They spent almost six months living in a primitive underground cave, waiting for the world to end next month. Attempts to persuade them to come out -- you had to shout down a snow-encrusted chimney -- didn't work.
But on Tuesday, 14 members of a Russian doomsday cult emerged from their remote underground hiding place. They had apparently concluded that the recent collapse of part of their roof meant that God now wanted them to return to the surface.
Another 14 cult members were still inside the bunker in Russia's Penza region, two of them children. Seven women left last week. Local officials were yesterday confident that the last members would leave in time for Orthodox Easter, April 27.
"All are in good health, considering they have spent half a year underground," said Oleg Melnichenko, deputy governor of the Penza region, where members of the cult have been holed up in a scrub-covered hillside since last October.
"They have refused medical attention and are now in a house, praying, where they say they will stay until Orthodox Easter," he said. "They say that God had given them a signal to leave after the fourth partial cave-in."
The group that emerged yesterday included two girls aged eight and 12, as well its most "difficult" member, Vitaly Nedogon. Melnichenko said that the remaining members had refused all offers to leave.
Yesterday's peaceful exit is a rare triumph for Russia's authorities, who refrained from storming the cave. The group had threatened to blow themselves up with gas canisters if the police tried to remove them by force.
The cult members from Russia and Belarus gathered in a nearby village last year, attracted by the teachings of the cult's leader Pavel Kuznetsov.
Kuznetsov, who is now undergoing psychiatric treatment, had predicted that the world would end this month or next. The group then decided to disappear into the cave.
A reporter who crawled into the underground tunnel yesterday discovered a makeshift kitchen, a sleeping space hollowed out into the earth, a chess set, pages from a children's book, and walls imaginatively decorated with images of flowers and plants.
Cult members had taken their provisions with them: jars of pickled mushrooms, pasta, cooking oil, and a saw.
Yesterday an expert in cults said that several other extreme religious movements were now springing up across Russia. They believe tax numbers -- and processed food -- are the work of the devil.
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