BU2B Russia is correct to rule them extremist. However this is counter productive as it just feeds into the persecution complex of the cult members. Soviet Russia sent JWs to Siberia and they came out even stronger. Persecution actually strengthens the cult.Russia has a long and sordid history of 'Christian' cults that dates back to the very beginnings of the spread of Orthodox Christianity in Russia. For several centuries, the 'Word' was taught by semi-literate and or/illiterate monks who had wandered into the steppes of Russia and Siberia. These monks and religious adherents, fanatical in nature, would have at times, only a text or two of Biblical text memorized, and from that, they would build a whole following of uneducated people. What resulted was fragmented, strange cults that practiced just as strange rituals. Odd sexual practices were common among these cults.
It was from this cultural background that Rasputin emerged in the early 1900s, just prior to the Russian revolution of 1917.. He was the monk credited with the downfall of the Romanov Empire.
I think that the history of 'extremist cults' is just too recent in the Russian memory for them to accept another cult.
