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On April 26-27, 2024, Moscow hosted the All-Russian Scientific Conference "Religion Studies: Past, Present, Future" organized by the Educational and Scientific Center for the Study of Religions of Russian State University for the Humanities and the Department of Philosophy and Theology of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University with the support of the Russian Society of Religious Studies, the journals "Religious Studies" and "Studia Religiosa Rossica: Scientific Journal on Religion".

On April 27, 2024, within the framework of the section "History of Religion", Ivan Zaitsev, Junior Research Fellow of the Center of the Indo-Pacific Region, spoke. His presentation on the topic "Religion and Philosophy as Tools of Anti-Communist Propaganda in Burma (Myanmar): Study of the Pamphlet ‘Dhammantara’” was devoted to the famous information-psychological special operation "Dhammantaraya", which was held in 1958-1960 and became a classic example of appealing to religion as a propaganda tool. The key document of the information-psychological special operation is a pamphlet of the same name, published in several languages, including Burmese. In its content, the “Dhammantaraya” is an example of political propaganda. However, the specificity of the pamphlet's content also allows to consider it as a philosophical dispute between Buddhists and sympathizers of dialectical materialism, which complicates its perception by the general public.