In Soviet times, an obstacle to churching for many people was the widespread belief in society that church ministers were almost all KGB agents. Of course, such a radical opinion did not correspond to the truth, but there is evidence that some priests of the Russian Orthodox Church really worked for the state security organs of the totalitarian regime. In what status did they carry out their activities?
Cassocked informants?
In her autobiographical book Heavenly Fire, the writer Olesya Nikolaeva, the wife of the former press secretary of Patriarch Vladimir Vigilyansky, gives the example of human rights activist Zoya Krakhmalnikova, who, secretly preaching Orthodoxy, saw all of the real priests of the Moscow Patriarchate as “sexots” and “gebists”. This opinion was also shared by many children of the Russian Church Abroad in Soviet times.
“I had friends in the USSR, in Moscow, who did not confess to the priests of the Moscow Patriarchate - they were afraid that they would“snitch”on them in the KGB. Many people around me believed that there were only unworthy people among the hierarchs of the Moscow Patriarchate. Now I understand that this is far from the case, admitted, for example, the French publisher Victor Lupan.
However, the dissidents apparently did have some reason to beware of people in robes.
Personalities
Recently, a lot of news about priests who collaborated with the secret service is associated with the Baltic republics, where the archives of the local KGB departments are open to researchers and even posted on the Internet. For example, in December 2018, the National Archives of Latvia published information about the work of the current Metropolitan of Riga and All Latvia, Alexander (Kudryashov), for the KGB. According to this information, he was allegedly recruited back in 1982, immediately after taking the dignity. In the column "place of work and position" on a yellowed card with the surname "Kudryashov", "priest of the Orthodox Church" is written by hand. The press service of the synodal department of the Russian Orthodox Church did not comment on this message.
However, Orthodox publicists in Russia also write about the KGB "intruders". For example, about the former ROC cleric Valentin Rusantsev, who later became the head of the non-canonical Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, they say that the curators in the "organs" tried to get him appointed as a bishop, but they failed to do so.
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In cooperation with the KGB, the former primate of the UOC-MP Filaret (Denisenko), who broke away from the canonical church, also confessed, noting that he never betrayed the secret of confession. The current "honorary patriarch" of the non-canonical Orthodox Church of Ukraine justified himself by the fact that the special services "forced" the hierarchs to do this.
In addition to the priests, there were also laymen informants who actively participated in parish life in order to obtain information about the mood among believers. For example, Archpriest Alexander Men, as human rights activist Alexander Ogorodnikov argued, advised his flock to beware of the "informer" of the special services Sergei Bychkov, who later became a famous church historian. The former acting KGB informant is also called. Rector of the Leningrad Theological Academy Alexander Osipov, who in 1959 publicly left the Russian Orthodox Church and began to promote atheism.
What did the title of "agent" in the KGB mean?
The category of "agent" in the KGB did not mean that the person was a full-time security officer. It implied tacit cooperation and the transfer of information to the special services about persons who committed or could commit crimes. A Soviet citizen, including a priest, could agree to be an agent not only for material reward, but also under the pressure of threats or blackmail. The loyalty of such sexist agents was in question, so they required increased control.
Recruitment often took place through regular KGB officers who were part of the system of the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which had its own representatives in each region. It is noteworthy that the "KGBists" themselves treated such "religious" work as a kind of "exile."
Timur Sagdiev