Andrey Kormukhin is a founder and a leader of a far-right fundamentalist Orthodox group “Sorok Sorokov”.

**Composer career**

Andrey Borisovich Kormukhin was born in 1970 on February 20 in the city of Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod). His father worked as a chief engineer at a large industrial enterprise. Boris Alexandrovich had creative abilities and dreamed of building a career as a singer. His mother Faina Anfimovna worked as a director of the museum of architecture and life of the peoples of the Nizhny Novgorod Volga region “Shchelokovsky farmstead”. Popular singer Olga Kormukhina is known to be the composer’s older sister, with an age difference of 10 years.

His compositional activities have contributed to the release of several works. Andrey Kormukhin writes a number of compositions to lyrics by Konstantin Arsenyev: ‘Wanderer’, ‘You Just Need Me’, ‘Right to Love’ and also music to lyrics by his sister Olga and Rimma Kazakova called ‘The Plea’. Most of the songs have been [recorded](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pUbTtdmG6U) by the singer Olga Kormukhina.

**Religious activist**

For several years the composer has been involved in entrepreneurial activities, having a law degree, he is very good at business. But after a while Andrey Kormukhin finds his salvation in religion. The public figure’s life is directly connected with Orthodoxy. He believes that Russia needs faith to preserve the country’s unity, stability, to form strong families, to unite the people and strengthen patriotism. And Kormukhin also promotes the building of various Orthodox churches, believing it to be the most important factor in the development and preservation of civilization. Kormukhin has an extremely negative attitude towards other different religions, including paganism. In his opinion, such movements are not able to bring the country to a high level of development. His world view is confirmed by the fact that back in the 90s many religious movements were rejected by the people and left the country. The first mention of Andrey Kormukhin’s name in the media was the award of the Medal of Parental Glory, and he was also the head of the Movement for Many Children Russia.

On 1 July 2013, Kormukhin organised the Orthodox movement “Sorok Sorokov”, which was the Orthodox community’s response to the Pussy Riot action in Russia’s main temple. The message of the religious community was to unite faithful citizens and defend the Russian Orthodox Church from the oppression of Pussy Riot and other anti-religious organisations.