Russian doctors and rescuers tried this week to coax more than two dozen doomsday cult members into leaving their forest hideout near the Volga River, where they were awaiting the end of the world with the coming of spring.
The cult members have threatened to blow themselves up with about 100 gallons of stockpiled gasoline if authorities forced them out of their cave bunker near the village of Nikolskoye, about 400 miles southeast of Moscow, regional spokesman Yevgeny Guseynov told reporters.
Pyotr Kuznetsov, a self-declared prophet who established his True Russian Orthodox Church after he split with the official church, has not joined his followers. He was undergoing psychiatric evaluation after he was charged with setting up a religious organization associated with violence.
The 29 people—including four children, one only 18 months old—were stocked with food and other supplies in the snowy forest hideout. Russian Orthodox monks carefully descended into the snow-covered gully to try to make contact with the cult, but members refused to speak. They were, however, exchanging letters with church leader Kuznetsov and doctors, who promised food or medical supplies if needed.
Kuznetsov said his group believed that, in the afterlife, they would be able to judge whether others deserved heaven or hell. They are not allowed to watch television, listen to the radio or handle money. Members of the group don't eat food packaged with UPC codes— which the cult regards as the mark of the Antichrist.
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