Paper short abstract:

Russian anti-cultists claim they have developed a specific technology to expose Scientology and restrict its activities. With the Ukrainian war, they have insisted on the claim that Scientology was behind the 2014 Maidan and works for the American intelligence.

Paper long abstract:

Russian opponents of “cults” claim they have developed a unique technology to contrast them, connected with a new science called “destructology.” Its founder, Russian geographer and anti-cultist Roman Silantyev, persuaded Moscow State Linguistic University to create for him a “Laboratory of Destructology.” In 2009, Silantyev was appointed as the deputy of Alexander Dvorkin, the father of Russia’s anti-cult movement, as head of the Expert Council on religion at the Russian Ministry of Justice. Silantyev and Dvorkin claim they have elaborated a sect of scientific criteria to identify a “destructive cult,” and have applied them to different groups, primarily the Church of Scientology. From 2014 on, and with a particular emphasis since the war in Ukraine started in 2022, the anti-Scientology technology of Russian anti-cultists, which has also been exported to other post-Soviet countries, uses tolls that should “prove” that Scientologists operate in Russia and Ukraine on behalf of the American intelligence and were key organizers of the 2014 Maidan Revolution.