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Russia Tour Package for Americans: Trip to Russia from USA

Why americans rarely travel to russia.

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Draft itinerary for 10-days tour:, moscow, st. petersburg and the real russia, 0 day in moscow: arrival.

What is daily life in rural Russia? How the traditional Russian village still looks like? This is a very popular question among  foreign travelers.

This August we visited a small Russian village located in the middle of nowhere that is just 250 km from Moscow.

Our 4x4 Journey to Rybachy and Solovki Islands.

Very emotional and existential article about Russia Arctic, its abandoned settlements and severe nature. Amazing if you have time for philosophical thoughts.

Spend four hours off-roading through the mud and then climbing underground to walk 15-km wild catacombs in Moscow? EASY!

This kind of weekend is quite typical for some Russians (who loves adventures, of course). A couple of journalists joined Tony to see how his Adventure tour really looks!

A Visual History of the Russian-American Christian University

One of the legacies of the Russian-American Christian University (RACU) was the development of BEAM (Business & Education as Mission), Inc., which is a private foundation with an endowment based on the net assets from the sale of the RACU campus in Moscow in 2014. The Board of Trustees made the decision to build this foundation in the fall of 2014 for the purpose of supporting Christian educational programs that equipped young people in Russia and Ukraine for leadership roles in their societies. The related priorities of the foundation are to build constructive relations between people of faith in these countries, as well as others who desire peace and reconciliation, and to encourage cross-confessional cooperation in addressing social and humanitarian needs in these nations.

Because the foundation is a legacy of the fifteen-year history of RACU, the Trustees decided to share its story with our supporters and friends. A book that describes the history of RACU is currently under development at InterVarsity Academic Press and is scheduled for publication in 2019. To accompany the book, this visual history has been created for the benefit of the students, faculty, staff and supporters who were so instrumental in its history.

We will be adding more videos and photographs in the ensuing months, so please check back periodically and tell your friends to view this new section as well. We think that schools like RACU will be created in Russia and Ukraine in the years ahead, so this story is not over.

Dr. John A. Bernbaum President of BEAM, Inc.

The RACU Story

The idea behind this video came from Susan Clark (Assistant to the RACU President), who wanted to tell the story of why young Russians from outside Moscow would travel to the nation’s capital to attend the Russian-American Christian University, which did not have any dormitories and where the cost-of-living was dramatically higher than in their home towns. The original plans for RACU were for a commuter population, but right from the beginning approximately half of the students who enrolled were from all over the country. Eleven students came from the Kirov region, and this video tells the story of two of them, Igor and Vika, who were from the town of Kirovo-Chepetsk, located northeast of Moscow – a fourteen-hour train ride away. The difficulties of the transition from a centralized economy to a free market were also evident in their home town; making the adjustment to the nation’s capital, with its inflated costs, was another challenge for these young students. The video also shows RACU’s rental facility in a building owned by Moscow State University, the university’s second location. The list of those who produced this film, under Susan’s direction, is provided at the end of the video. Run time – 16:58 minutes .

RACU Student Retreat – September 2006

Each school year at RACU began with a student retreat and often was hosted by Americans who attended the event and lead the various sessions. The retreats were a community-building event that helped to launch each year with lots of fun and some powerful teaching. The retreat in September 2006 was hosted by a delegation from the First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, Florida, and the First Presbyterian Church of Gainesville, Florida. The music was often a highlight for the students who came from many different Christian communities. R untime – 6:41 minute s.

RACU Graduation – May 26, 2007 (Part I)

This video highlights the luncheon for graduates, faculty, staff and Trustees preceding the graduation ceremony, students and faculty putting on their caps and gowns, and the graduation ceremony itself, which was held on Saturday, May 26, 2007.  Runtime – 6:20 minutes .

RACU Graduation – May 26, 2007 (Part II)

These photos of the graduates, their families, and many guests at the graduation ceremony are a companion piece to Part I. Accompanied by music, these photos capture the excitement and beauty of this event. Runtime – 6:02 minutes .

RACU Building Dedication Ceremony – May 27, 2010

In May 2001, the Russian-American Christian University purchased a land plot in Moscow in a public auction and began the process of securing building permits and then construction a new campus facility which took ten years to complete. After moving five times in the first fourteen years, it was an extraordinary day when the building was completed, all the permits were received, and the university could open its doors to its students, faculty and supporters – both Russians and Americans. The facility was dedicated on Friday, May 27, 2010, and this momentous event was celebrated together with Russian and American leaders who supported its development in the hope that it would help to build constructive relationships between the two countries. Runtime – 7:46 minutes

In Moscow, Idaho, conservative ‘Christian Reconstructionists’ are thriving amid evangelical turmoil

Professor of history, Queen's University Belfast

Disclosure statement

Crawford Gribben received funding from the Irish Research Council for a research project on "Radical religion in the trans-Atlantic world."

Queen's University Belfast provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

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Evangelical groups in the U.S. have for years faced dwindling numbers . And a messy cultural fight over the direction of the movement might serve to drive further defections .

But while some of the largest Protestant denominations in America, such as Southern Baptists, continue to hemorrhage members , one small group of conservative evangelicals appears to be bucking the trend – despite numbering only around 1,300 or so.

For the past 30 years, believers from across the United States and beyond have been gathering in Moscow, a city in northern Idaho with a population of around 25,000. Here, as part of the Christ Church congregation, they have set their face against the cultures of American modernity. Guided by a controversial social theory known as “ Christian Reconstruction ,” which holds that biblical law should apply in today’s setting, they look to the Bible to understand how they believe American institutions should be reformed. Followers believe that abortion rights and same-sex marriage, among other evidences of what they would see as moral decline, will eventually be repealed. Their goal is simple – the conversion of the people of Moscow to their way of thinking as the first step toward the conversion of the world.

This hope might appear to be unrealistic. But as a scholar who has charted the rise of the movement in my book “ Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America ,” I know that these believers have already made steps toward that goal.

Growing influence

In Moscow, the community has established churches, a classical Christian school, a liberal arts college, a music conservatory, a publishing house, and the makings of a media empire. With books published by major trade and academic presses, and a talk show on Amazon Prime , the community is setting the agenda for a theologically vigorous and politically reactionary evangelical revival.

These believers are led by conservative pastor Douglas Wilson , whose views on gender, marriage and many other topics are controversial , even among the most conservative Christians. For over 30 years, Wilson has been campaigning against the influence of everything from atheism to feminism.

In so doing, he has attracted some significant critical attention – not least from the late journalist and prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens, with whom he debated whether Christianity was good for the world in a series of exchanges that was later turned into a book .

The community that Wilson leads in Moscow is still small. It is hard to obtain figures for the growth of Christ Church in terms of numbers, but my research and conversations with members of the congregation suggest it is expanding. What is clear is that in little more than three decades, Christ Church has gone from being a little-known congregation to one generating media attention and getting attention from senior political figures.

The community has established a K-12 school, a member of an association of hundreds of classical Christian schools heavily influenced by the educational beliefs of Wilson. In a testament to the political reach of the group, in 2019 Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska was one of the speakers at the association’s annual convention.

As I note in my book, the community’s liberal arts college sends students into doctoral programs in various disciplines at Ivy League and leading European universities – it isn’t an insular educational world. Its small and closely connected group of authors has worked with publishers such as Random House and Oxford University Press.

And then there is the talk show on Amazon Prime .

This talk show, “Man Rampant,” gives an indication of why this community is growing in influence despite the evangelical decline. Wilson, as its host, uses the platform to set out the ideas that undergird his vision of Christian renewal – developing an agenda drawn explicitly from the Bible about the revival of traditional masculinity.

As its title suggests, “Man Rampant” promotes an extremely muscular Christianity. Forget Jesus as well-meaning, meek and mild; the first episode condemned the “ sin of empathy .” Empathy, says Wilson, “is not a good thing.”

The “Man Rampant” agenda is reinforced on Wilson’s website, which draws upon the creative people living in the Moscow community to turn his arguments into striking visual metaphors , and where, while dismissing racism, he argues that “ it really is OK to be white .”

Going local to convert America

In America’s crowded religious marketplace, Wilson’s message is clearly distinct.

One of Wilson’s most important influences is the late R.J. Rushdoony , an Armenian-American Presbyterian theologian who was driven by protecting Protestants in the U.S. from suffering the kind of genocide from which his parents escaped. Frustrated by the other-worldliness of many American Christian denominations, whose adherents he feared preached more about heaven than earth, and their complacency in what he perceived to be a hostile liberal culture, Rushdoony set about developing biblical principles for how society should be organized .

The Ten Commandments were no longer to be considered as an artifact in the history of morality, Rushdoony argued. Instead, they should be understood as setting out the core principles for the running of the modern state. “Thou shalt not steal” ruled out the possibility of inflation, which Rushdoony argued devalued monetary assets and was therefore was a form of theft. And “Thou shalt have no other gods besides me” ruled out any possibility of religious pluralism.

Rushdoony promoted these ideals in titles such as 1973’s “ Institutes of Biblical Law ” – a 1,000-page exposition of the Ten Commandments that argued for both the abolition of the prison system and a massive extension of capital punishment.

Christians would be secure in American society only when it was shaped by their religious values, he argued. But the Christian America that he anticipated would not be secured through revolution or any form of top-down political change – only by the transformation of individual lives, families, towns and states.

This strategy of promoting beliefs at the local level explains why Christian Reconstructionists, like those led by Wilson, prefer to focus energies in small towns. The Reconstructionists in Moscow believe that they can achieve much more significant cultural impact if they can secure significant demographic change, either by the conversion of existing inhabitants or by encouraging others to move to the area.

Eschewing the existential crisis

The stated goal of Wilson’s congregation is to make Moscow a Christian town ; at present only around a third of Moscow residents identify as “religious ,” according to a 2019 report.

But it is Wilson’s attitude about public health measures during the pandemic that has most recently brought him and his church back to the attention of political leaders. Throughout the pandemic, he has argued that mask requirements reveal the hypocrisy of government. In September 2020, Wilson led his congregation in the illegal hymn-sing in front of City Hall that led to the arrests of several church members – footage of which was retweeted by President Trump , who suggested that the Moscow congregation’s arrests were emblematic of what would happen to evangelicals if Democrats took control. “DEMS WANT TO SHUT YOUR CHURCHES DOWN, PERMANENTLY,” the former president tweeted in all caps.

And yet, whatever the former president’s fears, Wilson’s congregation is growing. While large denominations, like the Southern Baptists, divide in the debate about critical race theory, Wilson’s church shows how some congregations could respond to evangelicalism’s existential crisis – and possibly thrive.

[ 3 media outlets, 1 religion newsletter. Get stories from The Conversation, AP and RNS. ]

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The Demise of Moscow’s “Russian-American Christian University”

Thoughts on a recent book by John Bernbaum

LadushkIn -- I'm still struck with sadness when recalling the makeshift monument erected in 2007 about 40 meters from the entrance to Moscow's "Russian-American Institute". Its plaque stated that the monument was dedicated to "protection from the enemies of the Russian soil". At least 15 demonstrations took place at the site in the four years prior to completion of the building in 2010. In the end, Russian taxes and US-debt killed the project and led to the building's purchase by a secular Russian firm in March 2014. Founded in 1995, the institution was known as the "Russian-American Christian University" (RACU) until November 2007.

What caused such a negative reaction within the Russian nation? After all, in October 1990, upper echelons of the Gorbachev-government had invited evangelical educators to start a liberal arts university on Russian soil. It was a Russian proposal, not an American one, and it was the Russians who gradually reneged on their invitation.

A book by the project's primary mover-and-shaker, John Bernbaum, is entitled "Opening the Red Door" and was published by InterVarsity-Press in 2019. The book is a documentary, not an intellectual enterprise, and makes no real effort to answer the above question. Allow me to try.

1. Reason #1: Too big and too different

Such a project at the country's Moscow epicentre was too big, too visible and too Western to survive a serious downturn in US-Russian relations. One could claim: In view of East-West tensions, not even St. Peter could have kept the project afloat. To believe otherwise would have meant defying the laws of gravity.

In addition: Russia's less-than-a-million evangelicals were in no position to support, both financially and intellectually, a multi-confessional project of these dimensions. In Europe, there is no tradition of privately-owned, Christian liberal-arts universities. Intellectual centers of learning are a luxury never enjoyed by Russian Protestants. Russian evangelical support for the project was very modest: its strongest supporter was the neo-Pentecostal "Associated Russian Union of Christians of Evangelical-Pentecostal Faith" (ROSKhVE).

In 2014, Ruslan Nadyuk (or Nadiuk), the long-term head of RACU's social work department, insisted: "Most (Russian) Protestants do not want professional programs. They view education strictly as an instrument for evangelism." Yet Protestants restricting themselves to evangelism "will in time reduce themselves to little groups capable only of converting their offspring". He added, that the anti-intellectualism in his realm is fueled by Western fundamentalists insisting that the study of psychology is an anti-Christian endeavor (see our release from 14 July 2014).

RACU was a welcome source of capital and jobs to Russian Protestants, but a sense of ownership did not develop. As I wrote in the above release: "To Protestants, this institution appeared worthy of exploitation, but not of sustenance. The unfed cow was milked until she expired."

The reservations of provincial, conservative church circles regarding a liberal-arts education is also par-for-the-course in North America. In the Russian context, such graduates usually end up as Charismatics or Orthodox - or as residents of the West. A vital first step would involve touting the fruits of involvement in intellectual topics among the old-time faithful.

2. Not meeting Russians on equal terms

In Russia, by far the world's largest country in territorial terms, such an international project can only succeed if local government and church authorities feel they are truly equal partners. Despite the very best of intentions, those paying the piper will also determine the tune, and Russia's Protestants were absolutely incapable - and the government unwilling - to supply 50% of the funding. It was a Catch-22 situation: the money was not there to ensure equal treatment, and without equal treatment, the project was doomed. Even RACU's PR-work in Russia was headed by a US marketing firm (page 197).

After 1990, and perhaps even today, Russia long wanted - or still wants - positive relations with the West. But that desire is not unconditional, very much in contrast to the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine. Smaller countries are accustomed to being junior partners and do accept orders arriving from above. The survival of Protestant university projects in Lithuania and Ukraine can be attributed in part to this readiness. The tiny minority of Russian Protestants frequently does not mind being a junior partner - but its government certainly does.

Those projects still surviving in Russia are, despite their names, essentially seminaries or Bible schools. Two of them are "St. Petersburg Christian University" and Krasnodar's "Kuban Evangelical-Christian University". They are more modest, less-invasive endeavors - and not located anywhere near the nation's capital.

There are Western-sponsored Christian institutions of learning in China and even North Korea. Yet in both cases, they are geared to job and professional training, not the liberal arts or theology, and tied closely to the hosting government. See "Pyongyang University of Science and Technology" under "pust.co". It has a sister institution in China.

3. Conflicting worldviews

Being "too Western" demands an explanation. The author is struck by the drastic gap between Bernbaum's description of recent Russian history and the views prominent within Russia - he inverts the heroes and villains. Bernbaum does not deny the human foibles of Boris Yeltsin, but his "heroes", Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, are viewed as villains by today's Russians. Gorbachev, regarded as the annihilator of the USSR's economy, has popularity ratings hovering around 1%.

Vladimir Putin is this book's nationalist villain. No mention is made of Putin's openness for a free trading zone reaching from Lisbon to Vladivostok or his remarkable address to Germany's Bundestag on 25 September 2001. He had then appealed for broad German-Russian cooperation while speaking of an "all-European cooperation between equals". Putin - not the West - spoke until recently of the other side as "partners". In Russia, it's the diehard nationalists who complain about Putin's softness on the West. The book does not regard NATO's encirclement of Russia as a major issue.

Bernbaum describes communism and the communist state essentially as highly-corrupt producers of rubble. Yet the communist state turned an agrarian power into a superpower in the half-century following 1917 - and that despite a devastating world war. The legendary Wolfowitz Doctrine of 1992 asserted that the USA should never again tolerate the existence of a second super power. That paper certainly did regard the USSR as having superpower status. Granted, the USSR never was a superpower in terms of living standard.

The book reveals several information gaps. On page 12, it is claimed that the sport-mad USSR had been without swimming pools. Yet mass access to swimming facilities has really only become a problem since 1990. Page 64 has the people demolishing statues of "Stalin, Lenin and Dzerzhinsky" in late 1990. Yet the statues of Stalin had been dumped 30 years before that.

One could claim that John Bernbaum, like very many of us, did not understand the USA either. The book assumes the US is a stalwart and mature force of stability; its seasoned evangelical educators teaching their skills to the less-endowed of Russia. Yet it was not the USSR nor China that rained death and destruction on Southeast Asia and the Middle East in the decades after WWII (The Soviet-Afghan war of 1979-89 could be seen as an exception, but Zbygniew Brzezinski and his "Operation Cyclone" were part of the cause in that one, too).

North America has had an excellent chain of Christian, liberal-arts institutions and I for one once profited from that immensely. I have reason to be grateful. But today, 25 years after the founding of RACU, 85% of US evangelicals are supporting a highly-divisive, populist and rightist president. In Brazil and Bolivia, evangelicals are helping to head extreme-rightist governments. We from the USA are not nearly as stable, learned and impartial as we once thought.

Perhaps evangelical goals are way too grandiose. Philip L. Wickeri's classic work from 1988 on the relationship between church and state in Mao's China, "Seeking the Common Ground", concludes that Christian circles had reconciled themselves to the fact that a church need not own hospitals and schools in order to make an impact. Christians were free as individuals to participate in the social program as a whole. Thanks in part to this "defeatist" worldview, the Chinese church grew from 2.5 to roughly 50-70 million in the 50 years after 1949. Granted, educational deficiencies remain a trademark of the current Chinese church.

Page 35 of Wickeri's book: Missionaries had a "pre-packaged understanding" of the truth, which rendered them incapable of genuine encounter with those around them. "The scandal is not the cross, but the unshaken class and ideological standpoint of the message bearer." Can missionaries be effective without being missionized themselves? Can change only occur if it is mutual? Western and Russian evangelicals could afford to study this book carefully.

Originally from webpage "wyoder.de"

CCD reprinted with permission. 

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