Isolated in a Russian Cult Commune in the Woods
Cults to Consciousness
Shelise Ann Sola, Jonathan C Rosales
4.8 • 570 Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2026
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At 15, Maria’s parents willingly gave her to Russian cult leader Sergey who would marry her off to a man she despised. At 16 she was alone, hidden in a swampy woodland at the commune without electricity or running water, struggling to survive and raise her newborn in a tent during winter. She details everything she had to do to get food and water against all odds.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back everybody to Colts to Consciousness. My name is Shalise Anzola and we are bringing back a guest who we just did an interview with. Everyone is loving it and there was still so much to the story as there usually is. So we wanted to bring her back. We were talking about her life after she got sucked into this Russian cult and was basically stranded on the mountainside with a newborn, got pregnant |
| 0:21.5 | again, all of the hardships that she had to face with that. And we will get more of her story |
| 0:26.7 | going soon. Thanks so much for joining us, Maria Vogel. Hi, thank you so much for having me again. |
| 0:34.8 | Yeah. So I wanted to start off with just a little bit of your story. And then we'll talk |
| 0:40.4 | about the impact that it has caused of just releasing it and people who you're like, how do |
| 0:45.9 | these people find my story? So for those who aren't familiar or haven't seen your first interview, |
| 0:51.1 | can you just give us a little up to date of, okay, how did we get to |
| 0:54.5 | the point where you're 15 in an arranged marriage stuck on a Russian commune in the middle of nowhere? |
| 1:01.3 | Yes. So I, my parents joined this cult. It was run by a Russian man when I was about 14. We'd |
| 1:10.6 | been in multiple cults before that |
| 1:12.2 | involving Amish and Mennonite. And when I was 15, a Russian cult leader named Sergei orchestrated |
| 1:22.1 | a marriage between me and a man who was, I think he was 23, almost 24 at the time, and I didn't know him at all. |
| 1:31.0 | I, if you watch my other interview, I kind of go into how I kind of agreed to it. |
| 1:36.6 | I didn't really agree to it, but I kind of thought if I said, okay, I'll marry him. |
| 1:40.3 | I thought I could make them wait until I turned 18. |
| 1:43.6 | And next thing I know, I'm getting married |
| 1:46.1 | in a month. And they've planned everything for me. And so I end up getting married. And he wasn't |
| 1:56.0 | horrible before that. He was kind of reasonable, seemed like a a reasonable person and then as soon as we got |
| 2:01.6 | married it was like a switch and he turned into this really abusive person immediately and um and so |
| 2:10.3 | i didn't even realize what i was getting into i thought yeah i'm being forced to get married but like |
| 2:14.7 | maybe it won't be that bad. And so we ended up living in |
| 2:21.0 | Minneapolis area, north of Minneapolis, for probably the first year of our marriage, almost, not quite a |
... |
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