KGB attempted to disrupt the West Coast prisoners' conference in Tacoma in 2004
March 8, 2004, in the vicinity of Seattle, Washington, in Tacoma, a congress of Protestant immigrants who had suffered religious persecution during the Soviet years took place. Called the “Day of Testimony of Former Prisoners,” its goal was to unite all those who had suffered for their faith and to tell young people how the Soviet regime destroyed believers.
– We invite believers from a wide variety of denominations, young and not so young, and even non-believers—in a word, anyone interested in this subject—to attend a worship service featuring former prisoners. You will hear the most gripping testimonies of Christians about years of suffering and heroic struggle for the glory of God against the punitive machine of the KGB, – the official press release of the Association of Former Prisoners stated. The congress also marked the launch of filming for an unprecedented documentary about the struggle of Soviet Christians against the KGB and the dictatorship of state atheism.
– Mankind has never known a period when any state openly declared war on God, and that period fell precisely to our lot. Unfortunately, there are not many of us former prisoners left, so we must hurry so that future generations will learn about that inhuman death machine that mercilessly destroyed thousands of Christian ministers, – declared Boris Perchatkin, chairman of the Association of Former Prisoners. – Remember, you are the victims and heirs of the victims of the Holocaust against Christians in the USSR! – he emphasized. Fortunately, this congress did take place, although before, the KGB’s agent network among pastors had managed to sabotage them.
Chekist pastors simply forbade believers from coming to these congresses, and they blindly obeyed, even throwing bundles of invitation tickets into the trash. Although in democratic America, who could be disturbed by testimony about how Christians were tormented in Soviet prisons? Only those, perhaps, who are called to protect the bright image of the Soviet past and to promote it among inexperienced émigré youth. That is the task Putin set before his intelligence service. The dark Soviet past is now glorified not only inside the country but also abroad, by operational Chekist methods. The fact is that shortly before the congress, in February, the first chapter of this book, “Chekist Pastors,” was published on the Internet. And this time they did not dare to sabotage the congress; it seemed awkward to so openly sign their own KGB affiliation. However, not everything went smoothly at the congress. For some reason the pastor of the church where the congress opening was scheduled did not announce it beforehand, and half of the people did not come. Even former prisoners among that church’s own believers knew nothing about the congress! People learned about it from radio broadcasts and Christian internet portals.
– And our Baptist prisoners stayed behind in their homeland! – the leaders of that church, members of the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (AUCECB), declared to Boris Perchatkin with undisguised anger. – And why did you move here? You should have stayed in your homeland too! – he retorted. – I could feel in my skin that to them, all former Soviet religious prisoners are enemies. It is no accident that Simonchik, the leader of the Baptist youth in Florida, shouted at a prayer meeting: “I’d lock those prisoners up again!” And this whole pro-Soviet bacchanalia is going on right here in the USA! – Boris Perchatkin later told me bitterly.
The idea of pseudo-patriotism is widely used in the KGB’s propaganda activity among émigrés. Thus, at the entrance to the church, several young people were openly distributing a leaflet accusing me (Konstantin Preobrazhensky) and Boris Perchatkin of a lack of patriotism. Not toward America, where we live, but toward Russia, which we left. Reading the text of that leaflet, I did not know where I was—in Seattle or Moscow? It was written from the standpoint of crude Putinist patriotism, which, one must agree, is not very appropriate here in America. For example, the leaflet claimed that Boris Perchatkin and I are serving the West. But this is the West, after all, and its security services do protect their citizens from terrorism, which cannot be said of their Russian colleagues. On the contrary, the danger here in America for each one of us is precisely the KGB! In full accord with Putin’s propaganda, the leaflet asserted that there were no religious persecutions in the USSR and blamed all of today’s misfortunes in Russia on the same West, rather than on its own rulers. As an example, it pointed out that Russia’s population is shrinking by a million people every year.
But are the Western special services to blame for this, and not the seventy-year Communist rule? And not the glorious Putin’s eight-year term, during which public health care was finally ruined? Absolutely nothing was done by Putin to increase the life expectancy of Russians. In the foreign Russian press, one can increasingly come across the assertion that even the current, greatly shrunken, almost 140-million population of Russia seems too large to Putin. To service the oil pipeline, a far smaller number of people is sufficient, and he has nothing with which to occupy the rest, especially the youth. Unless you send them to the army. An old KGB propaganda trick was clearly visible here: shifting blame from a sick head to a healthy one. However, the participation of this organization in preparing the leaflet was not even concealed, because it contained a detailed analysis of all my articles about the KGB’s work in foreign churches. Who, you must agree, would do this work voluntarily, for free? But I know for certain that for such work, my former colleagues in Moscow receive a steady Chekist salary. The leaflet accused me of mocking the sacred feeling of nostalgia. The Chekists are angered that I have hit their sore spot – the use of emigrants’ sincere love for their abandoned, and sometimes unfamiliar, homeland for their recruitment. “Help Russia!” say the Chekists in heartfelt voices to unlucky pseudo-patriots who have never lived in Russia and are unacquainted with our harsh reality. And immediately tears of gratitude stream from their eyes: “How, the Motherland has remembered me!” … They cannot even imagine that very soon this homeland will lead them to an American prison on charges of espionage. In my books, articles, and television appearances, I explain to Slavic emigrants how dangerous nostalgia is for them, the very nostalgia on which the KGB speculates. In doing so, I knock an important trump card out of that organization’s hands, hindering recruitment work.
– Cursed nostalgia! The intelligence plays on it! – I pointed out in my book The KGB in the Russian Emigration, published by Liberty Publishing in New York in 2007. And one of my interviews with the newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo was even headlined: “Moderate Your Nostalgia!” Clearly, I had hit the mark, undermining the recruitment methodology of my former colleagues. This leaflet could only have been produced by them, in the quiet offices of the intelligence headquarters in the outlying Moscow district of Yasenevo. I imagine how it was carried for approval to the head of the American section of Service “A” – the Russian intelligence unit for disinformation of Western public opinion. And then they got a visa from the head of yet another American section – in the “EM” directorate, which deals with Slavic emigration. And before that, they obtained the signature of the head of the sector of the same “EM” directorate, which supervises the religious organizations of Slavic emigrants. As far as I know, his office is located not in Yasenevo, but closer to the center of Moscow, in an inconspicuous pink building near the entrance to the “Prospekt Vernadskogo” metro station. Yes, it’s not so simple, friends!
At the end of the leaflet were the signatures of several people unknown to me. They root for Russia, yet they live in America. Despite all their sympathy for their former homeland, they do not move there to live. I have not come across their names among journalists, so it is hardly likely that they produced such a subtle literary analysis of my publications. The KGB did it for them. It was astonishing how they were not afraid to affix their signatures to such a dubious document, thereby indirectly confirming their connection with Russian intelligence. Alas, under American democracy and religious freedom, nothing threatens them. Just let them try to do the same in Russia – similarly sign an appeal extolling America and scourging its Russian detractors! The Russian special services, which they love so much, would immediately take an interest in them!
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