Pastor Stanislav Moskvitin is tried in Omsk for having allegedly converted his devotees through “illegal psychological techniques” and “hypnosis.”
by Massimo Introvigne
On September 14, 2022, the trial of Stanislav Moskvitin, pastor of the Apostolic Center Church “New Creation” started in Omsk, Russia.
On July 18, 2021, his place of worship, the basement floor of an office building in the center of Omsk, had been raided by the FSB. Parishioners described the raid as quite unexpected. Masked security officers entered the premises of New Creation and detained Moskvitin.
Moskvitin launched his church in 2014, and registered it in 2016, after a training in Seattle, Washington under Pastor Andrey Shapovalov, who runs the Transformation Center Church, a large nondenominational Slavic Evangelical community. Shapovalov has cooperated with Aleksey Ledyaev, the founder of the Latvian New Generation Church, whose Russian communities have been recently raided by FSB and even accused of being involved in espionage and sabotage operations on behalf of the Ukrainian intelligence.
Shapovalov and Ledyaev are both conservative Evangelicals, who once praised Putin’s and Patriarch Kyrill attitude on LGBT rights. However, since their organizations convert members of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to their brand of Evangelical Christianity, they are regarded as “totalitarian cults” by Russian anti-cult organizations, which are closely connected with the ROC.
New Creation is a member of the Russian Council of Christian Evangelical Churches. Moskvitin’s style of preaching is highly emotional, and parishioners describe miraculous healings and visions of angels, which are not uncommon among conservative Evangelicals and Pentecostals.
Moskvitin is accused of having illegally gathered funds for building a church. However, even the authorities admitted that he maintained a modest lifestyle and it seems that the money was kept for the purpose it was collected for.
The prosecutor is thus using against Moskvitin Article 239 of the Russian Criminal Code, which regards as a crime to organize religious associations “causing harm to the health of their members.” Increasingly, “health” is interpreted to include mental health, and with the strong support of the anti-cult associations “cults” are accused of brainwashing.
The FSB based its raid on the theory that Moskvitin “used various psychological techniques to influence parishioners in order to subjugate them and make a profit.” The FSB even claimed that “the pastor used several types of hypnosis: classical, fractional and Ericksonian.” This again shows the close cooperation between the FSB and the anti-cult organizations, whose ideology is based on the idea that “cults” convert their “victims” through forms of mind control and hypnosis.
The scientifically discredited theory of brainwashing is now used against Evangelical churches whose activities even the FSB admits do not fall under the Russian law on extremism, which has been used to “liquidate” the Jehovah’s Witnesses and other groups. The Russian idea of “extremism” is broad, but when it fails to capture a successful group that converts Orthodox Russians, Article 239 comes to the rescue, and the movement is accused of recruiting its members through brainwashing or “hypnosis.”