This would have been the Moscow WTS office 2016 if my assumptions and search is correct, it is an estate next the Golovinsky pond at the south-east door.
former
Russia - Who Will Get the Property of Jehovah's Witnesses?
by OrphanCrow 40 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
TheWonderofYou
The above house would be in Austrian possession.
For example, in order to return Mikhalkovo, it will be necessary to enter into a conflict with Austria, and in order to return Sunny, it will be necessary to conflict with the United States.
Interestingly this house already serves the community, as it appears as "House of culture"!
Obviously Austrian JW organisation already made a deal with the Moscow Towngovernment for a fair use of the house. And I think that this was already the case from the beginning.
It seems as Austria avoided such a conflict from the start and remains the owner but offered it free of cost as "house of culture" for other usage too. This is only my thoughts. However this could be a way and example for all JW posessions, kingdom halls ...become houses of culture,
And as JW are honouring all cultures anyway it is should be no problem for them to use some of the donated money for the creation of such "houses of culture" in whole Russia. What a witness if JW would support such a use of their money and property, be cooperative and so be able to stop persecution for JW. This would be a job for Austrian GB-member Gerrit Loesch, should he not visit pro-actively Moscow for checking the situation on the ground if this property serves really as house of culture and speak about future projects. Without diplomacy it will not come off to make progress.
Building a network with Moscow Towngovernment is certainly better than waiting for the attorneys and human right lawyers.
-
OrphanCrow
Interestingly this house already serves the community, as it appears as "House of culture"!
This is also a "House of Culture" - a photo from the JW Russian collection I linked to in an earlier post:
-
Listener
Barbara Anderson posted some interesting information regarding Theodore Jaracz and the USSR
In the early 1990s, his sneakiness caused him to almost lose his position. It was after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which was characterized by many of the Soviet Socialist Republics declaring their independence, this taking place from the beginning of 1990 until the end of 1991. After the republics claimed their independence, the GB decided it was an appropriate time to hold a convention in St. Petersburg and dispatched Jaracz to the area to make the arrangements. However, he secretly directed that many conventions be held in countries previously under the control of the Soviet Union. When this came to light after many conventions actually took place unbeknownst to the rest of the GB, to placate a very angry Body, he contritely apologized and promised never to do such a thing again.
http://watchtowerdocuments.org/the-theocratic-life-and-times-of-theodore-jaracz/
Since it was reported that the JWs were given property for a token payment around the years that Jaracz was taking a personal interest in what was going on there and he was secretly planning conventions around this area, I wonder what was really going on. -
OrphanCrow
Listener: Since it was reported that the JWs were given property for a token payment around the years that Jaracz was taking a personal interest in what was going on there and he was secretly planning conventions around this area, I wonder what was really going on.
I think there is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the hallowed doors that very few know about.
I found a couple articles from the 90s concerning the property and the construction/renovation of the abandoned "pioneer camp":
http://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/9612.html#20
Jehovah's Witnesses build center in St. Petersburg
Blagovest (Samara), no. 22, November 1996 (complete text)
Saint Petersburg. With permission of the administration of Saint Petersburg, construction has begun in one of the northern regions of the city on an administrative center of the "Jehovah's Witnesses" of Russia. Approval for construction, which is projected to be completed in 1998, was signed by the former major Anatoly Sobchak in his last days in office.
The decisive argument in favor of construction for the city investment commission was the claim that the administration's department on relations with religious associations does not intend to be an administering agency. At the same time numerous complaints against the Jehovhists from the Committee on the Defense of the Family and Personality were ignored.
The adoption of a favorable decision by the city administration for construction of a "Kingdom Hall" of the Jehovists near the "Akademicheskaia" metro station was successfully prevented by the efforts of relatives of victims of the sect.
As is known, "Jehovah's Witnesses" are a pseudo-Christian sect that is growing extremely vigorously in Russia. Experts on new religious movements note the special danger of the sect for society. One fearsome deception of the Jehovists is the categorical prohibition on blood transfusions. The sectarians believe that "to receive blood into the body either through the mouth or veins is a violation of the law of God." The religious prohibition on the simplest of medical procedure makes "Jehovah's Witnesses" guilty of the death of people, adults, children, and infants, who could have been saved by a blood transfusion.
http://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/9707.html
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES HAVE SETTLED IN THE SUBURBS OF SAINT PETERSBURG
Michael Jackson donated 1.5 million dollars to his Russian brothers and sisters.
by Oleg Silin
Nezavisimaia gazeta, 2 July 1997In the suburbs of St. Petersburg in Solnechny village Russia's first administrative center of the Christian religious organization "Jehovah's Witnesses" has opened. The vast scope of this action is demonstrated in the fact that more than 2,000 delegates and guests from 44 countries attended this event.
The Jehovah's Witnesses religious association arose in the second half of the nineteenth century in the USA. At present this organization number more than five million adherents. In our country is received official registration in 1991. Before that its activity was banned "because of its antisoviet tendencies." But as the members of the association emphasize, to this day the Jehovah's Witnesses do not know what the government actually accused them of.
Whatever may be the case, the most widely varying rumors circulated, even including the claim that "members of the sect brutally murder their children, sacrificing them, and they even commit suicide themselves." "In fact," the director of the Russian administrative center, Vasily Kalin, declared at a press conference, "Witnesses do not hold radical views and they do not advocate practices that are different from what society recognizes as normal conduct. This is what principally distinguishes us from cults and sects." In his words, the basic goal of the Jehovah's Witnesses is the study of the Bible. They give chief honor to God the Father, whom the Bible calls Jehovah, and they do not believe in the immortality of the soul.
More than 600 volunteers participated in the construction of the center in Solnechny village over the four and a half years it took. More than half of them were Russians and people from the republics of the former USSR. The rest came from Denmark, USA, Switzerland, Chile, Finland, Australia, and elsewhere. They deserve their due: they worked completely without pay and they center was built to European standards. In place of ruins of the remains of a Pioneer summer camp build in the 1960s they erected a four storey building complex equipped with state of the art technology, including a laundry and dry cleaners, a small furniture factory and clinic, cafeteria with its own bakery and kitchen, and seven residential blocks. At present about 300 Jehovah's Witnesses live and work in the administrative center.
As Vasily Kalin emphasizes, because the construction was done by their own efforts, including their own concrete factory, and much of the equipment and plumbing was a gift from the Scandanavian firm the construction cost extremely little.
However, justice requires that we note that evidently no small part was played by the contributions of well to do Jehovah's Witnesses. One of them alone, Michael Jackson, who came from a family of Witnesses, is said to have donated his Russian brothers and sisters one and a half million dollars.
-
OrphanCrow
A comment from the European exJW forum concerning the article in the OP:
1. The cost of buying the former pioneer camp
was 135,000,000 rubles.
Yes, it was a time when everything was badly depreciated, but even so, the coordinator of the Bethel in Selters, the German Willie Paul, skillfully traded with the seller, with a smile, but bent his line unrealistically
until he achieved his goal .
Yet this amount was not symbolic.
2. In Solnechnyy SI never had a printing house!
Especially, "the biggest in Europe!"
All literature was carried from Germany, something from Finland, and very rarely from Italy. -
TheWonderofYou
Referring to Moscow, the "house of culture" appears here as the "Freedom hall".
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-jehovah-s-witness-ban-upheld/28621481.html
-
OrphanCrow
I'm still thinking about this claim...and wondering if it has any truth
no small part was played by the contributions of well to do Jehovah's Witnesses. One of them alone, Michael Jackson, who came from a family of Witnesses, is said to have donated his Russian brothers and sisters one and a half million dollars.
The property for the Admin Center was purchased in Nov/Oct '96.
Michael Jackson was in Moscow September 1996
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCg2LTz3X_I
"Stranger In Moscow"
I was wandering in the rain
Mask of life, feelin' insane
Swift and sudden fall from grace
Sunny days seem far away
Kremlin's shadow belittlin' me
Stalin's tomb won't let me be
On and on and on it came
Wish the rain would just let me
How does it feel (How does it feel)
How does it feel
How does it feel
When you're alone
And you're cold inside
Here abandoned in my fame
Armageddon of the brain
KGB was doggin' me
Take my name and just let me be
Then a beggar boy called my name
Happy days will drown the pain
On and on and on it came
And again, and again, and again...
Take my name and just let me be
How does it feel (How does it feel)
How does it feel
How does it feel
How does it feel
How does it feel (How does it feel now)
How does it feel
How does it feel
When you're alone
And you're cold inside
How does it feel (How does it feel)
How does it feel
How does it feel
How does it feel
How does it feel (How does it feel now)
How does it feel
How does it feel
When you're alone
And you're cold inside
Like stranger in Moscow
(Lord have mercy)
Like stranger in Moscow
(Lord have mercy)
[2x]
We're talkin' danger
We're talkin' danger, baby
Like stranger in Moscow
[2x]
I'm living lonely
I'm living lonely, baby
Stranger in Moscow
[KGB interrogator (Russian to English translation):]
"Why have you come from the West?
Confess! To steal the great achievements of the people, the accomplishments of the workers..." -
Fisherman
But suppose WT wins in ECHR, what enforcement powers does the Court have?
What consequences for Russia if they defy ECHR judgment ?
-
OrphanCrow
fisherman: But suppose WT wins in ECHR, what enforcement powers does the Court have?
None
What consequences for Russia if they defy ECHR judgment ?
see above
