Ringing Cedars in New Zealand?
Bronwyn Rideout - 7th July 2025
In the June 9th edition of the newsletter, Mark wrote about the Russian right-wing new religious movement called Anastasianism, or the Ringing Cedars. I won’t retread what he and the fairly detailed Wikipedia page cover, but I’m here to report that, despite Mark’s hopes, Anastasianism is not isolated to the Wellington suburb of Brooklyn; its adherents and admirers can be found throughout New Zealand.
The earliest I can trace the formal presence of Ringing Cedars in NZ online is 2008, three years after the release of the English translation. This is the first point in which archived versions of the official website list Yuri Smirnov, then living in Takapuna, as its New Zealand representative.
Yuri/Yury Smirnov
According to Smirnov’s biography, he grew up in the Soviet Union and had been a spiritual seeker throughout his life. It is not clear on when he discovered Megre’s book series, but it’s possible that he came across it prior to immigrating to New Zealand in 2001. He lived in New Zealand between 2001 and 2007, and in 2004 started a website called Space of Love to promote Anastasia’s teaching. In 2007, Smirnov was further inspired by Megre’s writings to organise tours of sacred megaliths or dolmens in the northern Caucasus, and this is a business he continues to operate in 2025:
“In the beginning of 2008 I returned back to Russia from New Zealand, and in April 2008 I visited dolmens and Shetinin’s school in Gelendzhik region. I spent 5 unforgettable days near dolmens and there, at dolmens I got an idea to start a magazine with the purpose to spread information about Space of Love and to inspire people from all over the world to co-create their Spaces of Loves. A bit earlier, a year ago, in 2007, when I still was in New Zealand I got to know Dr.Regina B.jensen from US, whom I organized a private tour to dolmens and Shetinin’s school. So I suggested her to work together and she agreed! In September 2008, together with our wonderful editor Dr. Regina B.Jensen we published our first SOL issue. For now, by July 2011, we have 10 published issues (hard copies and online).”
The Space of Love magazine would be discontinued in 2013 after 13 issues, but Dr. Jensen and Yuri still collaborate - although it is unclear what their product or message is.
While the “official” website still lists Smirnov as the NZ representative, he returned to Russia in 2014 to settle near an ecovillage called Vedrussia (Sinegorie), which is home to multiple family homesteads called kin’s domains. Kin’s domains are the creation of Megre, and embody the Russian version of the illusory “Good ol’ days”. These domains are plots of land that are at least 1 hectare in size, which is expected to ensure that a family would be as autonomous as possible. Settlements like Vedurussia can vary in size, between 1 and several hundred acres, according to Julie Andreeva, and started forming in the 2000s after the publication of the first Ringing Cedars book. In 2023, Andreeva estimated that there were 500 of these group settlements in Russia. While the settlements all share a desire to create a living paradise or utopia to pass on to their children in perpetuity, and without government intervention, the needs and desires of their denizens entail variations between, and within, the settlements.
Kin’s domains around the world
Imbiren kin settlement in Siberia. 17 families live there permanently, while 20 owners come and go.
While people occasionally appear on Anastasian Facebook groups seeking kin’s domains or settlements in Aotearoa, nothing has been formally organised. Instead, there are a couple of individuals scattered throughout NZ who may have an isolated property somewhere.
The Ringing Cedars community in NZ appears to have been, and still remains, an ironically loosely-affiliated digital organism. There has been no clear leader in NZ since the late 2010s, when Smirnov returned to Russia. There was an official NZ distributor of the books, but their website has not been updated since 2009. A company named Ringing Cedars New Zealand Limited was listed in the Companies Register from 2008-2012, but I have been unable to find further information regarding its activities in NZ, save that one of its ex-Directors, Valerie Coyle, also operated an events company called Ringing Cedar Events in California. An organisation connecting English-speaking Anastasian fans, called the Anastasia Foundation, has recently formed, but they do not have any Australian or New Zealand ambassadors listed, and their online efforts are centred on the US and Canada.
I have not read anything that is explicitly problematic from interested Kiwis, or that indicates anything other than an interest in homesteading, although an attempt was made at one point to start a political party called the Motherland Party New Zealand, whose core values were based on Megre’s book. It was a single-issue party that sought to replicate 2016 Russian legislation that granted one hectare to citizens and foreign nationals who relocated to the Far East of Russia. The Motherland Party wanted to repeat this in NZ, and through doing so to create a hyper-decentralised government due to all these settlements being self-serving. At the same time a similar movement was attempted in Australia, called The Family Party, but this also failed to gain momentum.
Obviously these initiatives went nowhere, and the number of followers in NZ remains low, albeit more widespread than a single Wellington suburb. Still, Megre’s ideas have disseminated widely and have even penetrated unrelated segments of the new age community in New Zealand. While dreams of going back to the land, independence from the government, and self-sufficiency are not inherently harmful, the pipeline between that and conservative, hyper-nationalistic, and right-wing ideologies is more like a 20-foot trench. Vice reported that Nazi sympathisers and extremists are prominent leaders in the Ringing Cedars movement in Europe, and the group had been unable to satisfactorily dodge accusations that it is a right-wing movement. These are the aspects that lurk beneath the folksy veneer of Ringing Cedars, a group that Kiwi skeptics should definitely be aware of.