It is commonly known that expert evaluation is the cornerstone of evidence in civil proceedings and is among the principle forms of evidence in criminal proceedings. The expert himself, possessing specialized education, knowledge, and qualifications, is a figure whose opinion plays a decisive role in the trial and at times becomes crucial in the fate of other people.
Professional lawyers are aware that Russia’s civil and criminal proceedings are designed in such a way that, even when a human rights advocate brings abundant evidence and witness testimonies, the court may disregard it all and rest its judgment on a single, skewed yet decisive element — expert evaluation. And when that element is flawed, an expert’s error is transformed into an investigative and judicial mistake that can devastate the lives of innocent defendants and their families.
Lawyers in Russia, aware of the scale of the problem, are calling for the creation of a registry of unscrupulous experts, tougher liability for knowingly false reports, and amendments to the Criminal Code. They argue that such measures are essential to ensure that experts—who at times decide people’s fates, stripping them of property and assets—face real, proportional responsibility for deliberate unlawful actions. Among their proposals is to reclassify the crime under Article 307 of the Russian Criminal Code as a serious offense and raise the maximum penalty to ten years’ imprisonment.
We consider it important to examine Russia’s legal experience and offenses committed by representatives of Dvorkin’s totalitarian sect. This is crucial because threats to democracy are becoming particularly relevant, given that the network of antidemocratic anticult influence from Russia, led by Dvorkin, has been built up in democratic countries for decades. Examples that highlight these dangers and help identify risks to the functioning of democratic institutions will be provided below.
In this context, it is worth noting that actfiles materials have previously mentioned the “chief expert” Dvorkin and how, after reaching the federal level in Russia, he became chairman of the Expert Council on State Religious Evaluation at the Ministry of Justice. He grossly violated the law. Moreover, Dvorkin lacked the relevant professional qualifications; he was neither a civil servant, nor a religious scholar, nor an expert in relationship between the state and religion, which contradicted the requirements of the Regulations on the Expert Council.
As far back as 2009, specialists reacted extremely negatively to this decision and the new composition of the expert council. Remir Lopatkin, religious scholar and professor at the Department of State-Confessional Relations at the Russian Academy of State Service, voiced his stance on such an “expert council.” He stated: “The action we’re looking at today…is aimed at division, sowing discord within society, and pitting parts of the public against each other. That’s the first point. The second is that the issue goes beyond just the council. The Ministry of Justice arrogates, and partially delegates to the council, powers that it cannot have by the law. It states: “control over religious associations’ activities”. How so? Even in Soviet times the Council for Religious Affairs had no right to control the activities of religious associations. “Control over religious organizations’ declared forms and methods”. What right does anyone have to demand from a religious association to detail its forms and methods in a charter? It’s their internal matter. The Constitution separates religious organizations from the state, which means the state does not interfere with their internal structure or decisions.” 2
Anatoly Pchelintsev, editor-in-chief of the journal Religion and Law and an honorary attorney of Russia, also questioned the council’s competency: “Honestly, it’s hard to imagine a less professional body. Of the 24 members on the council, we hardly found any qualified religious scholars or scientists, except for two. The rest are journalists, engineers — people far removed from science. Among them are even extremists, and I have legal grounds for that claim. Recently, the Central Court of Khabarovsk, in response to a case by the Khabarovsk prosecutor, ruled one of the leaflets to be extremist material. The author of this leaflet is none other than Kuzmin A.V., one of the adherents of a pseudo-Orthodox cult led by Mr. Gorkin, operating in Saratov Oblast. His leaflet incites religious hatred and hostility.”
Let us recall that Alexander Kuzmin is Dvorkin’s closest associate — executive secretary of RACIRS and head of the missionary department of the Saratov diocese.
For more details on how Dvorkin recruited representatives from his shadow group to this Expert Council, who joined his team of so-called “experts” without sufficient qualifications or academic titles, see the article “Dvorkin’s Totalitarian Sect. 2009: Expert Council”
As head of the Expert Council under the Ministry of Justice, Dvorkin is clearly familiar with the real situation at the local level and the weak points in civil and criminal proceedings in Russia. As the country’s “chief expert,” he knows that proving the subjective element of the crime for a knowingly false expert report, provided for in Article 307 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, is quite difficult. An unethical expert can always explain that he is sure that “white is black” or vice versa. As a last resort, he can simply say he made a mistake. Dvorkin apparently took into account all these legal gaps in Russian legislation regarding experts and expert examinations, all these “loopholes” for manipulation and the hard-to-prove liability for a knowingly false expert report. And he didn’t just notice them; he clearly exploited them in creating and deploying his criminal network by involving judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officials in a criminal collusion. And this is not just about lobbying certain interests in favor of a client or a hostile takeover of a business — Dvorkin’s activities are much more serious and large-scale than they might seem at first glance: from taking children away from their parents to inciting hatred and wars between states.
The Trial Over “Bhagavad Gita As It Is”
It is worth mentioning the high-profile trial in which Dvorkin and his criminal group RACIRS were directly involved: they attempted to declare the Russian version of “Bhagavad Gita As It Is” extremist material. This book, by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, is a commented translation of the sacred Hindu text. The trial took place in the Russian city of Tomsk between August 12, 2011, and March 21, 2012. News of the criminal case against “Bhagavad-gita As It Is” did not go unnoticed in India, the United States, and Europe. In India, the news sparked what was called an “explosion of indignation” and turned into a political scandal. The case triggered a global media response, a diplomatic scandal, widespread protests from Indian politicians and the public, and criticism from both Indian and Russian scholars and human rights advocates.
International media covered in detail both the district court’s verdict and the rejection of the prosecutor’s appeal. On the eve of the trial, search engines displayed up to 500 news reports on the subject. India’s largest television network, New Delhi Television, continuously kept viewers informed about developments around “The Bhagavad-gita,” facilitating communication between the public and prominent practicing lawyers in India. For the first time in the history of Russian-Indian relations, anti-Russian demonstrations took place in India.
Few people know how Dvorkin’s totalitarian sect prepared and consistently fueled this international scandal. It is no surprise that the names that appear in both the scandal itself and its preparation, including those from RACIRS, are Alexander Dvorkin, Alexander Novopashin, Alexander Kuzmin, Alexander Korelov, Roman Silantyev, Maxim Stepanenko, and other notorious figures of Dvorkin’s totalitarian sect.
In the material below, we will draw on the scholarly article by Alexei Timoshchuk and Konstantin Filkin, Doctors of Philosophy, “The Case of the Trial of Swami Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita: Genesis, Analysis, Public and Media Reaction,” published in The Vestnik Tomskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta. History, 2013, No. 4 (24), as well as the article “The Trial of Bhagavad-gita As It Is” in Russian Wikipedia and other sources.
“Many observers considered the Tomsk trial the result of a ‘local-level conflict’ between the Krishna devotees and representatives of the Tomsk diocese of the ROC. According to religious scholar Boris Falikov, this trial became yet another round of persecution against the Krishna devotees by the ‘medieval tandem’ (a term Falikov coined to describe the alliance of Russian law enforcement and the ROC in their fight against sects).”
The Norwegian news service Forum 18, in the article “RUSSIA: Has the ‘madness’ of banning religious publications been stopped?” (7) reported the following while investigating who inspired this reckless move — the attempt at prohibition, which in fact stirs up hostility and hatred among people:
“In an analysis posted on his Livejournal blog on 2 January, Nikolai Karpitsky carefully reviewed all the evidence of possible initiators of the Tomsk case. Karpitsky — a philosophy lecturer at Siberian State Medical University in Tomsk, who is himself Russian Orthodox — took a close interest in the case on the side of the defence and attended hearings.”
“Karpitsky argues that despite evidence of FSB involvement, it is unlikely its officers would have initiated the case ‘unless they had an order from elsewhere’. He also discounts the idea that the three Tomsk University ‘experts’ who conducted the initial 2010 analysis were behind it, given their surprise that it would be used in court to try to ban the book and their renunciation of their analysis in court. He also rejects the idea that other academics could have been behind it.” 7
He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at Tomsk State University. A philosopher, public figure, and doctor of philosophy, he lectured on philosophy at universities in Tomsk, Riga, Khanty-Mansiysk, and Luhansk, and is the author of works on philosophy and religious studies.
“Karpitsky notes that an order or [command signal] could have come from Moscow to oversee the case, but can find no evidence of this. He points out that the FSB security service kept the case secret between October 2010 and June 2011. He argues that had the FSB been following a secret instruction from Moscow to prepare the case for court it would not have allowed Maksim Stepanenko, the head of the Tomsk Russian Orthodox Diocese’s Missionary Centre, to launch an attack on the book on 29 June 2011, one day before the prosecution case was handed to Lenin District Court. Stepanenko’s extensive attack on quotes from the work closely paralleled the ‘expert analysis’ of Avanesov, Svistunov, and Naumov from 2010, which had not yet been presented to the court.” 7
Source: k-istine.ru 9
Karpitsky stressed that on the website http://www.k-istine.ru, under the byline “Maksim Stepanenko, head of the Missionary Department of the Tomsk Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. Missionary-apologetic project ‘K Istine’ (‘Toward the Truth’), June 29, 2011,” an article appeared titled: “The book of the founder of the ‘Society for Krishna Consciousness’ Abhay Charan De ‘Bhagavad Gita As It Is’ — everyone who is not a Krishna devotee is a demon, a fallen sinner, a fool, and an ignoramus.” The article contained textual parallels with the expert analysis by Avanesov, Svistunov, and Naumov, which, at that point, had not yet even been presented to the court. 8
So from whom could the order from Moscow have come, the command to supervise the Tomsk case, given the close ties between Aleksandr Dvorkin (from Moscow) and Maksim Stepanenko (from Tomsk)?
Press conference “Totalitarian Sects: A Threat to the Individual, the Family, Society, and the State” at Interfax-Siberia, February 21, 2012.
Aleksey Berveno (left), archpriest of the Holy Trinity Church in Tomsk, head of the Orthodox rehabilitation center for drug addicts “Recovery of the Lost.”
Aleksandr Dvorkin (center), professor at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University of the Humanities (STOUH), head of the Department of Sectology, president of RACIRS.
Maksim Stepanenko (right), head of the Missionary Department of the Tomsk Diocese.
Source: k-istine.ru 11
“The first to announce the opening of a criminal case against the Bhagavad Gita to the public on August 7, 2011, was Maksim Stepanenko, head of the Missionary Department of the Tomsk Diocese of the ROC, who had been pursuing Krishna devotees in the region since early 2009 (in April 2011, in a village near Tomsk, four solid residential houses of Krishna devotees were demolished on his initiative).”
“The Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation for Tomsk Region refused to initiate a criminal case against Maksim Stepanenko, head of the Missionary Department of the Tomsk Diocese. The petition for criminal proceedings was filed by Enver Izmailov, head of the Tomsk Society for Krishna Consciousness. In February 2009, Stepanenko spoke at a public hearing on a project by society members to build several houses in the village of Kandinka. The Krishna devotees found his remarks offensive and regarded them as an attempt to obstruct the activities of their religious organization.”
Source: sova-center.ru 13
“If Maksim Stepanenko is an ‘illiterate blogger,’ then why are the sectarians’ proselytizing projects in Tomsk collapsing so badly?” — Maksim Stepanenko.
Source: k-istine.ru 14
June 30, 2011
Let us return to the beginning of the Tomsk trial. The lawsuit was officially filed by the Tomsk city prosecutor, Senior Justice Counselor Viktor Fedotov, on June 30, 2011, in the Leninsky District Court of Tomsk. The petition sought to recognize the third edition of the book “Bhagavad Gita As It Is” as extremist, with the aim of banning its publication, storage, and distribution under Article 13 of the Federal Law “On Countering Extremist Activity,” and, accordingly, to forward the ruling to federal authorities in Moscow for inclusion in the Federal List of Extremist Materials and for its prohibition throughout the territory of Russia. In the application, the prosecutor stated that his actions were carried out in the interests of “the Russian Federation and an unspecified circle of persons,” and listed the Department of the Ministry of Justice for Tomsk Region as the “interested party.” It should be recalled that in 2011 Aleksandr Dvorkin was chairman of the Expert Council on State Religious Evaluation under the Ministry of Justice in Moscow.
2011. Viktor Vasilyevich Fedotov (from February 24, 2010, to February 2020, prosecutor of the city of Tomsk). In 1993 he graduated with honors from the Faculty of Law at Tomsk State University (TSU).
It is worth noting that Vladimir Lukin, the human rights commissioner of Russia, who closely followed the entire trial, later told Interfax-Religion on December 29, 2011, that the whole case was an “unpleasant story” and described the Prosecutor’s suit as “very strange”. “The struggle with terrorism is a struggle with real terrorist planning and creation of groups, and not with the interpretation of ancient holy books, of whatever faith they might belong to,” he added. 7
Apparently, the prosecutor’s “very strange lawsuit” in Tomsk is explained by the subsequent spike in his income declarations, which occurred in 2011–2012.
“According to religious scholars Sergey Ivanenko and Nikolay Karpitsky, a view shared by a number of media outlets, the driving force behind the prosecutor’s petition was Maksim Stepanenko, head of the Missionary Department of the Tomsk Diocese. Ivanenko states that from 2008 to 2011 Stepanenko took ‘an active part in stirring up hatred against the Krishna devotees,’ launching an ‘anticult campaign’ against several families of Tomsk Krishna devotees who had established a settlement near the village of Kandinka. Largely thanks to his efforts, in 2011 the unfinished ‘sectarian’ settlement was demolished.
As Ivanenko points out, ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness) in Russia has had a complicated relationship with the ROC. Krishna devotees face criticism from the Orthodox anticult movement and from individual hierarchs. In 1994, the Bishops’ Council of the ROC adopted the resolution ‘On Pseudo-Christian Sects, Neopaganism, and Occultism,’ in which ISKCON was labeled a pseudo-religion. Orthodox publishers have issued anticult works portraying ISKCON and other Hindu-inspired religious organizations active in Russia as satanic, pseudo-religious, destructive totalitarian sects. For instance, in the 1990s the ROC disseminated a pamphlet by Archpriest Aleksandr Novopashin, ‘Christ and Krishna: Light and Darkness,’ in which Krishna was called the devil. At Orthodox universities, Aleksandr Dvorkin’s book ‘Sectology. Totalitarian sects: The Experience of Systematic Research’ serves as a study guide in sectology, where ISKCON is described as a “pseudo-Hindu syncretic proselytizing postmodernist neopagan totalitarian sect.”
It should be noted that in his book “Sectology. Totalitarian sects: The Experience of Systematic Research,” Aleksandr Dvorkin employs linguistic and psychological techniques aimed at inciting religious hostility toward nearly all non-Orthodox religions, including Hinduism. In particular, he declares Hinduism to be a “religion of the Antichrist,” directly linking it with absolute evil in Christian eschatology. He demonizes Hindu deities, especially Krishna, presenting him as a “dark spiritual entity” and directly comparing him to the devil. He uses derogative labels (“pseudo-Hindu,” “totalitarian sect”) stripping these religious movements of legitimacy. He dehumanizes their adherents, depicting them as “marginals,” “losers,” “slaves,” and people inclined to commit crimes. Dvorkin’s work shows a deliberate intent to cultivate in readers a sharply negative, hostile attitude not only toward Hindu religious practices but also toward Hindus themselves as people, inciting others to stir up hatred and violent extermination of groups discredited by Dvorkin, including religious minorities and vulnerable communities.
It is no surprise that Dvorkin’s extremist manual — the book “Sectology. Totalitarian sects: The Experience of Systematic Research” — was followed to the letter by Dvorkin’s adherents in the totalitarian sect he leads, first and foremost by representatives of RACIRS.
In 2010, Aleksandr Kuzmin, secretary of RACIRS, urged everyone engaged in the fight against cults “not to be embarrassed by accusations from cult defenders of inciting interreligious hatred and intolerance.”
May 14, 2010. Aleksandr Kuzmin: Cults Create Their Own “Human Rights” Organizations
Aleksandr Kuzmin, head of the Saratov branch of the Center for Religious Studies, urged those fighting against cults not to be embarrassed by accusations from cult defenders of inciting interreligious hatred and intolerance.
“According to Aleksandr Kuzmin, civic activists and journalists who spread information about the dangers of cultism, as well as law enforcement officers, are accused of slander, inciting interreligious hatred, inquisitorial behavior, and intolerance.”
“Particularly active in this regard are the Krishna devotees, who sell their literature right on the steps of two major Saratov universities,” Kuzmin wrote.
“However, as Kuzmin reports, the sectarians not only recruit on the street. In his words, they also infiltrate state organizations with their agents of influence, create ‘human rights’ organizations, and slowly but surely take over business.”
And here is Maksim Stepanenko’s own admission, published by him in early 2012 (already after the trial) on the website Toward the Truth, as a response to Professor Nikolay Karpitsky’s investigation “Who Is the Real Initiator of the Trial Against the Book Bhagavad Gita As It Is?” In it, Stepanenko, calling himself an “illiterate blogger” (as he was evidently described in Karpitsky’s article), and counting himself among the “adherents of Dvorkin’s sect,” confirms that he deliberately prepared and carried out persecution of the religious organization the Society for Krishna Consciousness and other religious groups, intentionally stirring up hostility and hatred among people.
“As for the totalitarian sect ‘Society for Krishna Consciousness,’ apparently the Lord Jesus Christ unexpectedly gave me such a ‘specialization’ back when Muscovites began to protest against the construction of a massive Krishnaite heathen temple on Khodynka Field:
Opposition to the construction in Moscow of the Krishnaite demonic heathen temple — archive of publications
Letter from Archbishop Nikon of Ufa and Sterlitamak to the mayor of Moscow regarding the construction of the Krishnaite temple
Here in Tomsk, from the very beginning of opposing the Krishnaite missionary project in Kandinka — which was conceived by Enver Izmailov as a missionary project, an example of an ideal Krishnaite paradise on earth — the ‘illiterate blogger’ could not avoid beginning a study of the sect’s foundational book, ‘Bhagavad Gita As It Is.’ Typically, it is the sectarians and various philosophers who try to make superficial judgments about Orthodoxy without ever bothering to familiarize themselves with the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church, its canons, and its practices. The adherents of the ‘Dvorkin sect,’ by contrast, try to study the doctrine of the sects they criticize.
Therefore I admit that since 2010 the ‘illiterate blogger’ has been carefully studying ‘Bhagavad Gita As It Is,’ and there I find not only evil-speaking against all non-Krishna devotees, but also savage paganism, ignorance, and pseudoscience, as well as indoctrination into total enslavement to the guru and the sect. In the near future I hope to dedicate a separate publication to Krishnaite polytheism and its primitive paganism, which is so contrary to Biblical Revelation.”
“That is why I was, am, and will be the initiator of exposing the Krishnaite lies about God. And lately the Krishna devotees and their gurus have been lying so badly. With all my soul I oppose Tomsk residents abandoning their faith in the Son of God — the Lord Jesus Christ — in order to worship this dreadful demon as god…”
So it was Maxim Stepanenko who “discovered” in the book “Bhagavad Gita As It Is,” “not only evil-speaking against all non-Krishna devotees, but savage paganism, ignorance and pseudoscience, as well as indoctrination into total enslavement to the guru and the sect”! And wasn’t it precisely Stepanenko’s conclusions that later formed the basis of the “expert analysis” (2010) prepared by other Dvorkin-aligned “experts,” headed by Avanesov?
The most paradoxical part of this case is: on what grounds did the prosecutor’s office initiate the Tomsk trial? On the basis of an expert report drafted privately by three faculty members of Tomsk State University (the same university where the Tomsk city prosecutor once studied): Sergey Avanesov (dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at TSU and lecturer at the Tomsk Theological Seminary), philosopher Valeriy Svistunov, and philologist Valeriy Naumov. These three, acting privately, “compiled” an expert report and signed it on October 25, 2010.
“The prosecutor’s office initiated the case on the basis of an expert report, compiled privately by three Tomsk State University (TSU) faculty members on the instruction of the FSB.”
“The report stated that the book contained signs of extremism. However, during the court hearings, the scholars who had prepared the analysis retracted their earlier findings. As a result, the court suspended proceedings and, at the request of the prosecutor’s office, ordered a new expert examination.”
“In the view of Oleg Khazanov, head of the Department of Ancient and Medieval History and Methodology of History at TSU, the situation with the expert analysis was a challenge for Tomsk scholars. Khazanov noted that the Faculty of History at TSU had been studying the Bhagavad Gita for many years and that he himself lectured on the subject. Yet the expert analysis was not entrusted to him or other specialists in this field, but to people for whom the Bhagavad Gita is not an object of academic research and whom the scholarly community considers ‘incompetent in the study of this material.’” 17
“At trial, the book was defended by members of the Tomsk Society for Krishna Consciousness, who had been distributing it for about ten years, as well as the Bhaktivedanta Vaishnava Society, representing the publisher. As it turned out, the prosecution could not cite a single criminal act connected to the Bhagavad Gita. Nevertheless, the prosecutor noted that the case had been brought to court in order to prevent possible extremist crimes.” 18
The prosecutor’s words clearly bear the Dvorkin signature of inciting hostility and hatred among people: no crimes were recorded, but perhaps… what if… maybe… if one were to suppose it had happened, then it would have occurred… therefore, “to prevent possible extremist crimes” supposedly resulting from reading the commentary to a sacred Hindu scripture. Isn’t this sheer nonsense?
The article “Legalized Sadists. The Totalitarian Sect of Dvorkin” on the actfiles portal presented evidence that in 2013 Russian investigative journalists exposed a significant gap between Dvorkin’s claims about “sectarianism everywhere” and the actual criminal landscape. Dvorkin’s deceptive rhetoric — filled with speculation and assumptions about the “widespread spread of sectarianism” in the country and alleged crimes committed by “sects” and “cults” — did not correspond to reality.
Court Hearing of August 12, 2011
Let us return to the Tomsk trial. On the very day of the first hearing, Tomsk human rights activists held a series of one-person pickets in support of the book. Their placards displayed quotes from Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” — a novel about a totalitarian society where books are burned — as well as excerpts from Article 28 of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees freedom of conscience and religion, including the right to disseminate religious beliefs. 18 Meanwhile, inside the courtroom, an expert “battle” was unfolding in the name of justice.
The trial began on August 12, 2011. One of the first questions raised was whether there had been any cases of extremism connected with the book “Bhagavad Gita As It Is.” A representative of the Ministry of Justice responded that during the entire ten-year existence of the local religious organization “Tomsk Society for Krishna Consciousness,” there had been no cases of extremist activity, nor even violations of the law.
“The defense then questioned the very expertise underlying the prosecutor’s accusation, along with the qualifications of the experts. In support, they submitted a critical opinion by a prominent Russian religious scholar, PhD, S.I. Ivanenko, which called into doubt the expert evaluation carried out at Tomsk State University (TSU). His review identified numerous flaws: plagiarism from several Orthodox anti-cult websites, bias of the experts (all tied to the ROC), discrepancies between citations and the actual book under study, quotations taken out of context, and even references to other works besides “Bhagavad Gita As It Is.” But the most unexpected and decisive argument came in the form of an official letter from the TSU administration confirming that the university had not authorized its staff members Avanesov, Svistunov, and Naumov to conduct the expert evaluation. Thus, the prosecution referred to an ‘expert evaluation by TSU,’ when in fact no official TSU expertise had ever taken place. This finally undermined the credibility of the experts’ conclusions.” 19
“At the hearing, Doctor of Philology N. V. Serebrennikov and Doctor of Philosophy N. N. Karpitsky, who were invited to court as consultants, spoke. Both scholars expressed their disagreement with the expert opinion of TSU faculty, who had found elements of incitement to hatred and degradation of human dignity in the book.” 18
Both consultants stated that there was no extremism in the book and that its text must be read in the context of its own historical and cultural time.
Court Hearing of August 18, 2011
The August 18 hearing unfolded against the backdrop of a rising wave of protests in the media. The prosecution slightly altered its strategy, attempting to clarify that the case concerned exclusively the commentaries of Bhaktivedanta Swami, and not the original ‘Bhagavad-gita’ text itself. Yet in the prosecutor’s application and in the expert report, the book as a whole was cited, including both commentary and the original text together.
“The defense attorney, Alexander Shakhov, drew the court’s attention to the fact that the so-called ‘expert council’ was made up of individuals who lacked the necessary qualifications.” 20
“At the hearing, the defense presented an expert analysis by the well-known Russian religious scholar, Doctor of Philosophy Ekaterina Elbakyan, senior researcher at the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and member of the European Association for the Study of Religions. She analyzed the Vaishnava doctrine as a whole the ‘expert opinion of the comprehensive TSU commission,’ pointing out both the absence of extremism in the book and the errors made by the experts.” 19
“The defense petitioned the court to include the expert analysis of a famous Russian scholar of religion from Moscow, Ekaterina Elbakyan, in the case materials. The petition was denied.” 12
When the experts were questioned in court, interesting circumstances of the case came to light. For example, the head of the Tomsk “expert” group, Sergey Avanesov, testified that in 2010 he had been approached by Dmitry Velikotsky, an officer of the Tomsk regional branch of the FSB, with a request to provide an expert opinion. According to Avanesov, the FSB officer independently contacted Valery Naumov, who later joined Avanesov’s expert group. Sergey Avanesov limited his role in writing the expert opinion to organizational functions and editing the final text, without conducting the actual research. When he learned that a trial had begun, Avanesov was very surprised, expressed his bewilderment to the FSB officer, and then turned to the prosecutor’s office with a request to withdraw the application from the court. 8
Andrey Melnikov, deputy editor-in-chief of “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” and managing editor of its supplement “NG-Religions,” noted in his article “The Case Is Up to Krishna,” noted:
“The very first Tomsk expert analysis of 2010 devotes much space to justifying the ‘non-traditional,’ ‘sectarian’ — in the authors’ terminology — character of Prabhupada’s teachings. At the same time, the experts curiously and consistently draw comparisons with Christianity, which in turn makes it possible to conclude that the authors of the study are connected with confessionally biased ‘anti-sect’ organizations.” 21
In 2011, the head of the Tomsk “expert” group, Sergey Avanesov — then dean of the philosophy faculty of Tomsk State University — was also an active member of the missionary department of the Tomsk diocese of the ROC, headed by Maksim Stepanenko, and a contributor to the online resource “K Istine” (“Toward the Truth”), where Stepanenko served as editor-in-chief.
Source: web.archive.org 12
Avanesov graduated from the history faculty of Tomsk State University in 1986. He worked as a history lecturer in Tomsk universities, directed a summer Orthodox-oriented children’s camp called “Skiniya” near the village of Kaltay (under the patronage of the Tomsk Church of St. Alexander Nevsky), and served on the board of the Tomsk regional branch of the Russian Children’s Foundation. In August 2006, he was appointed to the Public Chamber of Tomsk Region as head of the Tomsk Regional Orthodox Social Foundation “Favor.”
“When the judge asked whether the text contained incitement to hatred, Avanesov admitted that he did not see direct incitement. Asked whether the text asserted the exclusivity of Krishna devotees over followers of other religions, Avanesov said such exclusivity exists in the texts of any religious tradition. At the same time, he acknowledged that in some passages of ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is,’ this point is made quite harshly, with the use of words such as ‘pigs,’ ‘asses,’ and others. The judge countered that every tradition contains similar expressions, citing as an example the Bible’s phrase: ‘Do not cast your pearls before swine.’ Avanesov responded that, as a tolerant person, he would not be offended by such words, though someone else might be. Therefore, he concluded, in such cases one should seek clarification directly from the practitioners of the tradition. Overall, when asked about offensive words and expressions in the text, Avanesov said: ‘There is no unambiguous answer to these questions.’” 20
Andrey Melnikov, in his article “The Case Is Up to Krishna”, wrote that “interested parties have repeatedly pointed out that, by this logic, one could accuse the Holy Scripture of any ancient tradition of extremism. Vice President of the Centralized Religious Organization ‘Center of Krishna Consciousness Societies in Russia,’ Radha Damodar Das (Sergey Zuev), believes that in the consideration of the above-mentioned expert reports ‘it turned out that the main role was not played by the text itself, but by the linguistic fabric, and some sharp words. For example, the word ‘fool’ was one of the main complaints. The text is a polemic about those people who do not want to listen to God and do not understand Him. This was written 5,000 years ago, and no one was trying to insult anyone.’” 21
“After Avanesov’s testimony, the defense pointed out to the court a number of quotations cited in the expert report that were either taken out of context or altogether absent both in the commentaries and in the original texts of the ‘Bhagavad-gita.’ The defense also demonstrated to the court that, during the examination, not only the third edition of the ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ (on which the expert report was based and which was being considered for recognition as extremist material) had been analyzed, but also the second edition, which differed in translation, as well as other books by Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada — ‘Srimad-Bhagavatam’ and ‘The Science of Self-Realization.’
“After Avanesov, Associate Professor of the Department of History of Philosophy and Logic of the Faculty of Philosophy of TSU, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences Valeriy Svistunov, was invited into the courtroom.” 20
“Questioned by the court, Valeriy Svistunov testified that Avanesov had suggested he conduct a philosophical study rather than a forensic examination, that there had been no official TSU order establishing an expert commission, that the tasks given to him had been formulated vaguely, that he had never read this book before, and that in preparing his report he relied on information from anit-sect (anti-cult) websites.” 12
“Svistunov admitted that he had been familiar with the book ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ since the 1980s but had read it only now. Svistunov emphasized that, when tasked with conducting a philosophical study, he had not been limited in his choice of literature for analysis. He approached the task creatively: in addition to the ‘Bhagavad-gita’, he studied other books and read anti-cult websites criticizing the Krishna devotees. When asked whether there were insults or derogatory statements in the commentaries, the expert replied that there were none, and that the Krishnaite doctrine’s views on Christianity were in no way hostile, but rather neutral.” 19
When asked whether he had studied an alternative viewpoint on the Krishna devotees and their teachings, Svistunov answered in the negative, again stressing that this polemic was his “subjective opinion.” 20
“To the question of whether there were offensive or derogatory statements in the text, Svistunov answered that he had not found any. Like Avanesov, Svistunov said that the text contains references to the exclusivity of this religious path, but similar claims of exclusivity exist in every religious tradition. To the question about the Krishna devotees’ views on Christianity, Svistunov noted that they were by no means hostile, but rather neutral.” 20
“The author of the expert report had used materials from anti-sect (anti-cult) websites. At this court session, printouts from these websites were entered into the case file. The judge and the defense then pointed out a number of discrepancies between the quotations cited in the report and the third edition of the ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ under review.” 20
“The judge pointed out to both experts that many of the quotations in the report were taken out of context or absent altogether, both from the commentaries and from the original texts of the Bhagavad-gita. This can be explained by the fact that many quotations, never verified by the experts, migrated into the report from Orthodox anti-cultist articles, where an entirely different edition of the ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ had been cited.” 19
“After the expert’s questioning, defense attorney Aleksandr Shakhov made an oral statement to the court on the need to declare the expert report unlawful and to hold accountable the three specialists who had prepared it for violations of the procedure for conducting expert examinations.” 20
“The second court hearing, just like the first, was accompanied by solo pickets by human rights defenders. After the session ended, the TV channel ‘GTRK Tomsk’ aired a report under the misleading title ‘The Book ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ Condemned for Extremism.’ Later, the title of the report posted on the channel’s website was changed to ‘The Court Is Considering the Case of the Book ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is.’” 23
Court Hearing on August 29, 2011
“The defense petitioned to attach to the case an expert opinion by the well-known Russian religious scholar Boris Falikov, Associate Professor at the Center for the Comparative Study of Religions at the Russian State University for the Humanities, prepared in 2004 and dedicated to the analysis of the literature of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. The petition was denied.” 12
“This time, the third expert from TSU, philologist Valeriy Naumov, testified in court. Like Svistunov before him, Naumov stated that he had conducted merely a study, not a judicial expert examination. He could not recall who had specifically approached him with the request to conduct the expert evaluation, citing the time elapsed. He did not know from whom the department had received the book itself and the sheet with questions; he had been given them by a laboratory assistant of the department. The questions themselves bore no signatures or official seals.
Naumov claimed that he had used ‘component analysis, in which context is not taken into account and the text is broken down into minimal semantic units — that is, words are considered in isolation, without regard for the philosophical, religious, or other semantic dimension of the text. The meaning of the words themselves is analyzed using dictionaries.’ The expert emphasized that he did not consider the author’s intent in the text but only analyzed the meaning of individual words. The defense pointed out to the court that this method is not generally recognized. In response to repeated questions about the acceptability of such a method, given that it is not generally recognized, Naumov answered that of course there are different methods of analysis, but for him personally, in his personal experience this one seemed acceptable to him.
Regarding the conclusions of his expert report, where he had written, for example, that ‘the meaning of the call may be perceived in these contexts’ (i.e., as a call for violent actions), the expert explained that he used the word ‘may’ in the sense that it ‘may be perceived, or may not be perceived.’ Observers described Naumov’s examination as ambiguous, drafted as if the scholar was deliberately avoiding direct answers to the questions posed. The judge, in turn, pointed out to Naumov several places in his expert opinion where the quoted passages were not present on the pages he himself had indicated in the book.” 12,19
Court Hearing on August 30, 2011
“Despite the fact that after the rejection of the initial TSU examination there was no longer any legal basis for the prosecutor’s motion, at the fourth hearing (August 30, 2012), the prosecutor filed a motion for a new judicial comprehensive psychological-linguistic religious studies expert analysis. The institution proposed to conduct it was Kemerovo State University, and the selected experts were three Kemerovo State University faculty members: religious scholar Alexey Gorbatov (Head of the Department of History and Theory of Culture, Doctor of Historical Sciences), linguist Mikhail Osadchiy (PhD in Philology, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Stylistics and Rhetoric), and psychologist Sergey Dranishnikov (lecturer). Neither sociologists nor philosophers were included among the appointed specialists. The court left the questions for them unchanged.
The defense expressed doubts about the qualifications and impartiality of this panel. Defense representatives noted that Alexey Gorbatov was not competent in matters of Hinduism and that he was not an expert on Hinduism. His field of scholarly interest lies in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, and his main publications are devoted to the history of Christianity in Siberia. Defense representatives also drew the court’s attention to Gorbatov’s confessional bias, as he had previously co-authored publications with the Archbishop of the Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church.” 24,25
“The representatives of the defense also pointed out that Sergey Dranishnikov did not hold an academic degree. And the linguist Mikhail Osadchiy had previously participated in preparing expert opinions for courts on the basis of which several Jehovah’s Witnesses’ books had been declared extremist. As a result, 18 publications of that religious organization were banned from distribution in the Russian Federation. At the same time, Osadchiy used the same dubious ‘component analysis’ as Naumov. (Incidentally, the expert report of M.A. Osadchiy on Jehovah’s Witnesses’ books, which was used in the trial in Gorno-Altaysk, was opposed by an extremely critical concluding statement from A.E. Nagovitsyn, PhD, senior research fellow at the State Scientific Research Institute of Family and Upbringing of the Russian Academy of Education). It was suggested that M.A. Osadchiy would follow the path of V.G. Naumov, using the same methods and presenting the very same results (which is what happened).
Moreover, the expressions ‘manipulation of consciousness’ and ‘psychological influence’ included in the questions for the expert review, prepared by the prosecutor’s office, were noted for their lack of clarity and ambiguity and had nothing to do with the issue of extremism.
Based on this, the representatives of the defense petitioned to ‘disqualify these experts on the grounds of their obvious lack of objectivity’ and to assign the expert review to qualified scholars from other cities. Alternative expert commissions proposed by the defense — comprising reputable scholars from Moscow and from the Urals (the Ural Regional Center for Forensics of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation) — were rejected by the judge. The court deemed this impossible, citing the fact that the experts proposed by the defense ‘work in different academic and scientific institutions, which would increase the time needed to conduct the review and, as a result, could lead to a violation of the reasonable time limits of legal proceedings in the case, given the distance of the experts from the city of Tomsk.’ The court also rejected the defense’s objections to the questions posed to the experts, which contained incorrect wording and bore no relation to an examination for extremism. The new expert evaluation was ordered by the court to be completed by December 1, 2011.” 24,26
“Ultimately, the expert report by Kemerovo State University was submitted to the court only on December 15. At the hearing on December 19, 2011, a statement from the Human Rights Commissioner of the Russian Federation, V.P. Lukin, was presented, authorizing the participation of his representative in the trial. The court declared a recess in connection with the need for the newly interested party to familiarize itself with the case.” 19
At this time, while the trial was ongoing, the head of the Missionary Department of the Tomsk Diocese of the ROC, Maksim Stepenenko (as well as other adepts of the totalitarian sect of Dvorkin, who in the media supported Dvorkin’s “wave of repressions” against religious organizations), was systematically publishing provocative materials and slanderous fabrications on the “K Istine” (“Toward the Truth”) portal, targeting both Vaishnavas and other people who, in word or deed, expressed their attitude toward the trial of the book. Here is one example, provided by Nikolai Karpitsky, of how many defamatory articles Stepenenko published on the “K Istine” portal in the eight days leading up to the trial (which, in essence, can be regarded as putting pressure on the judiciary).
“On December 26, 2011, the Russian ISKCON issued an official statement noting that ‘the inadequacy of the assertions on which the accusation of extremism is based is obvious not only to specialists.’ The authors of the statement cited two passages from the Kemerovo experts’ reports, in which the experts concluded that the text contained extremism based on phrases taken out of context.” 27
“The representatives of the defense stated that the contradictions in the experts’ reports required a new expert review, and petitioned for the appointment of a new comprehensive psychological-linguistic expert analysis. The defense informed the court that ‘scholars from Barnaul, the Urals, and St. Petersburg had expressed readiness to conduct the new review,’ and presented the court with a list of ‘competent specialists.’” 28
“After this, the representatives of the defense petitioned to attach to the case the study of the text “Bhagavad-gita As It Is”, carried out by experts from Barnaul. The same questions had been posed to the Barnaul scholars as to the Kemerovo experts, but their expert reports turned out to be ‘absolutely opposite.’ As the defense noted, unlike the Kemerovo examination, the Barnaul study was conducted using scientific methods described in the expert report, which in volume was three times greater than the Kemerovo study.” 27
Court Hearing on December 28, 2011
“On December 28, the final session was held in the Leninsky District Court of Tomsk. Many media representatives followed the trial. The key point of the court hearing was supposed to be the review of the court-ordered psychological-linguistic religious studies expert analysis carried out at Kemerovo State University. The 40-page expert report included a description of the commission’s composition (a religious studies scholar, a linguist, and a psychologist), the conditions under which the analysis was conducted, and then, separately for each expert, a description of the methods used, the actual analysis, and the resulting conclusions. The report also contained a section analyzing the questions formulated by the prosecutor’s office and submitted by the court to the expert commission. In this section, the experts stated that they could not answer a number of the questions because the wording was too vague or because it was impossible to conduct research on that subject. They also pointed out the extreme ambiguity of the phrase ‘manipulation of consciousness.’
In the conclusions, the specialists’ opinions diverged. Religious studies scholar Alexey Gorbatov stated in his report that the book did not contain extremism. The findings of linguist Mikhail Osadchy and psychologist Sergey Dranishnikov coincided in places literally word for word (which raised questions in court). They concluded that the book contained statements offensive ‘to an indeterminate group of people,’ justified the necessity of ‘restricting women’s freedom,’ and noted that ‘the book may influence the system of social ideas.’
Next, the defense presented several reviews of the expert report that refuted the claim of extremism in the book. Among them was a review by Associate Professor O.V. Orlova, PhD in Philology, from Tomsk State Pedagogical University, who specializes in linguistic expert analysis. She noted that the conclusions of the Kemerovo linguist were not substantiated or objective because they did not conform to the methodology of modern linguistic text analysis. In addition, other reviews were submitted: a review by D.O. Dobrovolsky, Doctor of Philology, Professor, and senior research fellow of the Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences; a review by V.F. Spiridonov, Doctor of Psychology and Associate Professor of the Department of General Patterns of Mental Development at Russian State University for the Humanities; and a review by A.E. Nagovitsyn, Doctor of Philosophy, Candidate of Psychology, and Professor of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Moscow State University.”
“The court was also presented with the expert report of the autonomous non-profit organization ‘Linguistic Expert Consulting Center’ of Barnaul (the study was conducted by A.V. Ivanov, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor; D.V. Kashirsky, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Associate Professor; O.N. Matveeva, Candidate of Philological Sciences; Ya.V. Sokolov, head of the psychological service of the Altai Regional Clinical Psychiatric Hospital). This expert report amounted to 120 pages. For comparison, the Kemerovo report consisted of only 40 pages.
The defense noted that in 11 expert evaluations reviewed by the court, it was stated that there was no extremism in the ‘Bhagavad-gita,’ and only in two (one of which was by an expert without sufficient qualifications) was it claimed that signs of extremism were present. Moreover, under the law, to classify material as extremist it must contain a call to extremist activity or its justification. But even in the Kemerovo report, Gorbatov and Osadchy pointed out that there was no call for violent actions in the book. 19
“After the closing arguments, Judge Galina Butenko of the Leninsky District Court of Tomsk found the complainant’s arguments unconvincing and announced the rejection of the prosecutor’s request to recognize ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ as extremist. G. Butenko found no grounds to declare ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ extremist literature, noting that the book is ‘one of the interpretations of the sacred Hindu scripture ‘Bhagavad-gita,’’ and concluding that the text of ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ does not contain imperative statements, calls for hostile or violent actions against people of certain confessional, national, or ethnic groups, nor statements justifying such actions.” 29,30
“Subsequently, the prosecutor’s office filed an appeal against the court’s decision. But on March 21, 2012, the regional court upheld the district court’s ruling.” (19)
Public Reaction to the Court’s Decision
“Information about the outcome of the hearing quickly appeared in Russian and foreign mass media. Public and political circles in Russia and India welcomed the court’s decision. In particular, Indian Minister S.M. Krishna praised the ruling and thanked the Russian government for its support.
The Commissioner for Human Rights in Tomsk Region, Nelli Krechetova, welcomed the regional prosecutor’s decision, stating that ‘common sense has prevailed.’ Her remarks were widely circulated in the Russian press. In her statement, the Tomsk ombudsman said:
‘First of all, I consider the very framing of the issue absurd. This book is considered sacred by nearly a billion people around the world. In Russia, ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ has been freely distributed for 20 years. It has been published in more than 60 languages worldwide. The claim that not the entire text but only the commentary is extremist is untenable, since the commentary is an integral part of the book… A possible ban on the book, and therefore a ban on the religious activity of its followers, would violate the constitutional rights of citizens to freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is an officially registered organization… There have been no established cases of extremism related to the distribution of this book in Russia over the more than 20 years of its presence here…’
Krechetova noted that from the very beginning she had asked the prosecutor’s office to withdraw the ‘shameful lawsuit’ and admitted that ‘I was practically certain it would end this way.’ The ombudsman stressed that it is not books that should be put on trial but deeds of an extremist nature, because ‘the classics of world literature are also ambiguous — there is plenty that can be found there. But they cannot be banned — this is about freedom of thought, freedom of faith, and freedom of conscience.’” 31,19
“The President of the Association of Indians in Russia, Sanjit Kumar Jha, who even flew to Tomsk specifically to attend the regional court hearings, when answering questions from the hosts of the ‘Profilaktika’ (‘Preventive Measure’) program on the Rossiya TV channel, pointed to the poor education of the experts as the main reason for the trial over the Hindu scripture. Sanjit Kumar Jha said:
‘Terrible resonance in India. Parliament stopped for two days. It is a tragedy for us when a sacred book is put on trial. There must be agreement among religious people that their [books] should never be put on trial, no matter which — the Bible, the Quran, or the Gita.’
Professor of Siberian State Medical University Nikolay Karpitsky also raised a legitimate question: ‘How much did this groundless trial over a book cost us as taxpayers, and why do responsible officials trust not scholars and specialists but ignorant provocateurs?’” 8
Two days after the ruling of the Tomsk Regional Court, Nikolay Karpitsky wrote an article on his blog titled “How to Hold Biased Experts Accountable?” He appealed to the expert community for help, since he decided to look for evidence of deliberate falsehood by the Tomsk and Kemerovo experts who participated in the trial and to bring them to criminal responsibility under Article 307 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Knowingly False Testimony, Expert Opinion, or Mistranslation”).
Doctor of Philosophy and Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Vladimir State University (city of Vladimir), Alexey Timoshchuk, together with public observer at the Tomsk trial Konstantin Filkin, note in their academic work that Russian society has observed the following trend:
‘Today in Russia, unfortunately, there is no institution of conscientious expert evaluation. The so-called ‘scholars,’ with their incompetence, nearly restricted Russian citizens in certain constitutional rights, yet they continue to teach students and hold positions. It can be assumed that representatives of law enforcement and security agencies who spun the flywheel of the judicial machine only demonstrated their own incompetence. To say even more — using their official position for personal purposes, with their reckless actions they not only put to the test the well-established Russian-Indian relations but also challenged the foundations of the constitutional system in terms of individual rights and freedoms. By putting ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ on trial for extremism, they themselves nearly became instigators of interreligious hostility.
In this regard, one more conclusion should be cited from this work. The one-sided and baseless application of the Federal Law ‘On Countering Extremist Activity’ and Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, in terms of classifying this or that literature as extremist, has already sparked enormous criticism. The unprecedented frequency of the application of this law is obviously not caused by a real increase in extremism in the country, but by the fact that the law itself has become a ‘Procrustean bed,’ ready in unscrupulous hands to become a real weapon.”
The public reaction was almost unanimous in assessing the trial as absurd — a nonsensical persecution of adherents of various religions for the “assertion of the superiority” of their faith over others. For Russian media, analysts, and bloggers, the general reaction was the recognition of the obviously fabricated nature of the charges, compounded by the unfounded application of anti-extremism legislation. The reaction from Indian society — which, in fact, is indifferent to Russian law — was prompted by the understanding that this charge was an insult to what is dear and even sacred to them: both the “Bhagavad-gita” itself and the people whose worldview is built on it.
The subject of the trial in Tomsk was raised at several roundtables and symposia. For example, on November 28, 2011, “Moskovsky Komsomolets” held a “roundtable” on the problems of applying anti-extremism legislation to religious texts, especially in connection with the Tomsk trial, assessing its negative consequences for Russian society and Russian-Indian relations. Lawyers, representatives of the Public Chamber, media, scholars, and members of the Indian community in Moscow participated.
“Scholars and lawyers expressed concern that in some cases, under the pretext of fighting extremism, attempts are made to restrict the legitimate rights of religious minorities.” “It was emphasized that, due to the imperfection of the law ‘On Countering Extremist Activity,’ the situation has reached a critical level and requires serious government intervention, as it is about the beginning of total terror against any citizens, against any sacred book, against any opinion — even if it concerns law-abiding citizens or law-abiding religious organizations.” 19
On February 24–25, 2012, Tomsk State University hosted the All-Russian Academic Conference “Bhagavad-gita in History and in Contemporary Society” with International Participation (on February 24, Interfax-Siberia also held a related press conference). The conference was organized by Tomsk State University and the Department of Culture of Tomsk Region. More than 50 papers were submitted, including several from abroad.
On February 25, the Tomsk Institute of Economics and Law held a roundtable titled “The Social and Legal Significance of the Trial on Recognizing ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ as Extremist Material.” On the first day, the conference opened with a speech by A.A. Kuzichkin, head of the Tomsk Region Department of Culture, who emphasized that “stability is our investment capital,” and stated that the purpose of the conference was “to harmonize interethnic and interfaith relations.” Welcoming remarks were also given by S.N. Kirpotin, Doctor of Biological Sciences and Vice-Rector for International Relations of TSU, and N.S. Krechetova, Candidate of Historical Sciences and Commissioner for Human Rights in Tomsk Region. Then, scholars from Moscow, Vladimir, Tyumen, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Barnaul, Novosibirsk, and Tomsk delivered their presentations. As part of the conference proceedings, reviews by various scholars were also published, including a review by N.N. Karpitsky of the report of the court expert commission on the results of the comprehensive psychological-religious-linguistic forensic examination (Kemerovo, Dec. 14, 2011, No. 50/11, A.V. Gorbatov, S.A. Dranishnikov, M.A. Osadchy). Representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office, Ministry of Justice, and FSB were specially invited to the meeting for a broader discussion of the issue. However, none of these agencies participated.
Olga Orlova, Candidate of Philological Sciences, head of the Department of Language Theory and Methods of Teaching Russian Language and Literature at Tomsk State Pedagogical University, spoke about how representatives of the Tomsk Region FSB had offered her to prepare an expert report on this book with a prosecutorial bias, which she refused. In connection with this situation, she raised the issue of the need to create “an expert community that would handle complex and controversial cases requiring the combined efforts of specialists from different fields of knowledge.”
At the end of the roundtable, a resolution was adopted, stating that the participants of the conference were convinced that “one of the urgent problems on the agenda in Russia is the formation of a multiethnic and multiconfessional civil society that excludes the monopoly of any one ideology and intolerance toward other cultures and religions.” It also stated that “to such religious texts as ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is,’ the concept of extremism cannot be applied. We consider the opinion of the experts who conducted the religious and psychological-linguistic expert analysis of ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ to be unprofessional, unscientific, and biased. We consider unacceptable the moral position of S.S. Avanesov, V.N. Svistunov, V.G. Naumov, M.A. Osadchy, and S.A. Dranishnikov, who, lacking proper scholarly qualifications, signed this expert report. We express our distrust in A.L. Dvorkin as chairman of the Expert Council at the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.”
“We draw the attention of the state and society to the urgent problem of the enforcement of the Federal Law ‘On Countering Extremist Activity,’ which today allows abuses against religious organizations.” All participants supported the idea of creating an expert community capable of issuing objective, scientifically grounded reports in order to counter the appearance of unqualified and unfounded expert reports. Sixty-four attendees expressed their agreement. The resolution was signed by Irina Glushkova, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Candidate of Philological Sciences, senior research fellow at the Center for Indian Studies of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Nikolay Karpitsky, Professor of Siberian State Medical University; and Oleg Khazanov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, and head of the Department of Ancient, Medieval, and Methodology of History at the National Research Tomsk State University. 34,35
Dvorkin’s Extremist-Terrorist Mafia
But what changed after this incident? Did this international scandal have any consequences for Dvorkin and his totalitarian sect, which staged a full-scale informational terror attack on peaceful citizens — genuine extremism aimed at inciting enmity and hatred? Judging by subsequent events, the initiators, instigators, and organizers of this crime against society remained unpunished. Moreover, they issued numerous threats, spread discrediting material in the media, and humiliated those who dared to speak out against their Nazi-style activities, those who stood for law and human rights, for mutual respect among people in a united human family.
For example, Maksim Stepanenko — an adherent of Dvorkin’s totalitarian sect who played one of the leading roles in the Tomsk trial — partly confirms this in his numerous articles on the missionary portal “K Istine” (“Toward the Truth”) (“The Trial of the Book ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is’ in Tomsk (Archive of Publications)”). 36
After the trial, Maksim Stepanenko (at that time head of the Missionary Department of the Tomsk Diocese), analyzing the defeat in court, wrote in his article:
“And, by the way, the ones most upset with my actions were not the ‘prosecution side’ (they don’t even know me — that’s true), but your opponent by the ‘prosecution side.’ What upsets me greatly is the complete absence of competent informational support for the trial, thanks to which the lying propaganda of the Krishnaites prevailed in the media. Because of this, the sound idea of banning the book of the totalitarian sect was presented in the media as nonsense and a mistake. I am also upset with the initial mistake in choosing experts who (not all, admittedly) turned out to be inexperienced, utterly weak in the face of the sectarians’ criticism. If we had chosen real specialists from the start, now the Krishnaites would be feverishly burning their misanthropic pulp. However, this is excusable — the Tomsk prosecutor’s office has no experience in conducting such hearings, and you can’t learn this from textbooks…”
A very obvious working scheme of Dvorkin’s totalitarian sect for discrediting unwanted organizations and pushing cases to court:
- “Competent informational support” of the trial, so that Dvorkin’s dehumanizing, Nazi-style propaganda, would prevail in the media over the opinion of the opponents. And for this, as practice shows, anticultists do everything possible — from bribing and blackmailing editors to shutting down the official website (and therefore the official information, important for journalists) of the opposing organization.
- Choosing experienced, expressive, charismatic “experts” (note, we are not talking here about real experts with proper qualifications, academic titles, or work experience — the main thing is that this “expert” defends the commissioned point of view by any means).
- Involving law enforcement agencies in a criminal conspiracy and unlawful actions in “conducting such processes.” Such criminal schemes, which violate the lawful interests and rights of citizens, are certainly not taught in state institutions — unless, perhaps, in places where lectures are given by “fighters against sects and cults” such as Dvorkin, Novopashin, Kuzmin, and others see article
Further, Stepanenko boasts about his antisectarian (anticult) work in the information field and about organizing Dvorkin’s trip to Tomsk:
“For example, in 2011, I — an entirely ‘wrong’ and ‘poorly educated’ missionary (and even a mere horse doctor!) — wrote almost 170 articles, news reports, and answers to readers’ questions for the Missionary-Apologetic Project ‘K Istine’ (‘Toward the Truth’). This year, more than 10 articles on the Krishnaite theme have already been published, several apologetic videos have been recorded and published, the visit of Professor Aleksandr Dvorkin has been organized, and a special section has been created dedicated to the trial of ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is.’” 37
“Over four years, since the ‘illiterate blogger’ returned to his hometown of Tomsk after living in Bashkiria for almost 20 years, he has acquired many acquaintances, friends, assistants, and sympathizers. This also explains my awareness — thank God for the Internet and social networks! Half an hour on the computer, and I already know who belongs to which sect, what their plans are, their phone numbers, addresses…”
Source: k-istine.ru 14
Maksim Stepanenko is a graphic example of Dvorkin’s totalitarian sect, who prides himself on the fact that not only the head of the Tomsk Regional Department of Culture Andrey Kuzichkin and the archbishop, but even two presidents of Russia are unable to rein him in. No matter how many complaints people wrote to the highest authorities, in the end these complaints ended up only in Stepanenko’s collection. In other words, even the presidents of Russia cannot do anything about Dvorkin’s totalitarian sect. So, who actually rules Russia? Who holds the actual power?
“And, in fact, a missionary certainly should not be refuting such legends. Tomsk used to be a quiet ‘tolerant Vasyugan’ (excuse me, a ‘tolerant city’), everyone befriended each other, considered their sects (excuse me, their ‘religions’ and ‘churches’) ‘valid,’ equally leading to Gehenna (excuse me, ‘to God’). And then, in 2008, Maksim Stepanenko (excuse me, an ‘illiterate blogger’ and a ‘provocateur’) appeared in Tomsk (excuse me, ‘was expelled from the Ufa diocese’) and began denouncing (excuse me, like an octopus, he wrapped everyone and everything in his tentacles, infiltrated all law enforcement agencies and, crazy (!), through the hands of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, and the Prosecutor’s Office, began persecuting and even destroying homes of sectarians (excuse me, peaceful, sober, ‘innocent and fluffy’ believers who did not belong to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church)…
Yes, that’s me, I admit… An intolerant ‘provocateur,’ because of whom the quiet, swampy ‘Vasyugan of tolerance’ began to boil, raising a lot of muck from the bottom. Which is why some of the local ‘swamp’ dwellers got alarmed.
The Tomsk Regional Department of Culture, represented by Andrey Kuzichkin, has already held several conferences inviting all sects and journalists in an attempt to at least somehow calm the boiling swamp of tolerance.
Specifically, the Hare Krishnas, neo-pagans, and other troubled groups created a certain Round Table on ‘Interfaith Dialogue in Tomsk.’ At its first sessions, the main items on the agenda were only these questions: what to do and how to counter the apologetic efforts of the Tomsk diocese, and who will be friends with us against the Tomsk diocese and Maksim Stepanenko?
Some, in despair and yearning for tolerance, began to appeal in their complaints to the highest authorities, and not even to governors or presidents of republics (complaints to governors are already commonplace and ‘too petty’), but to the presidents of Russia. For example, the founder of the neo-pagan sect ‘Anastasia,’ Vladimir Megre, several years ago devoted half a page in his letter to President Vladimir Putin specifically to my humble person… In my collection, I already have several complaints about me addressed to Dmitry Medvedev.”
“As for my virtuality and the support of my actions by the ruling archbishop and Tomsk Orthodox priests — I’m not going to prove that.
What for? If we assume that the ‘illiterate blogger’ is an imposter, against whom not only the head of the Tomsk Regional Department of Culture Andrey Kuzichkin and the archbishop, but even two presidents of Russia are unable to rein in… it changes nothing, and in no way shakes my position regarding the Vaishnavas, whom I regard as idolaters stealing intelligent, talented, and ascetically minded people away from Christ.
First of all, because my miserable and ‘illiterate’ voice (here, I’ll repeat once again, I fully agree with you) is not the only one criticizing the totalitarian sect ‘International Society for Krishna Consciousness,’ as well as other sects. The opinion that the ‘International Society for Krishna Consciousness’ is a false religion, a totalitarian and destructive sect — is the opinion of the entire Russian Orthodox Church.
How can it be that such a ‘religious studies scholar’ has still not read the definition ‘On pseudo-Christian sects, neo-paganism and occultism’ of the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of 1994? I quote: ‘On the other hand, through the opened borders into our countries came preachers of false Christianity and pseudo-religions, arriving from the West and the East. Among them … the ‘International Society for Krishna Consciousness.’”
“The sect ‘International Society for Krishna Consciousness’ is included in the reference book ‘New Religious Associations of Russia of a Destructive and Occult Nature,’ published by the Synodal Missionary Department of the Moscow Patriarchate in 2002. Like all diocesan missionaries, I received this book as a gift at the Church Missionary Congress from the chief missionary of the ROC MP — Archbishop of Belgorod and Stary Oskol Ioann.
In the section of the Missionary-Apologetic Project ‘K Istine’ (Trans. note: ‘Toward the Truth’), which is devoted to this sect, my articles make up only a small share. Among the authors exposing this non-Hindu sect are several respected priests, deacons, scholars, laymen, truly talented (unlike me) apologists and religious studies scholars, as well as an archbishop, a metropolitan, and a patriarch.”
The Tomsk trial over the book “Bhagavad-gītā As It Is” is a clear example of how and for what purpose Dvorkin uses his “experts” in criminal deeds, inciting hatred and hostility in society. His stance, pointing to extremism — meaning an adherence to extreme radical views and the stirring up of hatred and enmity — was reflected in the transcript of the press conference “Totalitarian Sects: A Threat to the Individual, Family, Society, and the State” held after the trial, on February 21, 2012, by Interfax-Siberia.
When asked, “In principle, do you approve of banning books?” Aleksandr Dvorkin replied:
“Yes. ‘Bhagavad-gītā As It Is’ carries a terrifying potential for man-hating. And this is not just a theoretical assumption. The entire history of the sect ‘International Society for Krishna Consciousness’ since the 1960s is a history of crime. And in terms of the number of crimes committed by the leaders and members of the ‘International Society for Krishna Consciousness’ relative to the size of the sect, any mafia organization pales in comparison. This includes large-scale fraud, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, contract killings, and — most horrifying of all — pedophilia on an especially large scale.”
“For traditional Hindus, we are ‘mleccha’ — ‘white barbarians’ who lie outside the framework of their religious coordinates. For them, we are an untouchable caste. Representatives of the highest Brahmin caste, after contact with a European, must undergo a purification ritual.”
Chronology of Subsequent Events and Dvorkin’s Repressions
As is well known, the “anti-sect fighter” Alexander Dvorkin has a reputation as a vindictive and resentful man who can nurse a grudge for years. To illustrate the situation, let us cite just a few examples from the many stories of people — victims who suffered from Dvorkin’s repressions. These are the people whose lives were destroyed by the adherents only because, by defending the lawful interests of citizens, these people did not allow lawlessness to prevail in Tomsk. After the court scandal, Dvorkin’s adherents not only strengthened their position in Tomsk Region but also unleashed outright terror on those who helped defend the rights of law-abiding citizens.
On October 14, 2011, Alexander Korelov, a lawyer and employee of RACIRS headed by the scandalous Orthodox sectologist Dvorkin, published on the website “K Istine” a statement claiming that “The Ombudsman for Human Rights in Tomsk Region (Nelly Krechetova) sets herself against the citizens of Russia.” On the same site, Maksim Stepanenko accused the ombudsman of “incompetence in matters of religion” and of insulting Orthodox believers, suggesting she should resign. 39
So, after Dvorkin’s visit to Tomsk in February 2012, the following events occurred.
March 17, 2012. The head of administration of Tomsk Region, Viktor Kress, was promoted to the executive branch (on May 17, 2012, he was appointed a member of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, took the post of deputy chairman of the Committee on Science, Education, Culture, and Information Policy, and became a member of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs). His place was taken by the new governor of Tomsk Region, Sergey Zhvachkin.
March 17, 2012. The head of the Department of Tomsk Region, Andrey Kuzichkin, who had actively taken the side of the defense of Tomsk Krishna devotees during the trial, resigned following the appointment of the new governor.
July 12, 2012. A criminal case was opened against him, accusing him of misappropriating sponsorship funds during the organization of a pilgrimage trip of six people, representatives of different confessions (Orthodoxy, Judaism, and Islam), to Israel. The preliminary investigation of the criminal case was carried out by the FSB Directorate of Russia for Tomsk Region. It ended with a ban on Kuzichkin holding leadership positions for three years in state service and in local self-government bodies. Later, he emigrated to Estonia, where he received political refugee status. In an interview with an Estonian publication, Andrey Kuzichkin said that the criminal case against him was an FSB special operation and that the reason for the “persecution” was his refusal to take part in the repression of religious minorities.
Source: tomsk.ru 40
Maksim Stepanenko dedicated several gloating articles to Andrey Kuzichkin and Nelly Krechetova as people who had stood up in defense of the Tomsk Krishna devotees. Here are examples of some of them.
“It seems to me that after the fall of Andrey Kuzichkin, the time has now come for Nelly Stepanovna Krechetova — soon the new authorities will throw her out the window of the office of the Ombudsman for Human Rights in Tomsk Region.” 43
In April 2013, deputies of the Tomsk Regional Duma voted for the early dismissal of the Ombudsman for Human Rights in Tomsk Region, Nelly Stepanovna Krechetova, only two years into her work. Before this event, according to Krechetova herself, she had been subjected to an orchestrated smear campaign.
On November 21, 2013, a new rector of Tomsk State University was appointed. Eduard Vladimirovich Galazhinsky took the post and subsequently carried out regular expert and analytical work as part of a number of key federal and regional collegial bodies. 44
In 2013–2014, strange events unfolded in the life of Professor Nikolai Karpitsky. He was unexpectedly dismissed in succession from two universities — first from Siberian State Medical University in Tomsk, where he had taught for 15 years, and then from Yugra State University in Khanty-Mansiysk. In the latter case, Karpitsky had spent his vacation in Ukraine, visited the Institute of Philosophy in Kyiv, and participated in the annual youth religious studies school in Dnipro. Upon returning home, he discovered that he had been fired. Everything happened without any clear explanation from the administration of the real reasons for his dismissal. 45
Nikolai Karpitsky
“There were no complaints against me. I successfully passed the preliminary competitive selection, fulfilling all the requirements for candidates. And if today I am dismissed after a trip, then tomorrow anyone could be dismissed simply for thinking about making such a trip.” 46
On his blog, the professor posted an appeal he had sent to the rector of Yugra State University, Tatyana Karminskaya. In it, he specifically referred to violations of the law committed during the termination of his contract. 45
It should be noted that Tatyana Karminskaya had been appointed rector of Yugra State University on February 16, 2011. In May 2014, a new rector, Olga Kobyakova, was also appointed at Siberian State Medical University. Remarkable coincidences, are they not?
In the end, Nikolai Karpitsky was forced to emigrate from Russia. Since the fall of 2015, he has been teaching at the relocated Luhansk National Agrarian University (in Kharkiv, Starobilsk, and Sloviansk). 47
And unfortunately, these cases are not isolated. There are many such examples. To grasp the absurdity of what is happening and the scale of this social tragedy, let us cite only a few typical moves used by Dvorkin’s “anti-sect fighters.” These are baseless accusations, media smears, and attacks on Krishna devotees (and other new religious movements) that are taking place across the country.
• “On December 2, 2016, in the city of Tver, a case of illegal missionary activity was opened against the local Krishna community over an event that was still in the planning stages. The case was initiated under Article 5.26 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (Violation of the laws on freedom of conscience and freedom of belief, as well as on religious associations) against the Krishna community in Tver. Believers were accused of illegal missionary work for a planned action. A local TV channel ran an ‘anti-sectarian’ segment on the issue. On November 28, the local channel Tverskoy Prospekt aired the program ‘Patrol Service’ featuring Andrey Bezrukov, a faculty member of the Department of Theology at Tver State University and the author of the expert report in the mentioned case. On air, he said that Krishna devotees ‘wanted to chant mantras in front of the residents of Tver,’ and also declared that under the Yarovaya Law ‘it was now forbidden to talk about any God on the streets and in apartments. Only with the permission of the state, which registers and issues permits for such activities.’ The ‘sectologist’ accused ISKCON followers of fraud and claimed that Indian Krishna devotees opposed Russian ones because they were ‘white Christians violating the ‘law of the parents.’” 48
• “On March 3, 2016, in Chelyabinsk, the Chelyabinsk Diocese accused an educational center of promoting Krishna teachings. The Chelyabinsk Diocese warned residents of the region about the dangers of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and accused the educational center of spreading its doctrine. The missionary department of the diocese issued an appeal to the residents of the region. According to them, the tutoring center ‘Godograf,’ which prepared school students for state exams, was ‘a cover structure of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.’ The appeal stated that ‘it is representatives of the Krishna cult who are guilty of murdering people, including Orthodox priests, of numerous rapes in so-called ‘gurukulas’ — Krishna children’s schools — of drug trafficking, and more.’ It went on to say that those using the services of ‘Godograf’ were ‘in fact sponsoring a destructive cult and contributing to the involvement of their loved ones in it.’ As a result, the prosecutor’s office initiated administrative proceedings, the management was fined, and the center was shut down. Earlier, the Chelyabinsk Diocese had initiated an inspection of an English-language school, RM-Studio, whose director was fined for possessing a book by Ron Hubbard.” 49,50
• “On September 29, 2016, in the city of Chita (Zabaykalsky Krai), the local Chita Diocese held an action called ‘Stop, sect,’ directed against the activities of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Six people led by a local priest gathered on Lenin Square with placards reading ‘Sects Get Out of Zabaykalye,’ ‘Sects are Freedom from Conscience,’ ‘Stop Sect!’ and ‘Chita — A Territory With No Sects.’ Let us remind you that at the end of March, representatives of the missionary department of the Chita Diocese and Orthodox activists had already organized a ‘Stop, sect’ action in Chita, during which they distributed leaflets criticizing the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization. Later, the diocese announced a petition drive demanding a ban on Jehovah’s Witness communities in Zabaykalsky Krai. The confrontation culminated in a picket near a Jehovah’s Witness center, after which an elderly female Jehovah’s Witness suffered a fractured hip.” 51
• “May 18, 2017. Karachay-Cherkessia. A Krishna devotee was called an illegal missionary for hosting community prayers in his own home. In the village of Yershov (Karachay-Cherkessia), a case was opened against Sergey Belyaev — leader of the Krishna community and owner of the house where the community gathered for prayer — on charges of unlawful missionary activity. According to the case materials, members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness allegedly conducted religious rites and missionary activity in a private residence, which was deemed a violation of the law. Belyaev’s lawyer, Mikhail Frolov, pointed out that worship in a private home has nothing to do with missionary activity, which federal law ‘On Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Associations’ prohibits in residential premises. He compared this to banning a family from praying before meals.” 52
In 2015, scholar of religion, Doctor of Philosophy, and professor at the Academy of Labor and Social Relations, Yekaterina Elbakyan, analyzing the role of religious studies expertise in high-profile court cases against religious organizations, wrote in her article “Religious Studies Expertise in Light of General Scientific Principles.” 53
“In recent years, Russia has witnessed a wave of court cases involving the sacred texts and literature of various religions. This includes the trial in Tomsk over the book ‘Bhagavad-gita As It Is,’ considered by believers to be a sacred text since it contains the commentary of the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness — acharya Swami Prabhupada; and the shock for Islamic religious organizations when the Oktyabrsky District Court in Novorossiysk banned the Russian translation of the Qur’an by Elmir Kuliev. One must also add here a number of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ publications, which have been regularly added to the Federal List of Extremist Materials of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as a result of court rulings. By early December 2015, the list already included more than 3,152 titles. Among them are Jehovah’s Witnesses’ books, brochures, and magazines, as well as certain works by Ronald Hubbard, regarded by his followers — Scientologists — as sacred. The apogee of the struggle against sacred texts so far has been the appeal by a St. Petersburg lawyer to the prosecutor’s office to examine the Bible for ‘extremism.’
Typically, the basis for accusing religious literature of promoting exclusivity and extremist actions against believers of other faiths, or non-believers, lies in free interpretations of phrases taken out of context, or simply in ignorance of the basic tenets and practices of the given religion.”
Today, it is “expert evaluation” that has become a true weapon against society in the hands of the sadist and maniac Dvorkin and his international criminal network. Alexander Dvorkin and his adherents from this totalitarian sect represent a deliberate, coordinated system, directed by Dvorkin, for inciting religious hatred while exploiting state structures for their own goals. Dvorkin’s attempt in Tomsk to have the main canonical text of the Krishna devotees declared extremist was the first touchstone toward igniting global religious wars. The next Nazi “stone” thrown by Dvorkin in this direction is already visible in Russia today: the mass persecution of people who practice Islam. As to how these events should unfold further according to Dvorkin’s plans — pushing the world toward a civilizational war — you can learn more in “The Impact” documentary. But all this could indeed happen if measures are not taken now to stop this Nazi machine of repression — the totalitarian sect of Dvorkin.
To be continued…
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