ll be at a loss, as you will have no one who will tell you what to do and how to live exactly… And if you have some failures, they could say that it is the result of the exit from the sect. That’s the way, people are held there.