Edit: in my country when I was growing up, the common perspective was simple: there are two main religions - Christian Orthodox and Catholic. All other Christian denominations were “sectarians”. Non-Christian religions were not even considered, those were “pagans”.
I was born in Tatarstan. For us, the division was Christian or Muslim. “Christian” was assumed to be Orthodox, but Catholics were considered to just be a kinda weird foreign flavour of Christianity. Pretty much everyone else made their presence known by proselytizing, and thus earned the title of sectarian for being a crazy evangelist (a chill immigrant who happens to be a Buddhist or Anglican doesn’t really talk much about their religion, so thus the only small religions you notice are the ones headed by people who don’t mind their own business).
Not ex-USSR, but yes
Edit: in my country when I was growing up, the common perspective was simple: there are two main religions - Christian Orthodox and Catholic. All other Christian denominations were “sectarians”. Non-Christian religions were not even considered, those were “pagans”.
I was born in Tatarstan. For us, the division was Christian or Muslim. “Christian” was assumed to be Orthodox, but Catholics were considered to just be a kinda weird foreign flavour of Christianity. Pretty much everyone else made their presence known by proselytizing, and thus earned the title of sectarian for being a crazy evangelist (a chill immigrant who happens to be a Buddhist or Anglican doesn’t really talk much about their religion, so thus the only small religions you notice are the ones headed by people who don’t mind their own business).