Former traffic cop known to thousands as Vissarion Christ the Teacher claims to be the son of God returned to Earth and is looking for followers to help him build a new society
A visit to Kyiv last week by the Jesus of Siberia occurred in understanding fashion.The streets of the capital were not jammed with pilgrims ;there were no mass conversions or visions of the Apocalypse; the world clearly did not end. Instead, the Messiah of Siberia – or Vissarion Christ the Teacher, as he is known to thousands of disciples across the former Soviet Union – held a press conference at the UNIAN news agency July 2, before going on to address the faithful and the curious on two evenings at the Nivky Park Amphitheater.
“If you have questions, don’t be afraid to ask,” Vissarion told a congregation of 400 at the opening session July 3. “I am ready to answer.”
There were, understandably, a lot of questions. While post-Soviet Ukraine has experienced all manner of religious revivals – among the country’s established religions, as well as with the arrival of new churches, denominations and faiths from abroad – it isn’t everyday that an individual announces he’s the son of God making his promised return to Earth, and looking for followers to help him build a new society.
“The main reason for my travels is to meet people,” Vissarion said. “I haven’t been abroad much the past few years, and if I come across people who are interested in what we are doing, then so much the better.”
Vissarion was born Sergei Torop in the southern Russian town of Krasnodar in 1961. Following army service, he settled in the Siberian town of Minusinsk, where he worked as a traffic cop until job cuts in 1989 left him unemployed. Torop’s rebirth as Vissarion coincided with the Soviet Union’s breakup and Russia’s descent into chaos, which left millions of people hungry for food, purpose and faith.
Operating from a home base deep in the Siberian taiga 4,000 kilometers east of Moscow, Vissarion’s Church of the Last Testament appears to be an effort to feed that hunger. Today, Vissarion presides over a commune of 4,000 followers outside the southern Siberian town of Abakan. The commune includes a number of adherents from Western Europe.
Living in a string of log cabins, Vissarion’s followers eke out a basic agrarian existence. They collect berries and mushrooms, and barter potatoes, cabbage and other vegetables, as well as handmade crafts, for staples like barley and buckwheat. Veganism is practiced – with only infants and mothers allowed milk products. Unsurprisingly, alcohol and tobacco are forbidden.
In Vissarion’s version of Christianity, elements of Orthodoxy mingle with Eastern, Luddite and New Age philosophy. The mountain village where Vissarion lives with his wife and six children is known as Sun City, and the commune as a whole is called an Eco-Poseleniye, or Eco-Settlement.
“It’s a kind of religion that encompasses all others,” explained Margarita Myashanskaya, one of a group of Vissarion’s followers from Kyiv who were waiting outside the UNIAN office.
A tanned and youthful 42-year-old, with long brown hair and a trim moustache and beard, dressed in a crimson robe trimmed with gold braid, Vissarion comes across as a liberal-minded savior. He offers no fire-and-brimstone sermons and dispenses with Orthodoxy’s sumptuous ceremonies. Instead, Vissarion’s press conference and evening services in Kyiv were guru-style question-and-answer sessions, with the Siberian savior smiling benevolently as he outlined “the right way to behave.”
Vissarion was most discursive on questions of an abstract, theological nature. Asked to describe his relationship with God, Vissarion said, “My father is like the sun – not burning among us, but taking the form of a spirit that enters the body like a ray of light.”
Proclaiming tolerance for people of all religions and races and understanding for abortion and homosexuality, Vissarion said his mission as Christ returned to Earth is to demonstrate the correct way to live – in a world that has forgotten its values.
“The level of technology has developed to the point where society has become dangerous,” he said. “Man has been led to feel he can’t do anything for himself, and he has lost his confidence.”
Vissarion was shorter on specifics, such as whether he plans to found similar communes in Ukraine.
“It’s possible,” he said. “It all depends on the people; if they feel like doing so, I would certainly encourage them.”
At present, that doesn’t appear likely. While there is a branch of the Last Testament Church in Kyiv, the 100 or so members mostly seem focused on Vissarion as Christ, not as commune leader, at least locally. Those interested in communal living are biding their time until they can join him at his Siberian sanctuary.
Vasyl Romanyuk organized the Kyiv branch.
“After reading about it, I went to see Eco-Poseleniye,” he said. “They’re building a new life there and, in the near future, won’t need money or anything else from the outside world.”
Nina Hashenko, a 65-year-old retired engineer, said she’s already received the blessing of her mother and daughter to go to Siberia, while her father and sister are opposed. Hashenko said she became a follower of the teachings of the Soviet-era prophet Porfiry Ivanov in 1990. Then in 2000, after the death of her husband, she heard a cassette of Vissarion speaking and was convinced he was the son whom Ivanov had mentioned when referring to himself as God.
“My goal is just to join in helping organizing this one family, this one community and one faith,” she said. “To learn in this family without asking for anything in return.”
The Nivky sessions attracted people of all ages, including members of Vissarion’s church and newcomers attracted by handbills and radio announcements or the sounds from within the amphitheater. Many said they appreciated the simplicity of Vissarion’s approach to religion and teaching.
“He’s no better or worse than an Orthodox priest, but he is far easier to understand,” said one man who asked not to be identified.
Lena Rublievskaya agreed. The 27-year-old said that because she is already a member of a religious minority, a group of Kyiv Jews who view Jesus Christ as the messiah, she is particularly tolerant of other beliefs.
“We’re always happy to hear other variations, since there shouldn’t be competition among religions and we are all, after all, the same,” she said.
