Massimo Introvigne

Applied Sciences Association

APPLIED SCIENCES ASSOCIATION TIMELINE

1919 (September 25):  Avraam Michelssohn, who would later adopt the name of Viktor Pavlovič Svetlov, was born in Moscow, Russia.

1975 (April 17):  Oleg Viktorovich Maltsev was born in Odessa, Ukraine. In the same year, he moved with his family to Sevastopol, Crimea.

1992:  Maltsev graduated at the Moscow Cadet Corps, with Svetlov as his mentor.

1992:  Svetlov established in Moscow TOROSS (Complex Territorial Analytical Consulting Agency).

1998:  Maltsev founded in Vienna the Scientific Research Institute “The Russian Science in Europe.”

1998 (April 27):  Svetlov died in Moscow in a car accident.

2009:  Maltsev founded in Sevastopol, Crimea, The Crimean Research Base. It ceased its operations in 2014.

2014:  Before the Russian occupation of Crimea, Maltsev and his core disciples moved from Sevastopol to Odessa.

2014: Maltsev met psychologist Mikhail Vygdorchik, who taught him the Schicksalsanalyse (Fate Analysis) doctrines of Leopold Szondi and became his teacher.

2014-2016:  In the “Odessa Cult Wars,” the Applied Sciences Association clashed with Ukrainian and Russian anti-cultists.

2015 (April 6):  The International Schicksalsanalys Community Research Institute was established in Odessa.

2016 (June 14):  The Scientific Research Memory Institute was established in Odessa.

2017 (January 24):  The Scientific Research Institute of World Martial Arts Traditions Study and Criminalistic Research on Weapon Handling was established in Odessa.

2017 (June 26):  Maltsev earned his Ph.D. in Psychological Sciences at Odessa State University.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

The Applied Sciences Association is not a religious movement. However, its teachings, rooted in psychology, extend to the field of spirituality and mysticism. For reasons explained in the section “Issues/Challenges,” from 2014 on, it became a main target of the Ukrainian and Russian anti-cult movements, which branded it as a “pseudo-religious cult.”

Oleg Maltsev was born on April 17, 1975 in Odessa, Ukraine, from Jewish parents. His family moved to Sevastopol, Crimea, when he was only four months old. Ukraine was then part of the Soviet Union. The young Maltsev prepared for a military career and studied in Moscow at the Moscow Cadet Corps. In Moscow, he met Viktor Pavlovič Svetlov (1919–1998), who became his mentor, and taught Maltsev the “Pastament doctrine” (see below, under “Beliefs.”). [Image at right] Svetlov’s real name was Avraam Michelssohn, and he descended from a distinguished family of Jewish rabbis. “V.P. Svetlov” had been his alias when working for the Soviet intelligence, and he had decided to keep it.

Maltsev was deeply inspired by Svetlov, and to this day he regards him as the true founder of the various associations he established. In 1992, Maltsev graduated from the Moscow Cadet Corps. He also studied law in Moscow and has practiced law since 2005. He started his own law firm in Ukraine in 2014. Later, in 2017, he would earn a Ph.D. in Psychological Sciences at Odessa State University.

In the same year, 1992, Svetlov established in Moscow TOROSS (Complex Territorial Analytical Consulting Agency), a private consulting company where Maltsev also worked. Maltsev then founded in 1998 in Vienna the Scientific Research Institute “The Russian Science in Europe,” and in 2009, The Crimean Research Base in Sevastopol, which operated until 2014. He moved to Odessa in 2014, with several key disciples, before the Russian occupation of Crimea.

By the time of this move, Maltsev was conducting research and providing courses and seminars on a variety of subjects, from psychology and business to mysticism. The move to Odessa coincided with his first controversies with anti-cultists. It also granted Maltsev a wider national, and then international, audience for its courses, which suggested a reorganization of its activities into three different branches, devoted respectively to psychology, martial arts, and spiritual doctrines, reunited under the umbrella of the Applied Sciences Association (incorporated as the Applied Sciences Association of Scientific Research Institutes), namely The International Schicksalsanalyse (Fate Analysis) Community Research Institute, the Scientific Research Memory Institute and The Scientific Research Institute of World Martial Arts Traditions Study and Criminalistic Research on Weapon Handling.

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

There are three main areas of what Maltsev prefers to call “scientific research” rather than theory or doctrine: psychological, physical, and spiritual. For the realization of professional and other tasks, Maltsev [Image at right] and his followers teach a doctrine called in Russian “Pastament” (literally, in English: pedestal). Maltsev claims that he learned this doctrine from Svetlov and that it is part of science rather than religion. “Pastament” is defined as the science about life, suggesting approaches to the solution of tasks that allow the person to be consistently effective (Maltsev 2014b; this section about doctrines is also based on extensive interviews with Oleg Maltsev and some of its long-time students in 2016, 2017, and 2018). “Pastament” is a science of task implementation, describing the relations of each person with herself and the world, and the interaction between personal and divine structures. It is not directed to self-knowledge, but to self-improvement. It is not about morality but efficiency: it does not classify the actions as good or bad, but as effective and ineffective.

Each person should perform a plurality of tasks in his or her life. Most lack the adequate skills to cope with multiple tasks, and become dependent on both critical acceleration and critical pressure. Feeling responsible for the tasks increases the pressure, and we are also induced to perform the tasks in increasingly short periods of time. Faced with pressure and acceleration, we need adequate tools, knowledge, and skills. “Pastament” is presented as the answer to this need through sets of tools, called “Rastrub” and “Sector.” “Rastrub” provides logic and orientation (applicable to both individuals and societies), and “Sector” allows to cope with the stress of pressure and acceleration. A more complex and high-level tool offered by the association is the “Full-Diapason Technology,” which includes three components: an informational power systems (IPS), which develops skills and controls critical acceleration; a global spiritual system (GPS), which increases individual power to resist pressure; and a hierarchical spiritual system (HSS), through which real problems are identified and solved and pseudo-problems, deriving from psychological and psychosomatic deviations, are identified and excluded. Maltsev explains that, by using these three components, or blocks of technology together, everybody can master the necessary skills, achieve results, and deal with acceleration and pressure.

The main object of this part of Maltsev’s research and teachings are skills. Studying skills, however, means studying memory. Maltsev’s theory of memory is largely based on the works of Soviet academicians Grigory Semenovich Popov and Alexei Samuilovich Yakovlev, who were active in the USSR from the 1930s and of whom Svetlov was a disciple. Popov and Yakovlev conducted their research for the Soviet military and under a curtain of secrecy, and few details of their biographies are known. However, Maltsev believes that they were instrumental in a great number of achievements of Soviet science.

Popov insisted on training speed. Natural hierarchies are created by the time each person needs to master a skill. For example, one can learn how to drive in one month, while another would need a year. Popov believed these differences to be connected to our family and ancestors, and he developed the idea of “ancestral concept.” In this sense, Popov’s theories were close to those of Léopold Szondi (1893-1986), [Image at right] of whom Maltsev became aware in 2014 through psychologist Mikhail Vygdorchik. In 2017, Maltsev and Vygdorchik went to the Zurich-based Szondi Institute, visited Szondi’s museum and grave, and produced a documentary about his life and theories.

Szondi was a Hungarian Jewish psychoanalyst who survived the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen and proposed a third way of deep psychology and memory studies, between Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). Szondi, befriended and esteemed by both Freud and Jung, was never as famous as they were, although his “Szondi test” is still widely used. It is a driving motion deep psychology test, where pictures of people suffering from mental disorders and “deviants” are shown to the patients and their reactions noted. Szondi became well-known when he was requested by the Israeli judges to examine the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962) with his test.

Freud focused on the individual unconscious and Jung on the collective unconscious. Szondi privileged the family unconscious, claiming that the genes of our ancestors of many generations are also present in our unconscious. In a way, our ancestors are there and determine many of our choices. However, when we realize this, we can also change our fate and not be totally determined by our ancestors’ presence in our psychical field (Hughes 1992). For Maltsev, the practical importance of Szondi’s Fate Analysis lies in the study of a methodology that may help to change human’s fate.

It is difficult to disentangle, in Maltsev’s approach to psychology, what comes respectively from Szondi and from Popov, and, no doubt, he also includes original elements of his own. From Popov’s system, Maltsev adopts an approach to memory in four stages: the extraction of an impulse, the extraction of a power component, the converter, and the result.

Maltsev teaches that, observed from outside, memory appears as consisting of blocks, distinguished into dynamic and static. There are four kinds of dynamic blocks: “theater” (responsible for each person’s role), “circus” (for skills), “education” (for knowledge) and “religion” (for doctrine). In addition, there are four kinds of static blocks: “library” (quickly accessible for practical problem solving), “archive” (a storage system of all data accumulated during the course of our lives), “museum” (the operational system for working with phenomena), and “gallery” (the operational system for working with emotions).

We mostly manage our memory through a mechanism called rezensor. The most important managing rezensor is called RCG, Recensorship Group Core, and is able to work with all memory blocks. Maltsev teaches that the RCG is an impulse component responsible for the skills of each person. Based on RCG, Maltsev distinguishes between three human types, designated for the simplicity of work with the imaginative names of “bandit,” “knight” (for men) or “lady” (for women), and “intriguer.”

During one of his “expeditions,” to the Canary Islands, Maltsev concluded that the RCG defines the destiny of a person, the nature of her skills, and her personal way of achievement. At the emergence of an impulse, the memory system automatically addresses those skills it regards as authoritative. There are both automatic and learned skills, but the learned skills predominate over the automatic. Images of authorities are stored in special blocks in the impulse canal of RCG.

The second area where the Applied Sciences Association operates is related to martial arts and weapon handling. [Image at right] As mentioned earlier, Maltsev is particularly interested in studying the skills, and regards weaponry as a great field for the historical and technical analysis of methodologies and technologies. For this reason, he privileges certain weapons, whose mastery, he believes, is more psychological than a matter of force. Such are the Italian weapons popular in the Renaissance, including the Venetian stiletto, and the swords and other weapons utilized in traditional Spanish fencing. Apart from the Spanish fencing, however, Maltsev also studied, and includes in his courses, fencing tradition from Italy (Venetian, Palermitan, Neapolitan, and other styles), Germany, Russia, and other countries. He translated into Russian a number of classical treatises about Italian and Spanish fencing. He also researched boxing, and the legendary American boxing manager and coach Constantine “Cus” D’Amato (1908-1985), who launched the careers of champions, such as Floyd Patterson (1935-2006) and Mike Tyson. According to Maltsev, who visited the regions of origin of the famous coach and explored local archives, D’Amato’s unique boxing style can be traced back to the same principles of the Spanish fencing called destreza, and Italian Renaissance fencing and weapon handling known as Neapolitan Style of Spanish fencing (Maltsev and Patti 2017).

Maltsev also concluded that an ancient and lost wisdom about weapon handling survives where it is rarely sought: in the criminal traditions of several countries, from South Africa (Maltsev 2017) to Russia (Maltsev 2016) and Italy, from Spain to Mexico (Maltsev and Rister 2016), Argentina, and the Philippines. Countries such as South Africa and the Philippines colored European imports with their peculiar ethnic substratum, but the core of the local criminal traditions came from Europe through colonialism. While obviously not condoning their uses for criminal purposes, Maltsev carries on expeditions all over the world to reconstruct traditions of weapon handlings and use in the criminal underworld.

Techniques for handling some weapons, Maltsev concluded, were also developed by certain religious and chivalric orders in the Renaissance and before, and were connected to their secret spirituality. In his later writings, although he had abandoned organized religion, Szondi concluded that faith is necessary for integration and elaborated a theory of spirituality. Maltsev believes that the study of memory may offer the first part of the theoretical basis for this argument Maltsev has also studied the historical heritage of various Catholic monastic and chivalric orders, and esoteric organizations, such as the Franciscans, the Knight Templars, the Rosicrucians, and the Order of the Knights of Our Lord Jesus Christ (also known as Military Order of Christ). Maltsev claims that, through his study of medieval and early modern mysticism, he was able to prove that Catholic religious orders, particularly the Franciscans, had already discovered and taught the main principles about memory and destiny that later Szondi and the pioneers of memory studies formulated in modern scientific terms.

The third area of Maltsev’s research and teachings is, in fact, spirituality and mysticism (Maltsev 2014a). He believes that it is impossible to discuss the categories of “God” and “spirit” without considering their interrelation. It is commonplace to consider God and the human spirit as entirely separated fields but, Maltsev argues, this is not correct and leads to entirely subjective or irrelevant opinions. Before asking questions about God, Maltsev suggests that we ask whether something called “human spirit” exists.

The starting point for answering this question is a linguistic approach. Maltsev believes that Russian is one of the oldest languages in the world and has maintained a uniquely stable structure of expressions and sentences. In Russian, one typical expression refers to the “power of the spirit.” From this, it is possible to conclude that the most important trait of the human spirit is its power component. In turn, the first comment we can make about God is that he is believed to be more powerful than humans. In fact, many religions teach that God can and will punish humans for their transgressions. Thus, in our life we experience both our human power and the presence of a power greater than ours, God.

The spirit should not to be confused with the human psyche. The spirit is responsible for power, the psyche for speed: how quickly something happens. The stronger the person grows, the more manageable his life becomes, inter alia through the control of speed. In a way, those more powerful are also more static. Maltsev explains that a strong person does not need to “run,” as all come to him, while a weak one would need to move constantly, because he or she does not have the power component that would attract others.

Spirit consists of three components: human power, the power of God, and memory. As demonstrated by Jung, memory can also be the source of great power and strength. A good spirituality, Maltsev claims, should increase power and strength. A spirituality whose end result is to make us weaker is useless or worse.

By asking the further question how we can distinguish in ourselves between the human power and the power of God, we realize, Maltsev teaches, that there are in fact three different Gods, or at least three different notions of God (Maltsev 2014c).

The first is an imaginary God, the individual representation human creates when they look “up,” to the sky. The second is the God in the memory. When we look “back,” rather than “up,” we realize that we were born, before we were taught how to conceptualize these notions, with a sense of justice, compassion, and truth. This is the “spark of God” in human memory. There is, however, also a third God, whom Maltsev calls the “Ship God.” [Image at right] In fact, this God is a system, but we see it through the face of the captain of the ship we call society. Those aboard a ship need the skills of the captain to survive, although the captain is also assisted by a cabin crew including various officers. This model is reproduced time and again in the family and innumerable businesses and social organizations. It is also reproduced in religion, as the Ship God is the God closest to humans and the one they continuously encounter.

Each person’s perception includes the three Gods, but we are born only with the image of the second, the God of memory. We create the first one with our imagination, and the third is the result of life experiences and teachings by one’s parents or the society. Maltsev notes that triangles and notions of God centered on number three, such as the Trinity, are present in many religions.

Religions, however, normally claim that God exists independently of humans. Maltsev believes that God and humans are inseparable categories. That does not mean that Maltsev’s system is atheistic. Rather, humans are part of God, but the part cannot exist without the whole, just as the whole cannot exist without its parts. The divine part of humans is, in fact, the spirit. Strengthening the spirit is important, because it means strengthening the person, and without cultivating the spirit one would lack strength, memory, and skills.

About survival after death, Maltsev maintains that we do not have conclusive evidence and can only speculate. Since we are born with memory and spirit, it would be logical to conclude that they survive. We can also speculate that how they survive is connected to the predominant conception of God each person had in life. Eternal reward or punishment is connected with the first God. The Ship God would call us to board another ship through reincarnation. Moreover, those centering their spirituality on the second God would be happy with the destiny of the hero, i.e. with surviving for a long time in the memory of others.

Maltsev uses often the word “mysticism,” but with a peculiar meaning. Originally, he argues, mysticism was intended as a system of knowledge about the world, God, and how to achieve power and authority during our lifetime. Mysticism was the science of the ruling classes. It evolved into modern science, while a lesser version, religion, was created for the common people. Building on the work of Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), Maltsev believes that, since at least the ancient Rome, there were two different forms of spirituality for different social groups. The God of the ruling class and the warriors and the God of the peasants were different, and catered to different needs.

From this observation, and from his study of European history, Maltsev came to the conclusion that there are three different traditions: Venetian, Rhine, and Athos. Each tradition is a way of both thinking and acting. The Athos system is centered on the first God, the Rhine on the third (the Ship God), and the Venetian on the second, although only the Venetian is aware of the existence of the three Gods. The Byzantine emperors, who used the first God to control their subjects, created the Athos tradition. Maltsev believes that this tradition today is most clearly at work in the Russian Orthodox Church, whose links with the Mount Athos monastic community in Greece are both old and deep. The Athos attitude is passive, requires mostly faith, and encourages devotees to tremble in fear of their God. By contrast, the Rhine tradition is active, as the Ship God requires concrete, practical actions, on the basis of which humans will be judged. Originally, the Rhine tradition developed within the class of knights, although later it extended to commoners. The great European revolutions were the results of the work of the Athos system, which as a result came to power, but not for a long time, as eventually its sworn enemy, the Rhine system, was always able to react and fight back.

Ultimately, however, both the Athos and the Rhine systems had been created by the Venetian tradition, the only one with a knowledge of how the three Gods logic is at work in human history. The Venetian tradition is the most powerful and merciless. It deals with the second God, the God of memory, and teaches humans how to be powerful, independent, and skillful. Its representatives always preferred to operate in the shadow. The Venetian system became almost completely invisible with the bourgeois revolutions, through a process extending from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, but did not disappear. How it works can be reconstructed by studying certain underground traditions where it survives, including the Sicilian mafia, not to be confused with the rival criminal tradition of nearby Calabria, known as Ndrangheta, which applies the Rhine rather than the Venetian system. In fact, Italy is a country of particular interest to Maltsev because he believes it keeps traces of all three systems: the Venetian in the north, Athos in the center, and Rhine in the south, while in other countries one system is clearly predominant.

RITUALS/PRACTICES

The Applied Sciences Association is not a religious movement and, as such, has no specific rituals. As it happens in similar groups, participating in the movement means attending seminars and courses, some of them online. Motivations for attending these courses mentioned in interviews realized by the undersigned in Ukraine in 2016 and 2018 include spiritual development, acquiring knowledge that would result in a better quality of life, mastering new skills, becoming more responsible, and even achieving financial independence.

In addition to seminars and courses, those who are part of the inner circle of the movement participate in field research trips Maltsev calls “scientific expeditions,” where he is helped by senior students to perform his archival researches, and at the same time teaches and demonstrates his esoteric theory of history through visits to architectural, archeological, and historical monuments. [Image at right]  Documentary movies are normally produced summarizing the activities and results of each “expedition.” Between 2013 and mid-2018, “expeditionary forces” completed 28 such trips to Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Czech Republic, and the United States.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

In its current incarnation, born after Maltsev’s move from Sevastopol to Odessa in 2014, the Applied Sciences Association of Scientific Research Institutes serves as an umbrella organization for three different institutes incorporated between 2015 and 2017 under Ukrainian law as private enterprises.

The first is the International Schicksalsanalyse (i.e. “Fate Analysis,” in German) Community Research Institute, founded on April 6, 2015, studying psychology in the Szondi tradition. The second is the Memory Institute, established on June 14, 2016, the study and teaching organization for the chivalric traditions, the esoteric view of history, and spirituality. The third is the Scientific Institute of World Martial Art Traditions Study and Criminalistic Research of Weapon Handling, founded on January 24, 2017, which studies and teaches martial arts and weapon handling techniques, some of them derived from criminal traditions all over the world.

Maltsev serves as the director of the Memory Institute, and is regarded as the leader of the whole movement. Maryna Illiusha is the director of the Schicksalsanalyse Institute and Evgeniya Tarasenko serves as director of the martial arts organization.

Maltsev considers that the doctrine of Pastament, as well as its tools, applied for task implementation, may offer new useful insights in a wide variety of human fields, including science, history, business, journalism, and the practice of law. As mentioned earlier, he is also a law graduate and a lawyer, and founded with Ukrainian colleague Olga Panchenko the Redut Law Firm. [Image at right] He also inspired the creation of the Unsolved Crimes online newspaper, originally devoted to murder cases and now quite active in fighting anti-cultists and other critics of the Applied Sciences Association.

Seminars and courses both in Ukraine and internationally (inter alia, they have been held in Italy, United States, Spain, and Turkey), have been attended by several hundred and, if Web seminars are included, thousands of persons interested in various aspects of the association’s activities. The association is very active on both YouTube and Facebook. The core “membership” (a notion not easily applicable to this kind of movements) is smaller, but seems to be increasing. There are some fifty full-time members, most of whom receive a salary from one of the organizations.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

Due to the support of the government during the different Vladimir Putin administrations, Russian anti-cultism has emerged as a leading force within the global anti-cult community. While, however, in other countries anti-cultism presents itself a secular, in Russia its main organization, the Saint Irenaeus of Lyons Centre, is closely connected with the Russian Orthodox Church. Its leader, Alexander Dvorkin, became the president of the Justice Ministry’s Expert Council for Conducting State Religious Studies Expert Analysis, a key actor in the campaigns aimed at banning “cults” (Human Rights Without Frontiers Correspondent in Russia 2012). [Image at right]

In 2009, Dvorkin became also the vice-president of the European anti-cult federation FECRIS. As economic support to FECRIS by other countries was drying out, the Russian component became a hegemonic one in the European alliance. This was somewhat paradoxical, because most European anti-cult organizations are deeply secular, while Dvorkin represents a radical faction of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In Russia, counter-cultists also tried to deepen their connection with politics, without hiding their religious background. A leading critic of “cults,” psychologist Alexander Neveev, is part of a project for an “Academy of Orthodox Politicians.”

Western anti-cultists, confronted with economic problems and decreasing support by governments, often have a mythical image of Dvorkin’s group as almost omnipotent in Russia. This is not the case. Dvorkin has also critics in Russian political and religious milieus, and needs to remind the public opinion of his relevancy by continuously finding new “dangerous cults.”

It is this background that explains the belated “cult wars” episode that happened in Odessa in 2014-2016. In 2012, a lady called Maria Kapar attended one of Maltsev’s courses. and she was happy with it. In fact, she continued attending the courses for approximately two years. At one stage Kapar, while collaborating with the Applied Sciences Association, was accused of using the group’s name for her personal illegal business activities in Odessa. As the conflict escalated, in 2014 Kapar contacted Neveev and presumably Dvorkin, who (apparently without having performed any search on the group) confirmed that she had been the victim of a typical “cult.”

Happy to be able to add a new “cult” to his list, Neveev posted Web pages against the “Odessa Templars” (a name Maltsev never used). They accused the group, inter alia, of connections with the medieval Order of Knights Templar, as well as setting up a military organization, brainwashing, fraud, and sexual improprieties, all standard accusations used against dozens of “cults” in Russia and elsewhere.

The Russian counter-cultists also suggested that Kapar contact the local media in Odessa. She found some journalists particularly hostile to “cults” and others interested in sensational news, including Maria Kovalyova, Dmitry Bakaev, Vyacheslav Kasim, Evgenii Lysyi, Oksana Podnebesna. Several hostile printed and electronic media accounts were authored by six different reporters. Some, such as Oksana Podnebesna, had reasons of hostility to the Redut Law Firm because of criminal cases (unrelated to Maltsev or “cults”) the firm won on behalf of defendants the reporters regarded as guilty.

The most serious incident involved Yulia Yalovaya, a 20-year old employee of the Redut Law Firm, also working for the Unsolved Crimes newspaper. Her mother read the Internet reports against the Applied Sciences Association and got in touch with the Russian counter-cultists who, according to her daughter, had her pay $12,000 for financing Yulia’s “rescue” (Fautré 2016). The mother then asked policemen to bring Yulia to the police station for questioning, claiming a “cult” was recruiting her into a “prostitution ring.”

Dvorkin and Neveev may be powerful in Russia, but their friends in Odessa were less well-known and could receive but a limited help by their Russian counterparts, if not through articles posted on the Internet. Dvorkin himself was forbidden to enter Ukraine since 2014, because of his positions on the Donetsk issue. Yulia Yalovaya was released thanks to the efforts of the Redut Law Firm and the journalists who had spread the anti-cult narratives about the Applied Sciences Association were hit by lawsuits. Some, such as Dmitry Bakaev, lost their jobs.

Unsolved Crimes produced a docudrama movie, Protect Your Dignity, about the Yalovaya case, which had favorable reviews internationally in human rights circles, and further damaged the case and the reputation of the anti-cultists. Their propaganda against the Applied Sciences Association is being kept alive on the web, but does not seem to disturb the progress of the group. [Image at right]

Considering the religious background of Russian anti-cultism, criticism by Maltsev about the historical wrongdoings of the Orthodox Church was an important factor in explaining what happened. The internal problems of the anti-cult movement and its need to find new targets were another factor: at one stage, even a law firm such as Redut was described as a “cult.” As these problems will probably continue in a near future, anti-cultists would continue to criticize the Applied Sciences Association, although its legal reaction has been particularly vigorous and effective.

IMAGES

Image #1: Portrait of Viktor Pavlovič Svetlov.
Image #2: Oleg Maltsev.
Image #3: Léopold Szondi.
Image #4: Oleg Maltsev teaching martial arts.
Image #5: Cover of the book Ship God (2014).
Image #6: Maltsev in one of his scientific expeditions.
Image #7: Olga Panchenko.
Image #8: Alexander Dvorkin.
Image #9: Confrontation between Julia Yalovaya and her mother at police station in Odessa, from the movie Protect Your Dignity.

REFERENCES

Fautré, Willy. 2016. “Followers of Jewish Psychiatrist Leopold Szondi accused by FECRIS Vice-President Alexander Dvorkin of Belonging to a ‘Cult.’” Human Rights Without Frontiers, September 5. Accessed from http://hrwf.eu/ukraine-followers-of-jewish-psychiatrist-leopold-szondi-accused-by-fecris-vice-president-alexander-dvorkin-of-belonging-to-a-cult/ on 11 September 2017.

Hughes, Richard A. 1992. Return of the Ancestor. Bern: Peter Lang.

Human Rights Without Frontiers Correspondent in Russia. 2012. “FECRIS and its Affiliate in Russia. The Orthodox Clerical Wing of FECRIS.” Religion – Staat – Gesellschaft 2012:267-306 [special issue “Freedom of Religion or Belief, Anti-Sect Movements and State Neutrality. A Case Study: FECRIS”].

Maltsev, Oleg. 2017. Black Logic. Odessa: Scientific Institute of World Martial Art Traditions Study and Criminalistic Research of Weapon Handling.

Maltsev, Oleg. 2016. On Your Knives: Knife in Russian Criminal Tradition. Odessa: Scientific Institute of World Martial Art Traditions Study and Criminalistic Research of Weapon Handling.

Maltsev, Oleg. 2014a. “TRUTH”: The Game That Rules the Word. Odessa: The Memory Institute.

Maltsev, Oleg. 2014b. Дорога на Постамент (Road to Pedestal). Odessa: The Memory Institute.

Maltsev, Oleg. 2014c. Корабельный Бог (Ship God). Odessa: The Memory Institute.

Maltsev, Oleg, and Jon Rister. 2016. Eternal Pain: Mexican Criminal Tradition. Odessa: Scientific Institute of World Martial Art Traditions Study and Criminalistic Research of Weapon Handling.

Maltsev, Oleg, and Tom Patti. 2017. Non-Compromised Pendulum. Odessa: Seredniak T. K.

Post Date:
19 May 2018

 

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