More than 700 activists of Rossiya Molodaya (Young Russia), a youth group, were joined by students and lecturers of Moscow's Bauman State Technological University (MGTU) in a rally on Friday to demand that a Scientologist office located in the vicinity of MGTU be shut down.
"Not so long ago, an organization emerged in the vicinity of our university whose main goal is to get MGTU students to join it. The name of that organization is the Church of Scientology of Ron Hubbard. In other words, it is a sect that is day after day trying to brainwash us in order to get hold of our money and our knowledge," the Rossiya Molodaya leader Maxim Mishchenko told the rally.
"The sect every day deals a blow to the scientific and technological elite of the country," Mishchenko said. Its purpose is "to fully subject people and deprive them of their willpower," he said.
"And we have come here to say no to the sect, to say that we will not stand for any constraints to be put on our studies and our lives," Mishchenko said.
