1993: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

White Brotherhood grabs headlines

Ukraine was showered with Western media attention in 1993, not because of its political or economic woes, but because of prophesies promoted by a doomsday cult known as the Great White Brotherhood.

Journalists from Europe and North America flocked to Kyyiv as a modern-day Armageddon loomed. Maria Devi Khrystos, 33, the self-proclaimed messiah, and her husband, Yuriy Kryvonohov, the cult's reputed mastermind, predicted that the end of the world would come in November 1993.

At first, the apocalypse and mass suicide were to take place on November 24, but as the White Brotherhood followers - many of them teenagers and children - gained the attention of Ukrainian authorities and the media, the leaders moved the end of the world up to November 14.

They also modified their mass suicide plan and later Kyyiv's Interior Ministry officials said that only the messiah was to be crucified, but would resurrect three days after her death. Cult followers even distributed literature that identified President Leonid Kravchuk as Pontius Pilate.

But, much to the disappointment of the 150,000 followers from all parts of the former Soviet Union, the world failed to end in 1993.

As the year ended, the cult leaders, who had been arrested on November 10, still were jailed, awaiting trial on charges of hooliganism and seizure of state property, which carries a penalty of three to five years' imprisonment.

Some of their victims - who were allegedly given drugs by the cult founder, Mr. Kryvonohov, a cybernetics engineer who was involved in developing mind-altering drugs for the Soviet army for psychological warfare - have already gone home with their parents, who are hoping to "de-program" their "zombie-like robots."

This bizarre episode in Ukraine's post-Soviet history underscored the lack of religion and organized activities brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In Ukraine, cult leaders have found fertile ground for sects and quasi-religious groups to breed. With Ukrainian officials puzzled by this situation, and Ukrainian religious and youth leaders unprepared to deal with the moral decay prevalent in this society today, what will 1994 bring?

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 26, 1993, No. 52, Vol. LXI

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