Item Detail
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17764
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3
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0
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English
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Crypto-Mormons or Pseudo-Mormons? Latter-day Saints and Russia's Indigenous New Religious Movements
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Western Folklore
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Summer 2002
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61
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no.2
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173-207
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When the LDS Church established its first mission in Russia in 1990, Mormon missionaries began hearing stories about existing pre-1990 Mormon groups from native Russians. Attempts were made to find these "lost Mormons," so far without success. They have found no hand-transcribed copies of the Book of Mormon. They found a cemetery near Mekhzavod in southern Russia that contained peak-roofed crosses that local residents referred to as "Mormon crosses." They describe a few instances where "Mormon" has "been used as an epithet for indigenous Russian religious groups due to Russian familiarity with certain Mormon stereotypes. In Bogdanovka, Orenburg, and Mekhzavod, the residents are familiar with the term 'Mormon' but use it with distinct local nuances."