Russian Federation

All the Christian churches and other religious groups suffered severe persecution under the atheist communist regime of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated in 1991, but in particular the Russian Orthodox Church, as the majority church and the locus of Russian religiosity. Among the Protestant and other churches are Baptists, Pentecostals, Seventh-day Adventists, Lutherans (mostly ethnic Germans and Finns), Methodists (which are part of the United Methodist Church), and several separatist Orthodox churches. An Interconfessional Committee was formed for dialogue between Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants but was not operational through 2005.