Rod Keller keeps an eye on Scientology social media for us, and on Sundays he dives into the latest happenings with the organization’s many front groups. This time, he’s taking us to Russia, where things have taken a turn for the worse. Take it away, Rod…
The World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE) will hold its 20th annual conference for Russian and Russian-speaking Scientologists in Moscow from September 28-30. The conference is at the Cosmos Hotel, the largest hotel in Russia, with over 1,700 rooms. Built in 1980 for the Summer Olympics, the hotel was re-dedicated in 2005 in honor of French General Charles de Gaulle to celebrate the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War, or World War II as it is known in Western countries. It’s an impressive hotel, but Scientology is run on statistics, and WISE in Russia is “downstat” in that reserved seating for this year is behind the pace set in 2015.
Scientology in Russia is under pressure from the authorities, with orgs and missions being the target of police raids and seizure of documents. But WISE continues to do business, selling Scientology under the name of business consulting. Sea Org member Eugenia Sukhareva is the Commanding Officer WISE CIS and Baltic States, and the main organizer of the conference.
The stars of WISE are the management consulting companies. Their business is to apply Scientology methods in their client businesses. WISE companies use Scientology’s OCA Personality Test in making hiring decisions, they prepare a Scientology Org Board with the same seven divisions as the local Scientology org. They promote management by statistics, tracking each employee’s production, rewarding those who are upstat, and punishing the downstat. They use Scientology’s PTS/SP detection methods to determine who is stopping their business from expanding. Employees are trained in L. Ron Hubbard’s Study Tech, using a dictionary to overcome misunderstood words.
There are a number of WISE consulting companies in Russian-speaking countries, and the founders are almost all speakers at the 2016 convention.
Valery Hodortsov is the co-founder of St. Petersburg-based ATManagement, which stands for Administrative Technology Management. He is a featured speaker at this year’s event. In 2015 ATM reserved 94 seats, but this year it’s down to 49 seats.
Alexander Vysotsky is the founder of Vysotsky Consulting, with headquarters in Moscow, but offices in many other cities, including New York. In 2015 they reserved 75 seats, down to 70 this year.
Vladimir Kusakin is the founder of Moscow-based BusinessForward, down from 52 reserved seats in 2015 to 35 seats this year.
American Lynn Irons also represents BusinessForward. Irons gave a briefing this year to the Moscow Ideal Org to tell Scientologists that the raids by the police were a good thing, that they mean Scientology is expanding in Russia.
Andrey Sizov of Prodavay, or “Sell” in Russian, fared the best by percentage, dropping only one of his 19 seats from 2015.
Vladimir Sidorenko represents Performia, formerly known as U-Man. Performia’s headquarters are in Sweden, and its business is mostly in Western Europe. In Russia, they are down from 18 seats in 2015 to 9 seats.
Consulting company KRB – 16 seats in 2015, has disappeared from this year’s conference, and may have gone out of business.
Practicum Group, with six seats in 2015, has none this year, but is still represented at the conference by founder Yevgeniy Kotov.
Here are the seating charts for 2015 and 2016, showing the decline of reservations by these WISE consulting companies from 280 to 181, a decline of 35 percent. They are hoping to fill the hall with 1,000 total attendees this year, which will be more difficult with fewer participants from the consultants.
WISE conventions are pure Scientology. At this year’s WISE convention in Europe, Patrick Valtin of New Era Management spoke on such topics as applying Tone 40, the “L” levels delivered at Flag Land Base in Clearwater, past lifetimes, ARC breaks, and the importance of postulates in business.
— Rod Keller
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Posted by Tony Ortega on September 18, 2016 at 07:00
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GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice
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