The Russian Buddhists v the billionaire

A small group of Buddhists led by a veteran of the USSR’s Afghan war has spent 21 years establishing a monastery in the Ural mountains. It sits on land claimed by a company belonging to one of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs. After years of delays, a date has now been set for the complex’s removal. Photojournalist Amos Chapple visited the monastery for RFE/RL

A 7km forest trail leads up to the monastery on the summit of Mount Kachkanar, which rises 888 metres above sea level. After heavy snowfall, the hike can take up to seven hours. Teams travel by sled down the mountain to collect supplies.

Inscribed on a large rock is a Sanskrit mantra, ‘Om mani padme hum’, indicating the monastery is close.

Mikhail Sannikov, a soldier turned Buddhist monk, founded the monastery in 1995. The 55-year-old abbot saw heavy action as a commander in the Soviet army during the 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan.

Sannikov, who now goes by the title Lama Dokshit, says he left the army in 1987 a damaged man after being wounded in separate encounters by “two bullets, a knife, and a piece of shrapnel”.

The fighting haunted him for years afterwards. “Sometimes it would come up during the ordinary things in life: I’d be watching an action movie and start counting how many bullets the character has left. It was hard to sleep at night.”

After leaving the army, Sannikov took menial jobs and hunted for “some kind of purpose”. In 1989 he ended up in Russia’s Buryatia region, where he studied Buddhism for six years. At the time of his studies, Sannikov says, Buddhism was almost exclusively practised in the east of the country.

I thought it was strange; we have good people in central Russia, too. My teacher said: ‘Well, go there, then.’ After my teacher drew a silhouette of a mountain, my task was clear

What Sannikov failed to realise was the wealth of metal ore that lay beneath the wind-whipped mountaintop.

What started as a wooden shack has grown into a complex featuring a Buddha statue, living quarters and communal kitchen, and sauna. The monastery is named Shad Tchup Ling, meaning “place of practice and realisation”.

The six-metre fibreglass Buddha statue was completed last summer. Despite the threat of demolition, the Kachkanar Buddhists continue to build the complex. Sannikov hopes eventually to open a school of Buddhism on the site.

Eight people live full-time in the monastery, with several regulars coming and going.

The early days of the monastery.

Anyone can live in the monastery, as long as they’re good people – Mikhail Sannikov

Julia is one of three women living in the monastery. The 30-year-old works as a hotel receptionist in the “real world”, but says she prefers life in the monastery, where she puts in non-stop 16-hour days serving up mostly simple dishes of buckwheat and pasta.

Rules are set in stone: no alcohol, drugs, or rough language; group meditation runs daily from 7-8 am; and five hours of work per day are expected.

Today, the church in Russia is just a business, a lot of young people are looking for another spiritual path – Boleslav

There’s a peace here that I just never find in normal life – Yulia

The peace is occasionally broken by the rumble and boom of this quarry, one of several near the monastery belonging to Evraz, a multinational mining company. Workers extract iron and vanadium, a mineral used to strengthen steel.

Evraz is co-owned by Roman Abramovich, an oligarch with close ties to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. The company employs about 6,000 people in the region. As one of its mines is being wound down, Evraz says it needs to scoop out the iron-heavy land under the monastery to remain profitable.

The company responded to an inquiry from RFE/RL about the scheduled removal of the monastery with an emailed statement: “The buildings on mount Kachkanar are located directly on the surface of the Sobstvenno-Kachkanarskoe Ore Deposit. According to the law of the Russian Federation, construction of any building and especially residence building above the deposit is forbidden for safety reasons. This matter is within the scope of responsibility of public authorities.”

Those public authorities are scheduled to raze the monastery complex on 1 March, but the plan is fraught: the image of a Buddha being removed to make way for business interests could prove awkward.

The monastery is visited by thousands of adventurers, most of them Russians, each year. Above: Boleslav Vavilov meditates after being posted as lookout for more tourists arriving on a night when sleeping space was scarce.

This young couple was part of a group of about 30 people who spent the night in the monastery during Amos’s stEvraz says it is prepared to assist with moving the monastery to another location, but the Kachkanar Buddhists say the site and the buildings they have raised on it are sacred.Official requests to remove the monastery have been ignored by Sannikov, as have two fines issued by the local authorities. Public opinion is split on whether the monastery should be allowed to remain on the mountaintop. A petition to save it drew thousands of signatures and was publicly backed by Russian music icon Boris Grebenshchikov. Some locals of Kachkanar, however, say the monastery is standing in the way of the future of the town itself. Lyudmila Lapteva, the editor-in-chief of Kachkanar’s Chetverg newspaper, told RFE/RL: “This town was built expressly to mine those minerals. If Evraz can’t keep mining here, then this town is going to cease to exist.”