Abstract
Despite the manifestation of specific interest in religion in the perestroika years, the Russian Far East by the early 1990s continued to be the most secular region of the country. A significant part of its population had no experience of "the life in God." The federal law "On freedom of religion" (1990) (signed on September 20th, 1991) coupled with Decree No. 123 "On the opening of Vladivostok for visiting by foreign citizens" led to the Russian Far East becoming one of the favorite places for foreign missionaries in the 1990s. The missionaries were arriving from many countries. They were primarily representatives of Protestant and Catholic religious organizations. Local Protestant communities (Baptists, evangelical Christians, Pentecostals, and Seventh-day Adventists) with the assistance and support from foreign missionaries and missionary organizations were able to commence mass evangelization of the population of the Far East in the 1990s. They had significant success in the evangelization process, outnumbering religious communities of the Russian Orthodox Church. On the one hand, cross-border migration of missionaries of various Christian denominations contributed to the growth of Protestant and Catholic communities and groups and helped the Far Eastern believers in the establishment of charitable activities. On the other hand, it sometimes led to conflicts. The positions of Baptism, Evangelical Christianity, Pentecostalism and Seventh-day Adventism in the Russian Far East were strong in Soviet times. In post-Soviet Russia, these denominations were viewed as traditional religions, together with the more conventional, historically recognized ones.
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