Russia Special Services note that in recent years the number of Satan worshipers in Russia has been growing exponentially. The August 25, 1999 Moscow News reported "Thousands of our compatriots worship Antichrist, elevating him to the rank of the supreme deity. In the Russian capital alone there are now about 20 Satanist organizations. These include the Russian Satanist Church, Black Wolves, the Left Path, the Church of the 13th Apostle, the Southern Cross, the Black Dragon, the Blue Lotus, the Order of the Silver Star, the Black Brothers of the Demon of Monday, and others. More than 2,000 people ‘live and work' in these organizations. Every sect has a specific hierarchy based on blind obedience to its ‘ideological' leader."

Among these satanists, one encounters all sorts of amulets, trinkets, and body tattoos in the form of digits, words, and symbols such as "666," "A," an upturned five-pointed star within a circle, a skull split in half, crosses turned upside down, and swastikas. Their creed is based on the traditions of occultism, black magic, and cabalism.

Examples of slogans include: "Death to All Things Living," "War on Christianity," and "God Is Dead, Long Live Satan!" Perverse satanist festivals that include "black masses" are observed on Walpurgis Night (marked on the eve of May Day), Catholic Anti-Christmas (6 a.m., June 6), the Buddhist Mass of the Devil (from September 29 to October 13), Lames (overnight from July 31 to August 1), Candlemas (overnight from February 14 to 15), Fern Seed Night (July 5 to 6), Massacre of the Innocents (!) (overnight from December 23 to 24), and Halloween (the evening of October 31), as well as nights of a full moon.

According to Special Services, Satanist organizations are often in close contact with (and sometimes simply duplicate) Nazi, fascist, and racist groups. It seems that these satanists take pains to conceal their identities. They will not make a phone call except in an emergency, and then only using a certain code. Most of the time they meet at night, conducting ambiguous conversations, full of words understood only to each other, while every interlocutor has one or even several aliases. Written messages are transmitted via the Internet or from hand to hand.

"In Russia today" writes Toby Westerman in the International News Analysis, "ritual killings of adults and children are becoming common. Security personnel attribute satanists with an increase of rapes, church and grave desecrations, animal torture and dismemberment, drug abuse and the practice of sexual orgies."

Agence France Presse reported in September that Russian police arrested a leader of a satanist cult that had allegedly planned several terrorist bomb attacks. Police arrested Mikhail Naumenko, 22, a literature student at Moscow's Gorky University. Naumenko was carrying a Brazilian-made Taurus and several doses of heroin when arrested. Police also found 300 grams (10 ounces) of the explosive TNT while searching Naumenko's house.

Naumenko's devil-worshiping cult, the Black Dragons, is suspected of planning a series of explosions in popular spots during the Moscow Festival held at the end of the summer.

The report stated further that the satanist group has several thousand members in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Rostov-on-Don. Izvestia reported on Sept. 2 the arrest of four satanists suspected of killing nearly 40 people as part of their rituals.

Toby Westerman noted, "Modern communications have assisted in the spread of the occult in Russia. The British Broadcasting Corporation (February 1995) reported that televised seances are common on Russian television. One leading figure of the pop-occult world, a female occult healer named ‘Juno' from ‘post-Soviet' Georgia, has employed her ‘mystical powers' on former Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin and the (former) leader of ‘democratic and reformed Russia,' Boris Yeltsin."

On a similar note, a July 28 report from The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, stated with alarm that social workers in Russia see "a growing negativism among teenagers" that includes "rock music, drugs that define groups, violence and a rise of interest in the occult."

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