It's hard to say what was in Russian official Anatoly Nichociovich Lashinski's mind as he flew into Utah last week on an official visit to examine The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
His Utah hosts characterize him as an intelligent man with a good background in religion. But political rhetoric in Russia had categorized the church as being among fanatical cults.Even a Russian federal program for combating organized crime targeted the church as "socially dangerous," according to a report seen by R.E. "Rusty" Butler, executive director of the Utah-Russia Institute.
Then Lashinski arrived while the mass suicide of the religious cult Heaven's Gate in California was in the news.
"Many consider us here in Utah as cult-type people, and then (Heaven's Gate) goes off just before he gets here, so he's wondering what he was going to see," Butler said. "He mentioned the suicides in San Diego during his visit here."
But Butler and others are convinced Lashinski left Utah with a much different view of the church, its members and the Utah community that is the church's heartland.
He met with the church's top leadership, saw some of the church's more prominent members of the business and political community and even went to a wedding reception in a neighborhood meetinghouse in Provo.
"He said he had been writing a catalog about different religions and sects," said one of his translators, Sister Ilona Makhinich, a Temple Square missionary for the church from Lithuania.
"The Mormons were mentioned as a totalitarian sect," she said. "He's now making a catalog where the (Latter-day Saints) will be mentioned as a church, not a sect."
The information he takes back is, "We are a Christian church, not an offbeat, threatening organization," Makhinich said.
The change in thinking is important to the church because Lashinski is the chairman of a committee setting policies on church relations for Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
Lashinski was particularly impressed to see the international scope of the church's membership, which was amply demonstrated during the official's visits on Temple Square and attendance at the church's general conference over the weekend. Makhinich was only one of many interpreters who translated conference proceedings for foreign church members and other visitors.
"He was able to see the many different races and nationalities here in the church. That was very important. It's not just an American church, but it's a world-wide church," Makhinich said.
Lashinski also met with some of the LDS Church's neighbors, visiting with Catholic, Jewish and Greek Orthodox leaders in Salt Lake City.
"He had a good meeting with some of our Russian Jews," said Rabbi Frederick L. Wenger of Congregation Kol Ami. The discussion was frank between the Russian official and Jews exiled from Russia. "They discussed the trials of the Jews in the former Soviet Union, and he expressed his own feelings that things were getting better."
Lashinski met briefly with LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley and with the church's First Presidency, members of the Quorum of the Twelve and other authorities. He toured Temple Square. He met for an hour with Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who is a member of the LDS Church.
Lashinski also visited the church's Missionary Training Center in Provo, where he saw young men and women preparing to do missionary work in Russia who were being taught by former missionaries who had been to Russia and returned.
"(Hatch) told Dr. Lashinski that far and away the best ambassadors Russia will ever have in the United States are the young men and women who go over to Russia for a period of two years and come back here and are enthusiastic about Russia, its language, its people and often use that experience in Russia as a springboard toward vocational interests and avocational interests, and they remain life-long ambassadors of Russian interest," Butler said. "Dr. Lashinski was deeply impressed by that.
"He had a very marvelous experience and personally told me he was deeply impressed and that the perception he had when he arrived was completely different than when he left," Butler said.