Pyotr Kuznetsov (; born 1964) is the leader and founder of the

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n religious group, the

True Russian Orthodox Church The Penza Recluses (, True Russian Orthodox Church, TROC; ) were an Independent Russian doomsday cult founded by Pyotr Kuznetsov which borrowed some ideas from Eastern Orthodoxy. The self-given name of the group was "Heavenly Jerusalem" (). The g ...

. Kuznetsov did not let his followers watch television, listen to the radio or handle money. The group has been referred to as a "

Doomsday cult A doomsday cult is a cult that believes in apocalypticism and millenarianism, including both those that predict disaster and those that attempt to destroy the entire universe. Sociologist John Lofland coined the term ''doomsday cult'' in his 19 ...

". Kuznetsov is a divorced architect from

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

, who wandered all across Russia to spread his message of the impending

apocalypse Apocalypse () is a literary genre originating in Judaism in the centuries following the Babylonian exile (597–587 BCE) but persisting in Christianity and Islam. In apocalypse, a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a ...

before settling in the village of Nikolskoye. He has been diagnosed as

schizophrenic Schizophrenia () is a mental disorder characterized variously by hallucinations (typically, Auditory hallucination#Schizophrenia, hearing voices), delusions, thought disorder, disorganized thinking and behavior, and Reduced affect display, f ...

, and according to ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', he sleeps in a coffin. On April 3, 2008, Kuznetsov

attempted suicide A suicide attempt is an act in which an individual tries to kill themselves but survives. Mental health professionals discourage describing suicide attempts as "failed" or "unsuccessful", as doing so may imply that a suicide resulting in death is ...

. He and his followers had been hiding in a cave in Russia's

Penza Penza (, ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Penza Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Sura (river), Sura River, southeast of Moscow. As of the 2010 Russian census, 2010 Census, Penza had ...

region in anticipation of Kuznetsov' prediction that the world would end. Officials speculated his suicide attempt may have been caused by realising his prediction had been wrong."

References

External links

* Stench of rotting corpses drives Russian doomsday group from cave on

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Living people 1964 births 20th-century apocalypticists 21st-century apocalypticists Founders of new religious movements People with schizophrenia {{Russia-bio-stub