Vasiliy Mitrokhin Archive: The penetration and persecution by KGB of the Soviet Russian Orthodox Church

Trough paying lip-service to freedom of religion, the Soviet state was the first attempt to eradicate the concept of God. Marx had famously denounced religion as “the opium of the people,» but also spoke with some compassion of its role as «the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world.» Lenin’s denunciation religion, however, was uncompromisingly venomous:
Every religious idea, every idea of God, every flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness, . . . vileness of the most dangerous kind, «contagion» of the most abominable kind. Millions of filthy deeds, acts of violence and physical contagions are far less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of a God decked out in the smartest «ideological» costumes.1

During the 1930s most priests were condemned to a gulag from which few returned. Most churches, with their religious symbols removed or defaced but their onion domes usually left more or less intact, were turned into barns, cinemas and garages, or given over to other secular purposes. After two decades of brutal persecution which had left only a few hundred churches open for worship, the Russian Orthodox Church was unexpectedly revived as a public institution by Stalin’s need for its support during the Great Patriotic War. In 1943, after a gap of seventeen years, tle Moscow Patriarchate, the Church’s administrative center, was formally reestablished.2 During the remainder of the decade, Orthodox Christians reclaimed and lovingly restored several thousand of their churches.3
The Church, however, paid a heavy price for its restoration. The Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church (later the Council for Religious Affairs) worked in close cooperation with the NKVD and its successors to ensure the subservience of Church to State.4 Both Patriarch Aleksi I and Metropolitan Nikolai of Krutitsky and Kolomna, second in the Orthodox hierarchy, joined the World Peace Council, the Soviet front organization founded in 1949, and were highly valued by the KGB as agents of influence.5 Aleksi declared in 1955:

The Russian Orthodox Church supports the totally peaceful foreign policy of our government, not because Church allegedly lacks freedom, but because Soviet policy is just and corresponds to the Christian ideals which the Church preaches.6

The Orthodox Church also took a prominent part in the founding of another front organization, the Christian Peace Conference (CPC), established in 1958 with its headquarters in Prague, in a further attempt to mobilize worldwide Christian support for the «peace policies» of the Soviet Union. At the second conference of the CPC in 1960 delegates from the rest of the world, mostly innocent of its orchestration by Moscow, outnumbered those from the Soviet Bloc.7
In 1961, with the KGB’s blessing, the Orthodox Church joined the World Council of Churches (WCC). At that very moment Khrushchev was in the midst of a ferocious anti-religious campaign which closed down many of the reopened churches, monasteries and seminaries and disbanded half the Orthodox parishes. The KGB was simultaneously seeking to strengthen its grip on the churches which remained. According to a secret KGB directive of 1961:

Up to 600 individuals are studying in the two ecclesiastical academies of the Moscow Patriarchate and the five ecclesiastical seminaries. These must be exploited in the interests of the KGB. We must infiltrate our people among the students of these ecclesiastical training establishments so that they will subsequently influence the state of affairs within the Russian Orthodox Church and exert influence on the believers.8

The head of the Second Chief Directorate, General Oleg Mikhailovich Gribanov, reported in 1962 that over the previous two years the KGB had infiltrated «reliable agents» into the leading positions of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Catholic dioceses, the Armenian Gregorian Church and other religious groups. These, he predicted, would make it possible to remove remaining «reactionary Church and sectarian Authorities» from their posts.9
Since the Russian Orthodox delegates to the WCC were carefully selected by the KGB and the Council for Religious Affairs, it is scarcely surprising that they denied—often indignantly—all reports of the persecution of their Church by the Soviet state. According to a KGB report of August 1969:

Agents ALTAR, SVYATOSLAV, ADAMANT, MAGISTER, ROSHCHIN and ZEMNOGORSKY went to England to take part in the work of the WCC central committee. Agents managed to avert hostile activities [public criticism of Soviet religious persecution]…10

The most important of the agents at the WCC central committee meeting in Canterbury was the leader of the Russian Orthodox delegation, Metropolitan Nikodim (agent ADAMANT),11 whose meteoric rise through the Church hierarchy was in itself unmistakable evidence of KGB approval. In 1960, at the age of only thirty-one, Nikodim had become the youngest bishop in Christendom. A year later he was put in charge of the Moscow Patriarchate’s foreign relations department, and in 1964 was appointed Metropolitan of Leningrad. Nikodim took the lead in ensuring that then n0 reference in the WCC central committee’s message to member churches either to the invasion of Czechoslovakia or to religious persecution in the Soviet Bloc. According to a report in the Church Times:
Agreement on the text of the message was not without drama… The main tic on the Thursday [August 21] when the fifth draft came up for discussion was the Metropolitan of Leningrad, Archbishop Ni[k]odim…. The Russian leader then dropped a bombshell[:].. If certain amendments are not taken into account which are essential to us, we shall have to reject this letter in holy synod and not send it to our Churches. I am sorry to speak in such sharp terms.»… On Friday morning [after redrafting] there was more sweetness and light, and with the Russian leader obviously mollified, the final draft went rough rapidly.
The main initiative agreed by the WCC central committee was a call to member churches to become «as fully engaged as possible in the struggle to eradicate racism in whatever form it appears.»12 While welcoming the campaign against racism, the Church Times deplored the failure of the WCC to address «grave breaches of human rights» or to offer help to the oppressed: «Czechoslovakia springs to mind as an obvious instance.»13
The KGB reported that, at the Canterbury conference, its agents had also succeeded “in placing agent KUZNETSOV in a high WCC post.» Agent KUZNETSOV was Alexei Sergeyevich Buyevsky, lay secretary of the Moscow Patriarchate’s foreign relations department headed by Nikodim. Since joining the department in 1946, Buyevskv accompanied all the major Russian Orthodox delegations abroad and had met the important visitors from foreign churches to Moscow. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he played an active role in the work of the WCC central committee, helping to policy statements on international affairs.14
In 1973 the Bishop of Bristol told the Church Times that, of the 130 members of the WCC central committee, 42 percent were Westerners, 28 percent Eastern Orthoodox (mainly Russian), and 30 percent from the Third World (mainly Africa). The Russian Orthodox and Third World majority saw Westerners «primarily as the representatives of colonialism’ with all the emotional overtones which that contains.»15 KGB agents on the WCC were remarkably successful in dissuading it from paying serious attention to religious persecution in the Soviet Bloc and in persuading concentrate instead on the sins of the imperialist West. The Reverend Richard Holloway of the Scottish Episcopal Church told the Nairobi Assembly of the WCC in 1975:

I have observed there is an unwritten rule operating that says that the USSR must never be castigated in public. Nevertheless it is known that the USSR is in the forefront of human rights violations. To mention this fact appears to be unsporting. I think this tradition should end. The USSR should take its place in the public confessional along with the rest of us from white neo-imperialism.16

As late as 1989, the Centre claimed that, following the secret implementation of «a plan approved by the KGB leadership,» «the WCC executive and central committee adopted public statements (eight) and messages (three) which corresponded to the political direction of Socialist [Communist] countries.»17
Members of the Orthodox hierarchy sent on missions to foreign church leaders, doubtless with KGB approval, invariably insisted that believers in the Soviet Union enjoyed freedom of religion. In January 1975 Metropolitan Yuvenali of Krutitsky and Kolomna, who had succeeded his cousin Metropolitan Nikodim as the globetrotting chairman of the Patriarchate’s foreign relations department,18 traveled to Britain for the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Donald Coggan. In an interview on the BBC World Service, Yuvenali condemned the tendency of «certain circles» in Britain, including some in the Church of England, to give a biased and one-sided view of the Orthodox Church in Russia. In a private meeting with Dr. Coggan, he attacked the Church Times for its «offensive» stories on religious persecution in Russia and denounced Keston College, the world’s leading research center on religion in Communist countries, directed by the Anglican priest Michael Bourdeaux, as «anti-Soviet.» Though courteous, Dr. Coggan was more robust than most of the Western council members of the WCC. Yuvenali appeared incredulous as the Archbishop patiently defended the independence of the Church Times and the fair-mindedness of Keston College. During a visit to the Soviet Union two years later Dr. Coggan annoyed his hosts by departing from the prepared itinerary to visit Moscow synagogues and the congregation of the imprisoned Baptist minister, Georgi Vins, in Kiev, where he led the singing of the hymn «He Who Would Valiant Be.»19
Among KGB agents in the Patriarchate’s foreign relations department who were regularly used as agents of influence in meetings with Western churches was the monk Iosif Pustoutov, who was recruited in 1970, aged twenty-six, with the code-name YESAULENKO. Over the next few years agent YESAULENKO was sent on missions to the Netherlands, West Germany, Italy and France. In 1976 he was appointed representative of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church at the Prague headquarters of the Christian Peace Conference. In order to raise his standing in the religious community, his case officer at the Prague residency, Yevgeni Vasilyevich Medvedev, arranged for him to be regularly invited to embassy receptions given by the Soviet ambassador.20
It would be both simplistic and unjust to see all the KGB’s agents and co-optees in the Orthodox Church and the WCC simply as cynical careerists with no real religious faith—though that may have been true of a minority. Most Russian Orthodox priests probably believed they had no option but to accept some of the demands of state security. One of the best-known dissident priest of the 1970s, Father Dmitri Dudko, later declared:
One hundred percent of the clergy were forced to cooperate to some extent with the KGB and pass on some sort of information—otherwise they would have been deprived of the possibility to work in a parish.

A minority, however, did successfully resist all the pressure placed on them by the KGB. In December 1991, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the last deputy chairman of the KGB, Anatoli Oleinikov, told an interviewer that, of the Russian Orthodox priests approached by the KGB, 15 to 20 percent had refused to work for it.21 The courageous minority who resisted all KGB pressure were inevitably denied advancement. The section of the Orthodox Church most compromised by ils ition with the KGB was its hierarchy.
It would be wrong, however, to interpret the deference shown by the hierarchy to the KGB simply in terms of the moral inadequacy of individual bishops. The Church was strongly influenced by a centuries-old tradition of Orthodox spirituality which emphasized submission to both God and Caesar. Before the Revolution, obedient to the Tsar had been regarded almost as a religious obligation. The Orthodox Church had traditionally functioned as a department of state as well as a guide to salvation. Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad, who headed the Russian Orthodox delegation WCC until his sudden death during a visit to the Vatican in 1978, impressed Western Christians by his deep devotion to the Orthodox liturgy and the apperent intensity of his prayer during church services.22 Nikodim’s admirers included Pope John Paul I, who was with him when Nikodim died of a heart attack and said afterwards that he had pronounced during their meeting «the most beautiful words about the Church that I ever heard.»23 Yet Nikodim was not merely supine submission to the Soviet powers-that-be but also a KGB agent.24 So was his private secretary and confidant, Nikolai Lvovich Tserpitsky, who was recruited in 1971 with the codename VLADIMIR.25
A report by the Council for Religious Affairs in 1974 distinguished three categories of Orthodox bishop. The first category

affirm both in words and deed not only loyalty but also patriotism towards the socialist society; strictly observe the laws on cults, and educate the parish clergy and believers in the same spirit; realistically understand that our state is not interested in proclaiming the role of religion and the church in society; and, realizing this, do not display any particular activeness in extending the influence of Orthodoxy among the population.

Among the bishops in this category were Patriarch Pimen, who had succeeded Alexi I in 1971, and Metropolitan Aleksi of Tallinn and Estonia, who in 1990 was to succeed Pimen as Patriarch Aleksi II.26 Both were fulsome in their public praise of Soviet leaders. Pimen even claimed to detect «lofty spiritual qualities» in Andropov, the chief persecutor of religious dissent during his patriarchate. On Andropov’s death Pimen declared that he would always «remember with heartfelt gratitude» his “benevolent understanding of the needs of our Church.”27

Like Patriarch Aleksi I, Pimen was used by the KGB to front Soviet «peace» propaganda, paying gushing and sycophantic tribute to Brezhnev’s «titanic work in the cause of international peace.»28 In February 1976 he, Metropolitan Aleksi and the other metropolitans on the Holy Synod received special awards from the Soviet Peace Fund «for manifold and fruitful activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in the struggle for peace, security and friendship.29 A month later the Patriarch was given a similar award by the World Peace Council to mark its twenty-fifth anniversary.30 In June 1977, Pimen hosted a conference at Zagorsk, organized behind the scenes by the KGB, entitled «Religious Workers for Lasting Peace, Disarmament and Just Relations among Nations,» which attracted 663 delegates from 107 countries, representing all the major world religions.31 The conference approved a call by Pimen to declare the years up to 2,000 «a period of struggle for peace»—thus, in the KGB’s view, preempting the danger that the Vatican might take the lead in a similar appeal.32 A month later Pimen was awarded the Order of the Red Banner «for his great patriotic activities in defense of peace.»33
The second category of bishops identified by the Council of Religious Affairs in 1974 consisted of those who, though loyal to the state and «correct» in their observance of the laws on religious observance, wished to «heighten the role of the Church in personal, family and public life . . . and select for priestly office young people who are zealous adherents of Orthodox piety.» Despite his use as an agent of influence in the World Council of Churches and elsewhere, Metropolitan Nikodim was included in this second category rather than the first—probably because of what was considered his excessive zeal in encouraging religious devotion.
The third category of bishops (just under a third of the total) consisted of those «who at different times have made attempts to evade the laws on cults,» though without the conspicuous defiance which would have required their removal from office.34
The first sign of dissidence within the Orthodox Church to gain worldwide publicity during the Brezhnev era was an appeal to the Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Nairobi in November 1975 by the banned priest Father Gleb Yakunin and the layman Lev Regelson, who appealed for support for the victims of religious persecution in the Soviet Union—a hitherto taboo subject at WCC meetings.35 A Swiss delegate was applauded when he proposed that a resolution on «Disarmament, the Helsinki Agreement and Religious Liberty» include the statement:

The WCC is concerned about restrictions to religious liberty, particularly in the USSR. The Assembly respectfully requests the government of the USSR to implement effectively principle no. 7 [religious and other freedoms] of the Helsinki Agreement.

Metropolitan Yuvenali complained that this proposal offended Christian charity. A KGB agent on the drafting committee, Alexei Buyevsky (agent KUZNETSOV), working «in the spirit of brotherly love, mutual understanding and the spirit of fellowship,» helped produce a formula which avoided any specific reference to the Soviet Union but “recognize[d] that churches in different parts of Europe are living and working under very different conditions and traditions.» The WCC’s general secretary, the West Indian Methodist Dr. Philip Potter, was asked to prepare a report on religious liberty in all countries which had signed the Helsinki Accords. The Times interpreted the WCC resolution as «a sidestep by churches on Soviet curbs.»36
There were no such prevarications in the denunciation of Western racism and imperialism. One of the keynote speakers at the assembly, Dr. Robert McAffie Brown of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, confessed that, as a white, male middle-class American, he embodied the sins of «racism, sexism, classism and imperialism.» In an attempt to avoid «linguistic imperialism,» he then began speaking in Spanish, thus forcing most of his audience to reach for their headsets so that they could hear his address translated back into imperialist English. The WCC’s refusal to consider non-white racism, such as the expulsion of Ugandan Asians in 1972, led to protests and a walk-out by some British delegates—prompting the comment by Dr. Potter that, «Wherever the British have gone in the world they have established a racist system.»37 At the end of the conference, lobbying by the Soviet Christian Peace Conference helped to ensure the election of Metropolitan Nikodim (agent ADAMANT) as one of the WCC’s six presidents.38
Had Andropov and the KGB leadership kept any sense of proportion about the threat of «ideological subversion» posed by the few brave dissidents within a generally subservient Orthodox Church, they would have been quite satisfied by the outcome of the Nairobi Assembly. In fact, mild though the WCC response to the appeal from Yakunin and Regelson was, it caused outrage at the Centre.39 Despite complaints by Dr. Potter’s critics in the West that he was «openly anti-Western and anti-capipitalist,»40 the KGB claimed that, in reality, he had «anti-Soviet leanings» and was “known for his provocative statements about the absence of freedom of conscience in the USSR.»41 Though he had been given a carefully staged-managed tour of Soviet religious institutions two months before the Nairobi Assembly, Potter had failed to defend them against Yakunin’s and Regelson’s outrageously accurate criticisms. Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev and Gallich told a Novosti correspondent after the assembly:

We deplore the prejudiced conviction held by the WCC leadership about our state and the Russian Orthodox Church. WCC general secretary Mr. Potter, by the way, was my guest last September and saw for himself that churches and monasteries were open. While here he attended divine services and said that he was always filled with joy when visiting this peace-loving country, in the midst of such prayerful and happy surroundings. It seemed strange and surprising to us that at the assembly he said nothing about his visit to the Soviet Union, including the Ukraine.42

The Centre organized a flood of letters to the ungrateful Dr. Potter from Russian Orthodox clergy, Baptists and other Soviet Christians, protesting at his alleged hostility towards them. It also sought to orchestrate public criticism of Potter by “prominent religious figure” in Britain, Syria and Lebanon, as well as in the Soviet Union. Further KGB active measures included the publication in Moscow of an English-language book, Religion Under Socialism, and the production of a TV documentary, Freedom of Religion in the USSR, both involving a probably English-speaking agent codenamed «K» (not identified in Mitrokhin’s notes). Attempts were also made to «compromise» Potter personally in various ways and—probably through KGB agents in the WCC—to suggest his replacement as general secretary. Archbishop Kiprian (agent SIMONOV) from the Moscow Church of the Consolation of All Who Sorrow, gave an interview denouncing «fabrications concerning the so-called persecution of believers in the USSR.»43
The absurdity of the KGB’s overreaction to the temporary embarrassment of the Nairobi Assembly and Dr. Potter’s handling of it was well illustrated by his report to the WCC central committee in August 1976 on progress to religious liberty in those countries which had signed the Helsinki Accords. His lengthy address said nothing about religious persecution in the Soviet Bloc, despite extensive, well-documented evidence of it submitted by Keston College and others. Dr. Potter did, however, insist that «it is essential for churches in Europe and north America to be aware of the problems created and maintained by European and American domination of other regions of the world.»44
The most serious act of public defiance within the Orthodox Church during the Brezhnev era was, in the Centre’s view, the foundation in December 1976 of the Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers’ Rights in the USSR by Father Gleb Yakunin, Hierodeacon Varsonofy (Khaibulin) and a layman, Viktor Kapitanchuk. The declared aim of the committee, which worked in consultation with the Helsinki Monitoring Group, was to help believers of all denominations «exercise their rights in accordance with their convictions.»45 «Yakunin and his associates,» reported the Centre, «are in practice engaging in a struggle with the existing order in the USSR . . . proclaiming a national religious revival in Russia as an alternative to Marxist-Leninist ideology»:
The committee has an extensive network of correspondents among religious fanatics; they are the main suppliers of information about the situation of believers in the USSR to places abroad.
In order to cause a schism in the Russian Orthodox Church and to set up a new Church organization taking up anti-Soviet positions, the Christian Committee has launched a campaign to compromise clergy loyal to the Soviet state as unfit to defend the interests of the believers.46

By 1980—to the consternation of the KGB—eleven volumes of documents totaling 1,189 pages of Russian text, obtained by the Christian Committee, had been published in the West.47
The KGB eventually demolished the Christian Committee by its traditional techniques of destabilization, agent penetration and persecution. The Fifth Directorate concluded that the most vulnerable of the committee’s founders was Hierodeacon Varsanofy. With the assistance of KGB agent GALKIN (an unindentified agent in the Orthodox Church), Varssanofy was assigned early in 1978 to a church in Vladimir region whose incumbent, agent VOLZHSKY, was a long-standing KGB agent. Finding it difficult to stay in touch with Yakunin and Kapitanchuk, Varsanofy resigned from the Christian Committee. According to Varsanofy`s file, agent VOLZHSKY introduced him to a sympathetic psychiatrist (also a KGB agent, codenamed BULKIN), who persuaded him that he was suffering from a nervous illness and should give up membership of the Christian Committee in order to reduce the stress he was under and prevent his illness from getting worse. The KGB claimed the credit for inducing Varsonofy “to abandon political activity and concentrate on research work in the field of theology, using materials from the Oblast archives.» While he was working in the archives, her KGB agent, codenamed SPIRANSKY, succeeded in winning his confidence and allegedly «deflected Varsanofy from his obsession of becoming the spokesman of believers in the Soviet Union»:

Finally he was persuaded to send a letter to Patriarch Pimen of All Russia and to senior personalities in the Russian Orthodox Church apologizing for the hurt that he had caused.48

On September 28, 1978 the Centre secretly promulgated KGB order no. 00122 on “Measures to Strengthen Agent Operational Work in the Struggle with Subversive Activity of Foreign Clerical Centres and Hostile Elements among Church People and Sectarians»: a lengthy document which reflected both the KGB’s addiction to conspiracy theory and its obsession with «ideological subversion” of all kinds. It also paid unwitting, if irritated, tribute to the courage of the persecuted believers and the vitality of their faith. Mitrokhin’s notes on order no. 00122 include the following:

Under the pretense of concern for the freedom of belief and the rights of believers in the USSR, imperialist intelligence services and foreign anti-Soviet centers were organizing ideological sabotage, aimed at undermining the moral and political unity of Soviet society and undermining the basis of the Socialist system; they sought to discredit the Soviet state and social order, incite religious organizations towards confrontations with the state and stimulate the emergence of an anti-Soviet underground among sectarians. With encouragement from abroad, hostile elements had launched active organizational and vocational activity aimed at forming illegal groups and organizations within the sectarian milieu, setting up printing presses and establishing contacts with foreign clerical centers.

Following the directives of the May 1975 conference of leading officials of KGB agencies [dealing with religious affairs], it had been possible to carry out measures to strengthen operational positions in international religious organizations, to expose compromise their leaders, officials and emissaries of clerical centers. Experienced and reliable agents had been infiltrated into the leading circles of some sectarian formations and measures to identify, prevent and terminate the subversive activity of hostile elements among the clerical anti-Soviet underground had become more effective, the further strengthening of the positions of progressive religious figures had been ensured, as well as their active participation in the struggle for peace and other political measures.
Operational work, however, still did not meet present requirements of the present time. The operational situation in a number of sectors of KGB agency work remained tense. The work of disrupting and detaching believers, especially among young people, from the influence of hostile elements was being carried out feebly. Agent positions in the leading ranks of the dissident Baptists, the Catholic and Uniate priesthood, the Pentecostalists, the Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and among the irregular Moslem clerics, were weak.
The USSR KGB Collegium decided as follows:
1. To raise the level of agent operational work designed to struggle against the subversive activity conducted under the cover of religion by imperialist intelligence services, clerical centers abroad and hostile elements within the country. The basic task was to identify in good time, prevent and put an end to the subversive designs of the adversary to stimulate anti-Soviet activity in the sectarian environment, creating religious formations hostile to the Socialist system and drawing believers into their sphere of influence.
2. The FCD, the SCD and the Fifth Directorate of the KGB were to identify the foreign anti-Soviet clerical organizations which, evidence showed, were being used by the adversary’s special services and were to submit proposals for identifying and cutting off subversive channels, identifying and intercepting communication channels with hostile elements in the sectarian milieu . . .
3. The Fifth Directorate and the local KGB agencies were to take steps to put an end to hostile activity designed to undermine loyalty to the Soviet state and the social order by the largest religious organization in the USSR, namely the Orthodox Church; they were to prevent the penetration of individuals with hostile attitudes in the leading ranks of the Church; in 1978-80, they were to take steps to strengthen the operational positions [i.e. the number and quality of agents] within the structure of the Orthodox Church (in Metropolitan provinces, Eparchies, parishes, monasteries and educational establishments), and to compromise and remove reactionary and anti-Soviet elements . . .49

The Christian Committee for the Defence of Believers’ Rights sought to protect itself against KGB penetration in part by remaining small, never having more than four members at any one time.50 In May 1979, however, it was joined by Father Vasili Fonchenkov, unaware that nine years earlier he had been recruited by the Fifth Directorate as agent DRUG (“Friend”). According to his file, “He was involved in the cultivation of specific inviduals [in the Orthodox Church], carried out his assignments conscientiously and showed initiative.» Since 1972 Fonchenkov had been a lecturer at the Zagorsk theological academy as well as holding a position in the foreign relations department of the Moscow Patriarchate. In 1976-7 he had been the incumbent of the church of St. Sergi in East Berlin and editor of Stimme der Orthodoxie (Voice of Orthodoxy), the journal of the Patriarchate’s central European exarhate.51 His contacts with foreign churches may well have helped to recommend agent DRUG to his unwitting colleagues on the Christian Committee.
The KGB campaign against public dissent in the Orthodox Church reached its peak in 1979-80, with a wave of arrests of leading dissidents—chief among them Farther Gleb Yakunin—who were later imprisoned or persuaded to recant. Probably to protect his cover, Fonchenkov was summoned for interrogation by the KGB and issued a statement saying that he was threatened with arrest, but was never charged.52 During a visit to West Germany in March 1980 Archbishop Pitirim of Volokolamsk (agent ABBAT)53 bizarrely declared that there had been «no wave of arrests.»54 The first major success of the KGB campaign was to persuade the charismatic Moscow priest Father Dmitri Dudko, whose offenses included calling for the canonization of Orthodox martyrs of the Soviet era, to make a public recantation on Soviet television in June 1980. Dudko’s resistance had been broken by a particularly skillful KGB interrogator, Vladimir Sergeyevich Sorokin, whom he had come to regard as «my own brother.» He said later that he had hoped that parts of his confession, such as his condemnation of «the sabre-rattling of the Carter administion would be recognized as words placed in his mouth by the KGB. His reputation, however, never fully recovered.55
There was no prospect of a recantation by Yakunin. Only his wife was allowed to attend his trial. The rest of his family and friends, along with the Western press, were refused admittance, while what one correspondent described as «burly young men in ill-fitting suits,» selected by the KGB, filed into the courtroom. Probably to protect his cover, Fonchenkov was among those who were turned away.56 Those called to give evidence against Yakunin included several KGB agents inside the Orthodox Church, among them Iosif Pustoutov (agent YESAULENKO), former representative of the Moscow Patriarchate at the Prague headquarters of the Christian Peace Conference, who testified to the harmful international consequences of the Christian Committee’s work. Yakunin accepted his sentence of five years’ imprisonment, followed by five years’ internal exile, with the words, «I thank God for this test He has sent me. I consider it a great honor, and, as a Christian, accept it gladly.» The British Council of Churches sent an appeal to Brezhnev, urging the court to reconsider its opinion. Attempts to gain the support of the World Council of Churches for a similar appeal h no response.57
A change in WCC rules before its Vancouver Assembly in 1983 ensured that the KGB suffered no repetition of the embarrassment caused by the discussion of the Yakunin and Regelson letter at the previous assembly seven and a half years earlier. Under the new regulations, probably promted by the KGB agents on the WCC council:
Appeals from groups or individuals for World Council of Churches intervention cannot be acted on by the assembly without the support of delegates or member churches, but will be followed up by the WCC general secretary.

An open letter from Vladimir Rusak, a Russian Orthodox deacon who had been dismissed for writing an unauthorized history of the Church after the October Revolution, appealed to delegates at Vancouver to «stop treating the propagandistic claims of Soviet delegates as the only source of information» on religion in the Soviet Union. He also urged the assembly to hold a frank debate on religious freedom. The mere discussion of the Yakunin-Regelson letter at Nairobi had «yielded some definite results» by embarrassing the authorities into the «hurried publication» of some copies of the Bible. The assembly also received another letter on behalf of thirty-five imprisoned Soviet Christians and 20,000 persecuted Pentecostalists who wished to emigrate to the West. Unsurprisingly, neither letter received support from Soviet delegates and neither was discussed at the assembly.
The embarrassment of the Afghan War was also successfully contained. Despite the desire of a minority of delegates for «a condemnation of Soviet aggression and the unconditional withdrawal of Soviet troops,» the final compromise resolution called for a Soviet withdrawal only «in the context of an overall political settlement between Afghanistan and the USSR» (conveniently ignoring the fact that the Kabul regime had been installed by the Soviet invaders) and «an end to the supply of arms to the opposition groups from outside» (in other words, the denial of arms to those resisting the Soviet invasion). These were precisely the conditions which the Soviet Union itself laid down for the withdrawal of its troops. Unsurprisingly, the Russian Orthodox delegation praised the final resolution as «balanced and realistic.» The Vancouver Assembly had no such inhibitions in condemning the West. Western capitalism was duly denounced as the main source of injustice in the world, responsible for the evils of sexism, racism, «cultural captivity, colonialism, and neo-colonialism.”58
The success, in Moscow’s view, of the Vancouver Assembly, probably helps to explain why the Centre established as one of the priorities for KGB active measures for 1984:
Exerting influence in our favor on the activity of. . . clerical organizations on the questions of war and peace, and other key contemporary problems.59

Looking back on his career in the KGB, Oleg Kalugin concludes that, like «the stranglehold over the Church inside the Soviet Union,» the penetration and exploitation of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad was «one of the most sordid and little known chapters in the history of our organization.»60 Mitrokhin came to the same conclusion, commenting at one point in his notes that the files contained «a whirlpool of filth.»61 The KGB used its agents among Russian Orthodox clergy in the West not merely to spy on emigre communities but also to identify possible agent recrutes.62 Though the Russian Orthodox Church in north America was split, the faction which remained loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate was, according to Kalugin, “riddled with KGB agents.»63 Among the agents identified in the files noted by Mitrokhin was a cleric codenamed KGB agent PETROV, who was sent to North America in the 1970s. His case officers in north America contacted him by using the passwords “Pyotr Mikhailovich,» the first name and patronymic of his Fifth Directorate controller in Moscow.64
The file on Arkadi Rodyonovich Tyshchuk (agent VORONOV), a priest who was posted to the Nikolsky Russian Orthodox cathedral in New York from 1977 to 1982, contains evidence of a hostility to the United States which may also have helped to motivate other Orthodox priests in the KGB’s north American network. The United States, agent VORONOV told his KGB case officer, suffered from the sin of pride—»and pride comes before a fall:»

When a country declares itself to be the most powerful and the richest, and that its government is the smartest and possesses the best weapons—that is not maturity, it is bragging, and is the reason for the downfall of all the powerful nations of the past.

KGB agent VORONOV usually met his controller from the New York residency either at the Soviet mission to the United Nations, where he went to collect his correspondence from Russia, or on board the ship Mikhail Lermontov, which regularly came into port at New York. More difficult to explain than his hostility to the United States was his apparent admiration for the KGB which, according to his file, he bizarrely described as a “good shepherd» and a «true Russian spiritual guardian and shepherd.»65
Russian Orthodox priests in the West were also used by FCD Directorate S to collect material for use in devising the well-documented legends of KGB illegals. In the early 1970s, for example, two KGB agents in the Moscow Patriarchate were sent to carry out detailed research on parish registers in Canada. Ivan Grigoryevich Borcha (codenamed agent FYODOR), who worked as a priest in prairie parishes of Ukrainian and Romanian communities, studied registers in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Viktor Sergeyevich Petlyuchenko (KGB agent PATRIOT), who was assigned to Orthodox parishes in Edmonton, carried out further research in Alberta.66
The Russian Orthodox Church, both at home and abroad, took a prominent part in the Rodina («Motherland») Society founded as a front organization by the KGB in December 1975 to promote «cultural relations with compatriots abroad,» and thus provide new opportunities for agent recruitment among emigre communities. Its vice-president, P. I. Vasilyev, was a senior member of the FCD’s Nineteenth (Soviet emigre) Department and headed a secret Rodina intelligence section.67 Metropolitan Alexi of Tallinn and Estonia (KGB agent DROZDOV),68 the future Patriarch Aleksi II, who was made a Rodina council member, told its opening conference, «We are all united by our love for our Socialist motherland.»Through its exarchates, dioceses and parishes in Europe, America, Asia and Africa, the Orthodox Church «continued to maintain spiritual ties with our compatriots” and was “doing its best to keep these contacts alive and active.”69 Metropolitan Aleksi is unlikely to have been unaware that these contacts were exploited by the KGB. According to a KGB document of 1988, «An order was drafted by the USSR KGB chairman to award an honorary citation to agent DROZDOV» for unspecified services to state security.70
DURING THE LATER 1980s the Moscow Patriarchate seemed to be trying neither to fall behind nor to overtake the speed at which the official programs of glasnost and perestroika were developing. In 1991, a year after succeeding Pimen as Patriarch, Aleksi II (KGB agent DROZDOV), finally dissociated himself and the Russian Orthodox Church from the declaration of loyalty» to the Soviet system issued by Metropolitan Sergi in 1927. When an interviewer reminded him that, a quarter of a century earlier, the Council for Religious Affairs had classed him as one of those bishops most loyal to the state, Patriarch asked for forgiveness and understanding of his attitude at the time. As Soviet Union began to disintegrate in the final months of 1991, Aleksi II declared that «Russia has suffered a severe illness in the form of Communism.»108

The Russian Orthodox Church, however, continued to be haunted by its past history of KGB penetration. After the failure of the August coup in 1991, the Russian government’s Committee on Freedom of Conscience, which included Father Gleb Yakunin, was given access to a section of the KGB archives which showed that some members of the Orthodox hierarchy had been KGB agents. After Yakunin published a selection of the documents, the archives were closed once more; he was accused of having betrayed state secrets to the United States and threatened with a private prosecution.109 Father Gleb remained defiant. He wrote to the Patriarch in January 1994:

If the Church is not cleansed of the taint of the spy and informer, it cannot be reborn. Unfortunately, only one archbishop—Archbishop Khrizostom of Lithuania—has had the courage publicly to acknowledge that in the past he worked as an agent, and has revealed his codename: RESTAVRATOR. No other Church hierarch has followed his example, however.
The most prominent agents of the past include agent DROZDOV—the only one of the churchmen to be officially honored with an award by the KGB of the USSR, in 1988, for oustanding intelligence services— KGB agents ADAMANT, OSTROVSKY, MIKHAILOV, TOPAZ and ABBAT. It is obvious that none of these or the less exalted agents are preparing to repent. On the contrary, they deliver themselves of pastoral maxims on the allegedly neutral character of informing on the Church, and articles have appeared in the Church press justifying the role of the informer as essential for the survival of the Church in an anti-religious state.
The codenames I discovered in the archives of the KGB belong to the top hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate.110

The letter to Aleksi II was unprecedented in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church—for, as the Patriarch must surely have been aware, agent DROZDOV, the most important of the KGB agents discovered by Father Gleb in the KGB archives, was in fact himself.

Notes. The Penetration and Persecution of the Soviet Churches
1. Lenin, Works, vol. 35, pp. 89-90; Shipler, Russia, pp. 270-1. KGB persecution of Islam and Judaism will covered be in volume 2.
2. Stalin may also have been influenced by the desire not to alienate his Anglo-American allies by continued religious persecution at a time when he was pressing them to open a second front. Pospielovsky, «The lest Years’ of Stalin’s Church Policy (1942-1948) in the Light of Archival Documents.»
3. The work of Michael Bourdeaux and his colleagues at Keston College has impressively documented the vitality of religious life in the post-war Russian Orthodox Church, despite continued persecution and a mostly subservient hierarchy. See, inter alia, Bourdeaux, Risen Indeed.
4. Luchterhandt, «The Council for Religious Affairs.»
5. vol. 5, sec. 9.
6. Meerson, «The Political Philosophy of the Russian Orthodox Episcopate in the Soviet Period,» p. 221.
7. Revesz, The Christian Peace Conference, pp. 1-4.
8. k-1,232.
9. k-1,214.
10. Harriss, «The Gospel According to Marx,» pp. 61-2.
11. Mitrokhin did not see the file on the 1961 WCC Central Committee meeting. Another file noted by him, however, identifies ADAMANT as Nikodim; vol. 7, ch. 5, para. 28.
12. «WCC Gives Eight-point Lead to Member Churches,» Church Times (August 29, 1969).
13. «Elusive Goal» (leader), Church Times (August 29,1969).
14. Harriss, «The Gospel According to Marx,» pp. 61-2. On Buyevsky’s role in the Moscow Patriarchate’s foreign relations Department, see Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, p. 266.
15. Letter from the Bishop of Bristol to the Church Times (September 7,1973); Smith, Fraudulent Gospel, pp. 2-3.
16. Babris, Silent Churches, p. 472.
17. Document cited by Harriss, «The Gospel According to Marx,» p. 62.
18. KGB Church records temporarily accessible to journalists after the disintegration of the Soviet Union indicate that, at some stage after Nikodim’s death in 1978, Yuvenali was given his former KGB codename ADAMANT. (It was not unusual for KGB codenames to be recycled.) Michael Dobbs, «Business as Usual for Ex-KGB Agents,» Washington Post (February 11,1992).
19. Pawley, Donald Coggan, pp. 244-8.
20. k-1,24.
21. Polyakov, «Activities of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1991,» p. 152.
22. Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, pp. 226-9.
23. Daily American (September 8,1978). On September 29,1978, less than a month after Nikodim’s death in the Vatican, John Paul I also died suddenly, thus becoming the shortest-lived pope since Urban VII died of malaria twelve days after his election in 1590.
24. See above, chapter 28.
25. k-1,30.
26. Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, pp. 215-16. On the authenticity of the report, see Oppenheim, «Are the Furov Reports Authentic?»
27. «His Holiness Patriarch Pimen’s Address Before Panikhida in the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Epiphany in Moscow,» Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (1984), no. 3.
28. See, for example, Pimen’s telegram to Brezhnev of December 17, 1976 in Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (1977), no. 2, pp. 3-4.
29. «Soviet Peace Fund Awards,» Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (1976), no. 4.
30. «His Holiness Patriarch Pimen Awarded by the World Peace Council,» Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (1976), no. 6.
31. «World Conference: Religious Leaders for Lasting Peace, Disarmament and Just Relations among Nations,» Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (1977), no. 7, pp. 2-3 and no. 8, pp. 17-64.
32. k-1, 23; vol. 6, ch. 10. The Patriarchate was also involved in another KGB-sponsored production in 1982, the World Conference of Religious Workers for Saving the Sacred Gift of Life from Nuclear Catastrophe, which again attracted about 600 participants.
33. «Decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet on Conferring the Order of the Red Banner of Labor upon Patriarch Pimen of Moscow and All Russia,» Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (1977), no. 9, p. 3.
34. Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, p. 217.
35. The full text of the letter from Yakunin and Regelson was published in Religion in Communist Lands, vol. 41 (1976), no. 1.
36. Lefever, Nairobi to Vancouver, pp. 64-5; Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, pp. 355-68; Hudson, The World Council of Churches in International Affairs, pp. 286-7.
37. Norman, Christianity and the World Order, pp. 1-2, 90 n. 62.
38. Lefever, Nairobi to Vancouver, p. 65; Babris, Silent Churches, p. 475.
39. vol. 6, ch. 10.
40. Harriss, «The Gospel According to Marx,» p. 63.
41. vol. 6,ch. 10.
42. «Interview Given by Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev and Gallich to a Novosti Press Agency Correspon-dent,» Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate (1976), no. 5.
43. vol. 6, ch. 10.
44. Smith, Fraudulent Gospel, p. 68.
45. The text of the founding declaration of the Christian Committee was published in Religion in Communist Lands, vol. 6 (1978), no. 1. On the work of the committee, see Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, pp. 373-81.
46. k-21,203.
47. Documents of the Christian Committeefor the Defense of Believers’ Rights in the USSR, 12 vols. (Vol. 3 consists of English translations; the remainder contain reproductions of the original Russian texts.) See also Scarfe (ed.), The CCDBR Documents: Christian Committeefor the Defense of Believers’ Rights in the USSR.
48. k-1, 65. On Varsonofy’s resignation from the Christian Committee, cf. Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, p. 379.
49. k-27,488.
50. Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, p. 379.
51. k-1, 50. On Fonchenkov’s public career, cf. Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, pp. 380-1.
52. Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, p. 428.
53. Albats, The State within a State, p. 46.
54. Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, pp. 422ff.
55. Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, pp. 430-9.
56. It is impossible, however, to rule out the possibility, that Fonchenkov had become genuinely sympathetic towards Yakunin. Mitrokhin’s notes on his career as agent DRUG are limited to the 1970s.
57. Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church, pp. 439-41.
58. Lefever, Nairobi to Vancouver, pp. 3-5, 67-70, 73, 75, appendix A.
59. Andrew and Gordievsky (eds.), Instructions from the Centre, p. 20.
60. Kalugin, Spy master, p. 197.
61. vol. 6,ch. 10, n. 1.
62. Mitrokhin’s notes on the file of agent VORONOV, for example, record that during his period in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he «was tasked to identify among his parishioners people who had a progressive and sympathetic view of the USSR—government workers, political party [members], union members, workers at scientific research institutes, diplomatic personnel, immigration officials, clergymen and church employees who were involved in the registration of births, marriages, and deaths [for assistance in the documentation of illegals] and agents of Zionist and anti-Soviet organizations» (vol. 6, app. 2, part 4).
63. Kalugin, Spy master, p. 197.
64. vol. 6, app. 2, part 4
65. vol. 6, app. 2, part 4.
66. vol. 8, ch. 6, paras. 16-17.
67. vol. 8, app. 3, para. 20.
68. Albats, The State within a State, p. 46. Confirmation of DROZDOV’s identity was provided by tin-release early in 1999 of a 1958 report on his recruitment, allegedly on «patriotic» grounds, by the Estonian KGB. Though the report refers to the agent only by his codename, his year of birth and career details are identical with those of Aleksi. James Meek, «Russian Patriarch ‘was KGB spy,’ » Guardian (February 12, 1999)
69. “Metropolitan Aleksiy’s Speech at the Founding Conference of the ‘Rodina’ Society» Journal of’ the Moscow Patriarchate (1976), no. 2.
70. Albats, The State within a State, p. 46.
108. Polyakov, «Activities of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1991; p. 147; Van den Bercken, «The Russian Orthodox Church, State and Society in 1991-1993,» p. 164.
109. Walters, «The Defrocking of Fr. Gleb Yakunin,» pp. 308-9.
110. Yakunin, «First Open Letter to Patriarch Aleksi II,» pp. 313-14. Father Gleb was in dispute with the Patriarch over the decision by the I loly Synod in October 1993 that Orthodox clergy would no longer In-allowed to stand as candidates for political office. He went ahead with his candidature in the elections two months later, was elected and then defrocked. Walters, «The Defrocking of Fr Gleb Yakunin,» p. 310.

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