# Russia

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-19 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Moojan Momen, Russia, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Russia
> 
> Moojan Momen
> 
> 1995
> 
> Russia. Area 17,078,005 sq. km. (6,592,110 sq.
> ml.). Pop. 148,100,000 (1990). The present Russian republic is a part of
> the much larger Imperial Russian Empire which after the Bolshevik Revolution
> of 1917 became the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Present-day
> Russia is still, however, the largest country in the world in area. The
> majority of its population are ethnically Russians (83%) but there are
> large regions which are the homelands of other ethnic groups such as the
> Tatars (4%), Yakut, Buryat, Chechen, Ingush, Chuvash, Bashkir, Daghestani,
> Ossetian, Udmurt, Mari, Komi, and others. It is difficult at this time
> to make any accurate statements about the religious composition of the
> people of Russia since they are at present emerging from seventy years
> in which all religion was repressed. Among those who are ethnically Russian,
> the Russian Orthodox Church is the predominant religious persuasion. Some
> of the ethnic minorities adhere to other religions: the Tatars, Bashkirs,
> Chechens, Daghestanis, and Ingush are Muslims; the Buryats and Kalmyks
> follow Mongolian Buddhism. Other articles deal with the Bahá'í Faith in
> the various parts of the former Soviet Union outside Russia.
> 
> 1. The Babi and Bahá'í Faiths and Czarist Russia.
> Because Russia had a very strong diplomatic presence in Iran in the nineteenth
> century, the first interactions between the new religion and the Czarist
> government occurred at an early date. In the early nineteenth century,
> a certain Mulla Sadiq had been prophesying the near advent of the Mahdi
> to the people of Urdubad in Russian territory, near the Iranian border
> (he was exiled to Warsaw where he died). His successor as leader of the
> movement that he had iniated, Sayyid `Abdu'l-Karim Urdubadi, is reported
> to have become a Babi and to have been exiled to Smolensk by the Russian
> authorities, fearful of the possibility of disturbances among their Muslim
> subjects. He was later freed and lived in Astrakhan (see "Azerbaijan").
> Therefore, when the Bab himself was moved in 1847 to his imprisonment at
> Maku close to the Russian border and close to the area that had been disturbed
> by Mulla Sadiq's preaching, the Russian minister in Tehran, Prince Dimitri
> Ivanovich Dolgorukov (d. 1867) insisted that the Bab be moved away from
> Maku (Kazemzadeh; BBR 72). From 1848 onwards, Dolgorukov referred frequently
> to the Bab and the Babis in the dispatches that he sent to the Russian
> Foreign Office. In 1849, Dolgorukov sent several reports of the Shaykh
> Tabarsi episode (q.v., BBR 92-5; "Excerpts"), and in 1850 he asked the
> Russian Consul in Tabriz to make inquiries about the doctrines of the Bab
> (BBR 9), as well as reporting the episodes at Zanjan (q.v., BBR 114-27;
> "Excerpts") and Nayriz (q.v., BBR 108).
> When the attempt on the life of Nasiru'd-Din Shah occurred
> in 1852, Bahá'u'lláh was arrested as he left the Russian legation, where
> his brother-in-law, Mirza Majid Ahi, was a secretary. Dolgorukov exerted
> himself greatly to obtain Bahá'u'lláh's release, a fact that is referred
> to in Bahá'u'lláh's tablet to the Czar of Russia. On his release, Dolgorukov
> is reported to have offered to arrange for Bahá'u'lláh's exile to be in
> Russian territory; but Bahá'u'lláh declined, preferring to go to Baghdad.
> One further episode in Iran involving the Russian government
> occurred when the Bahá'ís of Isfahan were being severely persecuted in
> 1903 and took sanctuary in the Russian consulate, with the encouragement
> of the Russian consul Baronovski. However, the Russian consul then lost
> his nerve and the Bahá'ís were forced to leave the consulate, many being
> beaten badly by the mob outside as they did so. There must be many more
> reports about episodes in Babi and Bahá'í history in the Russian Foreign
> Office Archives but these have not as yet been researched.
> Czar Alexander II was the recipient of one of Bahá'u'lláh's
> tablets (see "Kings and Leaders, Tablets to"). A number of Russian scholars
> were particularly active in investigating the Babi and Bahá'í religions.
> N.V. Khanykov, Bernard Dorn, and F.A. Bakulin collected material in Iran,
> while Alexander Tumanski (q.v.) studied the Bahá'í Faith among the Bahá'ís
> of Ashkhabad, and Baron Victor Rosen (q.v.) was responsible for publishing
> several of the writings of Bahá'u'lláh. Tumanski was responsible for the
> publication of a translation of the Kitab-i-Aqdas (q.v.) into Russian.
> 
> 2. Bahá'ís in Russia. From about 1884, Iranian
> Bahá'ís began to migrate to the Russian territories immediately north of
> Iran, to Ashkhabad and Baku in particular. Here they found a freedom of
> worship and a freedom to build the institutions of their Faith which was
> denied to them in Iran (see "Central Asia" and "Azerbaijan"). A small Bahá'í
> community sprang up in Russia itself as well. One of the first Bahá'ís
> was Izabella Grinevskaia (q.v.), although it is difficult to be certain
> when she first considered herself a Bahá'í. She met `Abdu'l-Bahá in 1910
> in Egypt and published plays and essays about the new religion. She was
> a resident of St. Petersburg. There were also a number of Iranian Bahá'í
> students and merchants in Moscow. Count Leo Tolstoy, the renowned author,
> was very interested in the Bahá'í Faith and met and corresponded with Bahá'ís.
> However due to the strict control on religion in Russia, the Bahá'ís were
> not able to teach the Bahá'í Faith openly there.
> For the first few years after the Bolshevik revolution,
> the Bahá'ís, although attacked in the government press (BW 2:35), benefited
> from the easing of some restrictions and were able to convert a few Russians
> to the Bahá'í Faith. Local spiritual assemblies were formed in Moscow and
> Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and a few other small communities arose in such
> places as Oriyol (?Auriol, Iryul, Uryul, ??XXX) near Moscow, where Hasan
> Bayk of Burda` in Russian Azerbaijan taught the Bahá'í Faith and succeeded
> in converting eight families.
> Eventually, however, the pressures against the Bahá'ís
> and all religions intensified. In 1926, a Bahá'í visiting Moscow to give
> a public lecture was arrested and a printing press used for the publication
> of Bahá'í materials was confiscated. By 1928, there were extensive moves
> against all the Bahá'í communities in the Soviet Union. The Bahá'í communities
> made many representations to the government against these persecutions
> but to no avail. Publications appeared attacking the Bahá'í Faith: I. Darov,
> Bekhaizm: Novaia Religiia Vostoka (Leningrad: Priboi, 1930); and
> A. Arsharuni, Bekhaizm (Moscow: Bezbozhnik, 1930); while the Small
> Soviet Encyclopaedia published in 1933 denounced the Bahá'í Faith for
> camouflaging itself as "socialism" and stated that it was one of the "fashionable
> religious philosophical systems which the bourgeoisie uses in its fight
> against the ideas of Socialism and Communism" (Kolarz 472). In 1938, numerous
> Bahá'ís were arrested and some of the Bahá'ís from Ashkhabad and other
> areas of Central Asia and the Caucasus were exiled to Siberia and elsewhere.
> All communal Bahá'í activity in the Soviet Union ceased from this date,
> although many of those remaining at home or in exile continued to hold
> firm in their faith. Another wave of persecutions and imprisonments occurred
> in 1948.
> Throughout these years, the few remaining Bahá'ís in Russia
> were isolated from the rest of the Bahá'í world. Mr. Bakhadin Orudzhev
> (d. 1989) of Baku lived in Moscow from 1973 and isolated Bahá'ís were reported
> in Penza and in a town near Leningard but there is little information about
> such individuals. Although there were occasional Bahá'í visitors to Russia
> such as Lorol Schopflocher and Muzaffar Namdar, they did not attempt to
> contact the Bahá'ís there.
> Shoghi Effendi made the opening of all of the Soviet Republics
> in Asia a goal of the Ten Year Crusade (q.v.). But no Knights of Bahá'u'lláh
> (q.v.) were named for these areas as it was found that there were already
> Bahá'ís living there. The German Bahá'ís were given the responsibility
> of trying to strengthen the Bahá'í community in Russia in 1963. During
> the 1960s and 1970s, a small number of Bahá'ís visited the Soviet Union
> as tourists but no attempt was made to teach the Bahá'í Faith.
> 
> 3. Resurrection of the Russian Bahá'í community.
> From 1979 onward, a small number of Bahá'í pioneers managed to settle in
> Russia. Paul Semenoff and his cousin Kathryn Soloveoff, two Canadian Bahá'ís
> of Doukhobor origin, arrived in Ivanovo to study Russian on 21 August 1979.
> Soloveoff had to return after four months because of her mother's illness
> but Semenoff stayed until 1981. At about the end of 1981, Mr. Muhammad
> Nur at-Tayyib from the Sudan came to Leningrad, where he remained until
> 1988. He was joined in 1986 by Friedo and Shole Zölzer and Karen Reitz
> from Germany, who all remained for short periods of time. Mr. Leif Hjierpe
> of Sweden lived in Moscow in 1980-81. In 1982, Richard and Corinne Hainsworth
> from the United Kingdom settled in Moscow, where they remain to the present,
> and where they were joined by Andrew and Vivien Bromfield from Ireland
> who remained from 1987 to 1993. Mr. Zaffarullah Nassim, a Bahá'í from Sri
> Lanka, opened the city of Krasnodar to the Bahá'í Faith in 1987, and was
> joined by Mr. Fondem from Ghana in 1989.
> The first Russian to become a Bahá'í in this new phase
> of growth was Miss Katya Zalenskaya in Leningrad in 1982. Anja Skreptsova
> became a Bahá'í in Moscow in 1984; Dr. Natalya Konstantinova Belisheva
> in Leningrad in September 1987; and Mrs. Irina Skladnova of Novgorod in
> 1987. In July 1989, Bahá'ís took part in a Peace Camp at Murmansk resulting
> in five new Bahá'ís. Among others who became Bahá'ís in that early period
> were Stanislav Koncebovski, who was the first to translate Bahá'í books
> into Russian in recent times, and Maria Skreptsova, who was later elected
> to the National Spiritual Assembly. By the end of 1989, there were some
> twenty-three Bahá'ís in Moscow, six in Leningrad, twenty-one in Murmansk,
> two in Krasnodar, and one in Petrozavodsk. In March 1990, Abbas and Rezvanieh
> Katirai became the last Knights of Bahá'u'lláh (q.v.) to be named when
> they pioneered to Sakhalin Island.
> From December 1989 onwards, most of the growth of the
> Bahá'í Faith in Russia was the result of organized groups of Bahá'ís from
> Europe, North America, Japan, and elsewhere coming to Russia for periods
> of a few weeks. The first such group came from Hawaii in December 1989
> and resulted in five new Bahá'ís in Kazan. Since 1987, Lynda Goodwin had
> been leading tours organized by the Center for US/USSR Intitiatives. These
> groups would often have a few Bahá'ís in them. On 1 January 1990, a public
> meeting on the Bahá'í Faith was organized in St. Petersburg in the course
> of one such tour. Between February and April 1990, the South American Bahá'í
> musical group "El Viento Canta" toured Russia, leading to Bahá'í converts
> in Ulan-Ude and Severobaikalsk in Siberia. Many more organized groups came
> throughout 1990-92, some staying in one place and others traveling to various
> centers. In 1990, the Soviet American Cooperation Society was set up in
> the United States (by Lynda Goodwin and Bill Mahoney) and NetEast was set
> up in Canada to facilitate the flow of Bahá'í visitors from North America.
> There were also groups drawn from all of the European countries and organized
> by the German Bahá'ís. Of particular note have been native Bahá'ís from
> North America and Greenland who have gone to the native populations of
> eastern Siberia.
> In April 1990, the Hand of the Cause Mr. Furutan (q.v.)
> traveled to Russia and was present at the election of the Local Spiritual
> Assembly of Moscow at Ridvan 1990. Further local assemblies were formed
> later that same year in Ulan-Ude (August), Kazan (September), Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
> (September), Leningrad (October) and Murmansk (October). On 8-9 December
> 1990, the first conference of the Bahá'ís of the Soviet Union was held
> in Moscow with representatives of thirty-five Bahá'í communities present,
> twenty-three of these being in Russia itself. There were now over three
> hundred Bahá'ís in Russia. By September 1991, there were some eight hundred
> Bahá'ís in twenty-three local assembly areas and some thirty-eight other
> localities.
> In April 1991, the National Spiritual Assembly of the
> Bahá'ís of the Soviet Union was formed at a convention held in Moscow.
> But by Ridvan 1992, following the rapid political changes taking place
> in the country, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Soviet Union was
> replaced by four new assemblies. One of these was the Regional Spiritual
> Assembly of Russia, Georgia, and Armenia. By Ridvan 1993, there were some
> 3,000 Bahá'ís in Russia with 40 local spiritual assemblies.
> There has usually been good relationships with the government
> authorities in recent times. The Regional Spiritual Assembly received,
> on 12 April 1993, a registration certificate recognizing it as the central
> institution of the Bahá'í Faith in Russia. Also of importance has been
> the development of an increasingly strong relationship with the Parliament
> of the Saka Republic (Yakutia) in Yakutsk, which was begun by Jens Lyberth
> of Greenland and continued through the visit of Hand of the Cause Ruhiyyih
> Khanum and her address to the Parliament in 1993.
> See also: "Grinevskaia, Izabella"; "Rosen, Baron Victor";
> "Tumanski, Alexander"; "Kings and Leaders, Letters to"
> 
> Bibliography. BW 2:30; 3:34-43. Graham
> Hassall, "Notes on the Babi and Bahá'í Religions in Russia and its territories,"
> JBS 1993, 5/3:41-80, 86. Mark Townshend, "God, come back to Russia," unpublished
> manuscript. Notes from the archives of the Eastern Desk of the National
> Spiritual Assembly of Germany, compiled by Gitta Schumann. F. Kazemzadeh,
> "Two incidents in the life of the Bab," WO 1971, 5/3:21-4. "Excerpts from
> the Dispatches written during 1848-1852 by Prince Dolgorukov," WO 1966,
> 1/1:17-24. Walter Kolarz, Religion in the Soviet Union, London:
> MacMillan, 1961, pp. 470-2.
> 
> METADATA
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> Views22103 views since posted 1999; last edit 2015-02-24 05:21 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../momen_encyclopedia_russia;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
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> Shortlink: bahai-library.com/453
> Citation: ris/453
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> — *Russia (Used by permission of the curator)*