Konstantin Preobrazhensky: Chapter 1 Pastors-Chekists from the book 'The KGB Comes with Us'

· Baptists, AUCECB, Persecution, KGB, Books, Konstantin Preobrazhensky, Unregistered Pentecostals, Pentecostals, Religious Mafia, Russia, Slavik Radchuk, Contemporary Persecution, Security Services, USA

It is hard for an ordinary Christian to believe that a pastor he knows well could turn out to be a disguised KGB agent carrying out an assignment. The material provided by former Soviet intelligence officer and retired KGB Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Preobrazhensky reveals such facts about the interaction between Christian churches (including Protestant ones) and the KGB that it becomes downright unsettling.

The first chapter from Konstantin Preobrazhensky’s new book, “The KGB Comes with Us.” The book describes the KGB’s work within the religious communities of emigrants from the former USSR. It will soon be available for purchase online, about which a separate announcement will be made.

About the author: Konstantin Preobrazhensky is an intelligence officer and writer, a retired KGB lieutenant colonel. In 2003, fleeing persecution for his exposés about the KGB in the 1990s, he emigrated to the United States, where he received political asylum.

1980–85 – TASS correspondent in Tokyo.

1987–91 – Aide to the head of the KGB’s Scientific and Technical Intelligence directorate.

Author of the books: “The KGB in the Russian Emigration” (New York, 2007), “The KGB in Japan” (Moscow, 2000, also published in the PRC in 2003), “The Spy Who Loved Japan” (Tokyo, 1994; this book became a bestseller in Japan), “Unknown Japan” (Moscow, 1993), “How to Become Japanese” (Moscow, 1989), “Sports Kimono” (Moscow, 1985), “The Bamboo Sword” (Moscow, 1982).

The novellas “Karate Begins with Bows” and “The Very New Old Pagoda,” written by Konstantin Preobrazhensky at the age of 22, were included by the Leningrad branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the academic anthology “Soviet Writers on Japan” (Leningrad, 1987).

CHEKIST PASTORS

Part One

Putin changed Russia’s intelligence concept. Now its intelligence service places the main emphasis in recruitment work not on left-wing, pro-communist Western intellectuals, as before, but on Russian emigrants. The Kremlin is subjugating the entire Slavic emigration from the former USSR, turning it into an instrument of pressure on the West—the same role that foreign communists played in Soviet times.

For this purpose, Putin created a new unit within the Foreign Intelligence Service—Directorate “EM” (emigration). It incorporated the 4th Department of Directorate “K” (foreign counterintelligence), which had worked against hostile Russian emigration, and the 19th Department of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (political intelligence), which had worked on friendly emigration…

Yes, the KGB really does have such a unit! Come to your senses, members of the numerous emigrant societies of friendship with Russia! Its Chekists operate among you just as cynically and brazenly as they do among your ideological opponents who criticize the Putin regime. Your fervent love for the motherland by no means spares you from recruitment by the KGB, which promises you many dangers!

The main lines of activity of Russian intelligence, according to old Chekist tradition, are called “lines.” Now a new line has appeared—“EM”—alongside “PR” (political intelligence), “X” (scientific-technical), “N” (illegal), and “KR” (foreign counterintelligence). This means that each SVR resident in every Russian embassy now has a new deputy who oversees the “EM” line. Under his command is a group of intelligence officers who work exclusively among emigrants from the USSR.

In May 2007, the KGB successfully completed a grandiose operation that had lasted 70 years: part of the Russian Church Abroad was absorbed by the Moscow Patriarchate and seized by Putin’s KGB empire. A powerful intelligence bridgehead has now been established in the United States and other Western countries. Putin knows perfectly well that counterintelligence in the U.S. is not permitted to investigate clergy, and he cynically exploits American religious freedom and people’s faith for espionage against the West.

I told this story in my book “The KGB in the Russian Emigration,” published in 2007 by the New York publishing house Liberty, which caused quite a stir. While working on it, I was surprised to learn that the Protestant emigration in the U.S. is saturated with agents even more densely than the Orthodox one, yet for some reason no one knows about it.

Some Protestant pastors here even tell their congregations outright: they say the KGB works only among the Orthodox, and we have nothing of the sort here. But why? Could it be that the KGB, which rooted out religion, made a pleasant exception for Protestants?

“What a pity that our commission never got to see the secret KGB documents about its work among them!” lamented Fr. Gleb Yakunin.

In 1992, he became a member of the Commission of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation for investigating the causes and circumstances of the GKChP. This helped him gain access to the secret documents of the 4th Department of the 5th KGB Directorate, which worked on Orthodoxy. Its materials from 1917 to 1988 were studied, after which Patriarch Alexy II sounded the alarm and began demanding that Yeltsin shut down the dangerous commission. To the credit of the first Russian president, it should be said that he did not heed the demands of agent “Drozdov” and cited the intransigence of the “radical democrats” in his circle.

Then Alexy II rushed to Ruslan Khasbulatov, who headed the Supreme Soviet, and he did heed the patriarch’s requests and shut down the commission.

“We only managed to find out about one agent from among the Baptists, a certain Orlov, who collaborated simultaneously with both the KGB and the GRU, the military intelligence,” Fr. Gleb chuckled. “Another department of the 5th KGB Directorate dealt with the Protestants, but they all operated in the same way because they answered to one man, General Filipp Bobkov. For example, a common technique was to infiltrate not only agents but also KGB officers into all religious organizations. After all, an agent is a civilian, willingly or unwillingly selling his comrades to the KGB, and there is no complete trust in him. Therefore, an agent must be constantly checked.

A KGB officer, on the other hand, has already passed all checks, is one hundred percent reliable, and—most importantly—is personally invested in the success of his own career.”

Naturally, the largest number of officer-priests were assigned to the Moscow Patriarchate. There, utterly alien to religious life, they constantly found themselves in absurd situations, which they later delighted in recounting to their colleagues at intelligence headquarters. I was among them, and I used these stories in my books.

Muslims were no exception. In the early eighties, two intelligence officers from Uzbekistan made a pilgrimage to Mecca, where no one identified them. Brezhnev later kissed them for it.

But not every KGB officer’s penetration of a hostile religious environment ended so festively. In the mid-seventies, an officer from one of the provincial city KGB departments managed to infiltrate a Skoptsy sect. He had already begun to gain their trust, and during one conversation they invited him to sit on a little bench. The chekist gratefully did so, preparing for a cunning conversation, but the bench broke in two, knives flashed, and in the blink of an eye the intelligence officer himself became a Skopets. They say that after this he drew his pistol and started shooting back—but what good could that do!

He no longer had the right to remain in military service, and had to be discharged as an invalid. A believer would see here the Lord’s righteous punishment. Chekists across the country recounted this case, laughing, to one another.

“But why does the KGB wage war on the Skoptsy? Do they harm the national security interests of our motherland?” some inexperienced reader might ask.

Alas, for the chekists, those interests are by no means paramount. They defend them negligently, reluctantly, and ineptly. The KGB acts only in its own narrow departmental interests, caring about its own prestige, influence, and wealth. To this end, the chekists unscrupulously use their special powers and rights, granted to them for ensuring the security of citizens. The KGB is for the most part a parasitic and unnecessary organization, leading Russia into a dead end.

It is logical to assume that KGB officers are also among Protestant pastors. There, they direct their agents and maintain contact with Moscow.

When, in the second half of the eighties, I studied at the Minsk KGB school, the instructors told us about an unusual problem faced by the party committees of very many plants and factories. The best workers there, as a rule, turned out to be Baptists or other Protestants. But they cannot be awarded the title of “Shock Worker of Communist Labor”! So the party committees rack their brains and turn to the KGB for advice.

They also said that Protestants are difficult to recruit on a material basis—that is, they do not take the money the KGB offers them. And they are not afraid to say:

“I don’t need money. I have enough for my daily bread, and that’s fine!..”

But on the whole, little is known about this work. Probably because Protestants were on the fringes of Soviet life, living mostly in the provinces.

And even less is known about the methods of Putin’s intelligence among Protestant émigrés in America. I found not a single publication on this subject, so I turned to the well-known Protestant human rights activist Boris Perchatkin, who emigrated to the USA. He is the author of two books and is writing a third: Secret Disciples, drawing on his many years of experience and observation. Excerpts from his book will be presented below, in his answers.

He is familiar with the KGB’s methods of working among Protestants not by hearsay: in the USSR he spent five years in prison, was tried twice for his faith and human rights activities. His wife, Zinaida, was also tried twice. Even Boris Perchatkin’s mother was tried three times—in 1954, 1983, and even in 1985, when she was already 58 years old, yet her age did not prevent the KGB from sentencing her to two years of ordinary regime.

Boris Perchatkin’s account contained so many facts new to me that I present it in full, inserting only here and there my own comments as a professional intelligence officer. I began the interview with a question.

Konstantin Preobrazhensky: In 2006, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution calling on the Russian Federation to ensure religious freedoms for all citizens without exception (Resolution on Religious Freedom in Russia No. 190), thus stating that religious freedom does not exist in Russia. Did you notice any maneuvering by Putin’s agents before the passage of this resolution, any attempts to oppose it?

Boris Perchatkin: Of course I noticed! Here is a clear example of such opposition. While the resolution was being discussed in congressional committees, it needed support. It was assumed that religious émigrés from the Russian Federation would send their congressmen letters urging them to vote for it. “After all, they fled from something and are now receiving refugee status!” Such a practice is widespread in America. So the congressional staff prepared a standard text for such a letter, and I faxed it to many churches. All people had to do was sign it and send it to their district’s congressman and senator. And what happened? Not a single such letter was sent! I was informed of this from Congress. Not one out of thousands! Then I turned to the Jewish human rights organization “Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.” They sent the letter to their contacts, and the Jews supported us, as had happened before, in Soviet times.

This means that the pastor-chekists threw the letter from Congress into the trash can so as not to cause moral harm to Putin’s Russia. Yet it would have been so natural for any presbyter or believer to sign such a letter: many of them had also suffered persecution back home!

It should be noted that the majority of this flock are not from Russia but emigrants from Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. For them, Russia is now a foreign country. But it seems as though their pastors are being directed from Moscow, from the Lubyanka. (Author’s note. Indeed, valuable agent networks from the national republics were subordinate to the central apparatus of the KGB. Naturally, duplicates of these agents’ personal files also existed in the local KGB offices, but shortly before the August 1991 putsch many of them were managed to be transferred to Moscow or destroyed. After Putin placed the main emphasis in intelligence work against the West on emigrants from the former USSR, the work with these agents in the USA was intensified. K.P.)

By blocking the signing of letters in support of the Congressional resolution in 2006, the Chekist pastors passed a successful test of strength before Putin. Meanwhile, the Slavic diaspora received yet another “minus” in the eyes of the American government. Yes, the resolution was adopted under the pressure of irrefutable facts and with the support of the Jewish community, but the masses of believers did not support it. After that, the Chekist pastors did everything possible to conceal the truth about this resolution from them.

“The KGB uses its agent network among Protestants to infiltrate Western countries on a much larger scale than among the Orthodox. After all, the West is predominantly Protestant,” continued Boris Perchatkin. “But while the agent work of the Moscow Patriarchate is now widely known, the KGB’s work through Protestants remains a secret to this day. Here are a few examples of a stunning KGB operation.

We Pentecostals, by participating in the dissident movement, willingly or unwillingly became participants in the ideological war against the USSR on the side of the West. Because, in seeking freedom and emigration on religious grounds, we showed the whole world that there is no freedom in the USSR. They sent us to the Gulag, but they did not grant us freedom of faith or release us for emigration, because by releasing us the Soviet government would thereby have acknowledged that its advertised freedom is a lie, for no one flees from freedom. We helped the West ‘strip’ the USSR, and on our front we won the war against the Evil Empire, because in 1988 the communists decided that holding us further was more trouble than it was worth. And they permitted religious emigration, thereby acknowledging that there is no freedom in the USSR. That was our victory and the West’s. And along with emigration came relative freedom. But it was right there that we all let our guard down and, in emigration, fell into a trap set by the KGB. The fate of the emigration began to unfold according to a scenario one could call ‘Secret Disciples.’

The scenario was brilliantly simple and diabolically cunning. Living in the USSR, we never knew the number of people in the underground, persecuted churches — neither Pentecostals nor Baptists. (It has now become known that there were about three hundred thousand of them.) But the KGB knew this very well, since all unregistered churches were kept under surveillance, and each had an informer.

By 1980 we had passed to the West ten thousand names of Pentecostals and Baptists who had openly declared their intention to leave the USSR on religious grounds. (These lists are still kept in the U.S. Congress.) And we also knew about twenty thousand sympathizers. That is ten percent of all religious underground anti-Soviet activists. However, as a result of repression against us by the authorities (from 1979 to 1986, 1,688 Pentecostals and over 200 Baptists were convicted) and by the church leadership (hundreds were excommunicated on the orders of Viktor Belykh), that number had shrunk by 1988 by at least a third, and in some regions by half. From the moment the doors opened up to the present day, as many as four hundred thousand Protestants have ended up in the United States with refugee status. Where did such a number of persecuted people come from?

Here is where and why. Those churches that chose to take the easy way and registered with the organs of Soviet power (i.e., agreed to be controlled by the KGB and to comply with the godless legislation on cults) outnumbered us almost twofold. The KGB calculated the approximate scale of our exodus and understood that those whom the Chekists had discriminated against and persecuted, and then allowed to emigrate, would consolidate upon arrival in the USA. (They did not allow us to do this in the USSR.) Knowing the mentality of our compatriots, the Chekists perfectly realized that, possessing such human and financial resources, we would organize a spiritual Protestant expansion into the territory of the USSR, and also set up powerful human rights activities on the territory of our former homeland. We would restore our history. We would prove the facts of genocide against us. We would do what has not been done so far: we would haul the KGB, its successor the FSB, and their boss — the Communist Party — before an international court as a lesson to others. Such a thing could only appear to them in a nightmare. Yes, a community of people with a purpose can accomplish a great deal!

When we were breaking through the Iron Curtain, we did not know the scale of potential emigration. But the communists did know, and what were they thinking when they let us go? Exactly — to let us go, but to bring us under control, so that for people like me life would not seem easy, in order to neutralize and corrupt the emigration, to lead it into a spiritual dead end, to paralyze any positive activity and human rights work and so on and so forth. But how to bring it under control?

Exactly! To ‘ride herd on’ the emigration, to take the lead. The KGB was preparing in advance for the mass dispatch of agents into America in order to take charge of, to control the Protestant refugees.

Elder Vasily told me that in 1987, when he was still living in Ukraine, he was summoned to the KGB and offered to emigrate to the United States.

“How can I go?” he asked. “And why are you offering me this? You don’t offer anything for nothing.”
“Of course, we don’t offer anything for nothing,” the Chekists agreed, “but you know that Christ had secret disciples, don’t you?”
“I know!” agreed Elder Vasily.
“Well, you will be our secret disciple!” the Chekists laughed.
“And what would a secret disciple have to do for you?”
Soon many of your fellow believers will go to America! And you’re young, promising, we like you, people will follow you. You’ll start a church in America. When things get going, start a brotherhood. If needed, we’ll help you!” the KGB officers explained.
And what is all this called—what you have proposed to me?” Presbyter Vasily asked for clarification.
We are offering you to create a church, is that bad?” the Chekists frowned. “Besides, imagine: you gather about five hundred people around you, and each throws a hundred dollars into your basket a month—tell me, is that bad? In America, a pastor is honorable, lucrative, and doesn’t get dusty…

From this it is clear that for work in the USA, in addition to the existing agent network, they recruited and trained clean—unexposed—secret disciples of the KGB. Presbyter Vasily refused to become a secret disciple of the KGB, and he was barred from leaving the country until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

From the moment religious emigration began, KGB “secret disciples” started seeping into America. The first thing they did was an energetic, I would say aggressive, takeover of leadership roles in churches and the establishment of churches under their control. Many of them I knew from their past Chekist “exploits” and I was struck by their impudence. It never crossed my mind that they would show up here after those “exploits.” The Soviets took advantage of the fact that in our appeals and statements to the West we did not distinguish between Protestants who collaborated with the Soviet authorities, such as the Soviet-patriotic Protestants of the Autonomous Registration and the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists (VSEKhB), and our own—the underground churches opposed to the Soviet regime. After all, we could not have imagined that the Soviet-patriotic Protestants, accomplices in our persecution, would be pushing into the USA and passing themselves off as sufferers. The KGB immediately exploited this oversight. As soon as we broke through the Iron Curtain, the Chekist pastors began encouraging their members to emigrate, and then, skillfully melting into the ranks of their reliable, deceived rank-and-file comrades, they quickly filled the emigration quota. The goal was subsequently to open Slavic churches in the USA based on loyal people and to place the real refugees arriving in the USA under their control.

On the other hand, in the unregistered churches (for which we were seeking emigration) many pastors and some bishops (such as Viktor Belykh, Nikolai Tachinsky, Nikolai Kotyakov, and others) and simply agents (like Slavik Radchuk) began actively to hold back those who were truly being persecuted, and to obstruct their departure. You ask how this is possible? Here are a few examples.

In the autumn of 1989 in Volgograd, Bishop Viktor Belykh, whose two daughters were already in the USA as refugees (!), explained in church that those who had left had fallen into trouble, were living off the garbage dump, would be glad to return but were stripped of citizenship, concluding that emigration is from Satan. And people believed it, reasoning: it’s not Soviet propaganda, it’s the bishop saying it!

At the same time, Nikolai Tachinsky traveled around the churches in the North Caucasus, preaching that emigration is a sin, and called on Viktor Belykh for help: to combat the spirit of emigration. Yet his own documents were being processed at the American embassy. When military actions began in the Caucasus, he abandoned the people he had deceived and fled. Now Nikolai Tachinsky leads an independent brotherhood in the USA!? Cleverly done, indeed.

The head of the so-called “Slavic Federation,” Adam Bondaruk, at the height of the persecution, betrayed the brotherhood and joined the registration, and began to persecute those who were striving for religious freedom and emigration. Adam Bondaruk proclaimed that there was complete freedom in the USSR and that one should take advantage of it. But unexpectedly, at the beginning of 1988, to everyone’s amazement, he began encouraging his flock to emigrate. But why emigrate if there is already complete freedom in the USSR?! And after his entire flock had left for the USA and created a base for him there, Adam Bondaruk himself showed up in America as a refugee and began to lead those whom he had previously persecuted…

Another “refugee” arrived in America: the so-called Bishop Nikolai Kotyakov. (If only you could see this “bishop”!) Before that, he had been to the USA and Europe more than once. (And this is a refugee!?) Nevertheless, he had the audacity to call America “a spawn of hell” and “the whore of Babylon.” “He who resists the Soviet authority resists God!” Kotyakov threatened. In 2000, not yet knowing who Kotyakov was, I reproached him for ordaining the cop, Slavik Radchuk. I was shocked by his reaction.

Don’t touch Radchuk!” he ordered me, “and if you tell anyone else about this or even corroborate anyone else’s evidence that he worked for the KGB, we’ll smear you against the wall! You won’t prove it—that train has left, and nobody here needs it. Got it? One phone call to Pyotr Sayenko, and you’ve ‘arrived’! Got it, you damn dissident?!”

By acting in this way, synchronously with the VSEKhB and under KGB leadership, they enabled the Chekist pastors to seize the initiative from us, who suspected nothing, and to bring the Protestant Slavic immigration under control. And then they themselves, who had been obstructing immigration and spreading anti-American propaganda, also ended up in America as refugees. (It is now clear that this was a precisely planned and executed action.) It is not hard to guess who orchestrated this: the same ones who in 1943, at Stalin’s behest and under Beria’s leadership, created the Moscow Patriarchate, and in 1944 the VSEKhB, and placed both religious organizations at the service of the godless authorities. And they served it, bowing and scraping: “What else might you wish, sir?” Directly or indirectly, they helped send more than a thousand believers to the Gulag.

You may ask: how could they act as lackeys? Here’s how. The AUCECB participated in international religious events around the world. For example, its first general secretary, Karev, traveled abroad 56 times, beginning in the 1940s. What was he doing in Western countries? After all, he traveled even during Stalin’s time, when not even atheist Soviet citizens were allowed abroad, when people could be sent to the GULAG for religious activity, sometimes for twenty-five years! Karev wrote a book in which he compared Lenin to Christ and concluded that Lenin was greater.

The entire leadership of the AUCECB traveled abroad because the leadership of a registered church was equated with that of a party functionary. So what were they doing in Western countries?

They were servicing the ideological machine of the godless authorities. In the West, the AUCECB blocked actions in our defense and discredited us in every possible way. (And not only us.) Above all, it identified those who sympathized with us and, conversely, those who sympathized with the Communists, so as to work with both groups later, depending on the circumstances and according to KGB instructions. For example, they charmed the Assemblies of God to such an extent that it turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the reality in the Evil Empire.

I’ll give just one example of the destructive activity of the AUCECB.

In 1979, we, the unregistered Pentecostals, decided to address a letter to the Twelfth World Pentecostal Conference, which was opening in Canada under the chairmanship of Thomas Zimmerman, the leader of the Assemblies of God. In it, we told about our persecution.

Six hundred Pentecostals found the courage to sign the letter. Collecting signatures was an extraordinarily difficult task. It required secretly traveling all over the Soviet Union, meeting in secret with believers who knew they were risking their lives by signing such a document. We all understood: if Thomas Zimmerman, as the head of the Assemblies of God, and through him the Twelfth World Pentecostal Conference, did not support us, we were doomed to the GULAG, and our families to new suffering.

But an official delegation from the AUCECB arrived at the conference and declared that there was no persecution of Pentecostals in the USSR: “What persecution? After all, we are also Pentecostals, and here we are—we’ve come to Canada! No one forbade us!”

The Americans asked the AUCECB delegation, “But you do have people in prison for their faith, don’t you?”

The AUCECB people responded with this argument: “Yes, we have Pentecostals in prison, we have Baptists in prison. But your American believers also go to prison, don’t they?”

“Yes, they do, if they’ve committed a crime,” the Americans agreed.

“Well, it’s the same with us!” the AUCECB people exclaimed triumphantly.

The Twelfth International Pentecostal Conference not only refused to consider our letter at the insistence of the Soviet pastor-KGB agents, but they also handed the letter over to them!

(Author’s note. Such insane naivety and astonishing gullibility toward the KGB agents is still displayed by the West even today! — K.P.)

Of course, the letter immediately ended up in the KGB. Repressions began. Thirty people whose signatures were at the head of the list were thrown into prison; the others were also persecuted in various ways. Some were summoned to the KGB for “prophylactic” talks, others were fired from their jobs.

I was arrested then and subsequently spent five years in a labor camp. I remember how the KGB investigator shook that letter in front of my face, triumphantly exclaiming: “See, your brothers abroad have handed you over to us themselves! You’re no use to anyone out there!”

And while we were sitting in prison, the AUCECB shielded us from the West with a smokescreen. Those nice AUCECB fellows—like Shatrov, Bychkov, Orlov, Karev, Bilas and others, many others—went abroad, delivered beautiful sermons, smiled sweetly, selflessly lied about freedom of conscience in the USSR, and slandered the prisoners and the churches! By doing so, they aggravated our heavy plight. Yet it was hard to find a Protestant family in which no one had suffered.

And… in the West they were believed, because people wanted to believe—it was more convenient! And profitable, too—you’d be invited to the USSR, chauffeured around churches where Judases were serving as pastors. Everywhere there were banquets, attention, honors, and… gifts, gifts! And when you got home, you were a hero—again visiting churches, now your own: conferences, congresses, donations, feasts. Then the Assemblies of God, to prove that there was freedom in the Union, would host the AUCECB people and those Pentecostals who had “autonomously registered” with the Soviet authorities. Then a reciprocal move would follow… And so, in peace and harmony, they lived until the demise of the Evil Empire.

In November 1988, I was invited to speak at the Billy Graham Center before representatives of Pentecostal associations at a conference organized by the State Department. There, I called on my fellow believers to support and help sponsor Pentecostal emigrants from the USSR who had gathered in Rome. Shortly after that, I was invited to the main office of the Assemblies of God, where, after a brief conversation, Joseph Flower, the head of the international department of the Assemblies of God, told me: “We don’t want to spoil our good relations with the AUCECB and the Soviet government because of you! Therefore, as a denomination, we refuse to support you. Look for support elsewhere—America is big!” I nearly fell off my chair. God had nothing to do with this! This was politics and religious business. From whom had we expected support while we languished and died in concentration camps?

And our fate was still very uncertain! Ahead was August 1991. It was still unknown what might have resulted from the military coup organized by the GKChP! — remarked Boris Perchatkin.

TO BE CONTINUED

PASTOR-KGB AGENTS

Part Two

While collecting material for my new book, The KGB in the Russian Emigration, published in 2007 by Liberty Publishing House in New York and causing a great stir, I was surprised to discover that the Protestant Russian—and generally Slavic—emigration in the USA is even more thoroughly permeated with agents than the Orthodox one, but for some reason nobody knows about it. I was unable to find a single publication on this subject. Yet such espionage is even more dangerous for America, where Protestants predominate. They treat their Slavic brethren with great trust and do not suspect at all that they might be spies.

Why did the KGB manage to camouflage itself so cleverly among Russian Protestants in America? Few people here can be asked such a question! But the well-known human rights activist Boris Perchatkin, who served two terms in Soviet prison for his faith, has begun to answer it in detail. His interview was placed in the first part of the article. Today Boris Perchatkin continues it, using names and facts that are completely new to me. I present Boris Perchatkin’s testimony without changes, only occasionally commenting on it as a professional intelligence officer.

So, BORIS PERCHATKIN TESTIFIES

The AUCECB is involved in KGB intelligence activities to an even greater extent than the Moscow Patriarchate. Yet official Soviet Protestants, nevertheless, receive refugee status in the USA. The Orthodox, however, are not granted it—so what distinguishes the leadership of registered Protestants from them? Only that they worked for the KGB far more! In this I see injustice.

The mass immigration of AUCECB functionaries and Autonomists to the USA under the guise of religious refugees became yet another successful move by the KGB in the struggle against the West. The KGB decided to dissolve us in the crowd of AUCECB functionaries and other pro-Soviet Protestants who were never persecuted at home, but to whom the USA naively opened its doors.

Unfortunately, American immigration authorities were unable to grasp this difference, granting refugee status to a great many Protestants who collaborated with the KGB and faithfully supported the Evil Empire. And such status cannot be given to those directly or indirectly involved in persecution. Moreover, many of these false refugees freely traveled to the West during Soviet times and did not request political asylum there. After all, no one persecuted them! Such people, according to American rules, should also not be granted refugee status. That means they deceived the immigration authorities.

For example, could those who are persecuted send their children to study abroad? Yet the son of AUCECB functionary Roman Bilas, Igor Bilas, studied in the eighties to become a pastor at a Protestant seminary abroad. But the USSR was fighting religion, and Protestantism was a hostile environment. How could one send an enemy to study abroad? After all, only the most reliable and vetted Soviet citizens could go abroad back then… There is only one answer: through the KGB. Roman Bilas himself, who traveled abroad in Soviet times, and his son Igor received refugee status in the USA as victims of religious persecution.

Here is a reverse example. The leader of our unregistered Pentecostal community in Nakhodka, Vasily Navarich, repeatedly fined for illegal church activities and having spent five years in camps at the Sakhalin logging site (probably based on this they concluded: “He was abroad!”) and left his health there, was, mockingly, not recognized as a refugee at the American embassy, and he had to file an appeal and prove for a long time that he is a victim of persecution. I’m in shock, and you?

But the most odious figure is Slavik (Rostislav) Radchuk. He too was a frequent guest in the USA and Europe since Soviet times and, around 1996, settled as a refugee in the USA. In the Union, many knew him as a traveling performer and suspected him, not without reason, of being an informer. And in 1977 in Nakhodka, he was caught in contacts with the KGB. Here is how it happened.

In 1976, events shook Nakhodka: believers flatly refused registration, became closely connected with the human rights dissident movement in Moscow, many applied for emigration, and the Voice of America reported on these events. And at this time, the nineteen-year-old Radchuk appears in Nakhodka: he said he was hiding from the army. But among us, someone was almost always in prison. He found a place to hide! Strange…

In Soviet times, Pentecostals in various cities specialized, as a rule, in in-demand trades. In sunny Sukhumi, for example, it was floriculture and photography, while in ours, Far Eastern Nakhodka, it was the plumbing trade.

For some reason, just at that time believers were gathered into one work brigade. They said believers work well and can be trusted with responsible tasks. But in fact the reason was different, a Chekist one. When believers gather, they begin to talk about their internal affairs, discuss, argue. That’s when they need to be eavesdropped on! The authorities assigned Radchuk to work in this plumbing brigade, even though he was not a plumber. But the bosses know best!

Apparently, this is how he did “alternative” military service. Perhaps the lad was noticed, or he got caught at something, and once harnessed—pull. It should be emphasized that Radchuk moved exclusively among unregistered Pentecostals, not members of the AUCECB. And he was exposed by chance. One day he asked the foreman to leave after lunch, supposedly to deliver firewood to an old woman.

“Fine, go, at least you’ll do a good deed, because you’re of little use at work anyway!” smirked foreman Grigory Vashchenko, whose son was then in prison for refusing military service. But the foreman saw Slavik run not toward the bus stop, but in the opposite direction, and get into a black “Volga” waiting for him. It was the car of the well-known Major Rudnitsky, head of the 5th branch of the Nakhodka city department of the KGB. (Author’s note. The “Fifth Line,” as is known, fought dissent, including religion. It was precisely there, and not at all in intelligence, that the “Orthodox president” Putin began his Chekist career.)

Besides, some readers may see a stretch in this episode: they say the KGB does not work so crudely, the head of a branch cannot arrive in his service car to meet an agent: that would risk blowing his cover.

It is indeed so. Meetings with agents are conducted strictly according to schedule, not too often, and in safe houses, which are nothing other than ordinary homes of Soviet people—apartments or private houses. Their owners are also KGB agents, recruited as keepers of safe houses. They have no right to know the names of the people who come to them, and moreover they must provide a cover story for the frequent visits of guests to the neighbors—claiming, for instance, that they are former students of the late husband who come to visit me, the widow, and so on. As a rule, these cover stories are very silly and unconvincing, but people in the provinces readily believe them.

Safe houses are not at all the same as conspiratorial apartments, known to everyone from films about Soviet intelligence officers. Conspiratorial apartments officially belong to the KGB, and the heads of the housing offices know this because only agents are appointed to that post.

So why didn’t Major Rudnitsky meet with this young man in a safe house, in a secure setting? The answer could also be this: the agent summoned the KGB officer for an emergency meeting by telephone. KGB rules permit this. (Author’s note. The most common summoning signal is, for example, the phrase “Aunt Vera is drawing you a dog.” After these words, the officer is obliged to drop everything and go to the safe house. K.P.)

And most importantly—Radchuk never admitted anywhere that the KGB was in contact with him. And all of us knew that the KGB was actively recruiting our young believers, and so we instructed them in the churches like this: “If the KGB has shown interest in you even once, declare it publicly in church, and they will leave you alone. Because the main condition of an agent contact is its secrecy. An exposed informant becomes useless to the Chekists…”

The next morning Vashchenko, in front of the whole brigade, began questioning Radchuk about why the poor old woman without firewood turned out to be Major Rudnitsky. And this same Major Rudnitsky had thrown nine Pentecostals from Nakhodka into prison. It is very possible that Slavik had a hand in this.

What happened after that is highly telling: Radchuk uttered not a single word at all, but simply grabbed his little suitcase and that very day vanished from Nakhodka for several years. (Author’s note. Such behavior is operationally correct and indicates that Slavik had been specially prepared for situations of this kind. Precisely in the same way, for example, should officers of the operational-technical service act when you accidentally catch them in your home installing listening equipment. They must silently pack their tools into a suitcase and retreat. K.P.)

After that, Radchuk traveled around the country without hindrance, ending up in the hottest spots where Protestant religious and human rights activity was boiling over. And yet traveling across the USSR in those dark years was not nearly as simple as riding across America today. For instance, during the years of Andropov’s rule, the police would block the exits from stores, stop buses, and ask everyone why he was there during working hours. For most of those detained, the police sent complaints to their workplaces, which led to serious trouble on the job. And those who had no permanent job were simply put in prison for three years for parasitism under Article 209. And woe to an underground Protestant who accidentally fell into such a check! He was punished far more harshly. Yet Radchuk never really worked anywhere at all!

Moreover, the police specifically hunted traveling Protestant preachers and couriers. They could easily stop anyone and check with what money he had bought his ticket—and where he had gotten the money in the first place, and woe to him if he could not prove where he worked and that the money had been earned by him personally and that he was on a trip because he was on a lawful vacation. And if the money for the trip had been collected by brothers in the faith, that was considered a crime under Soviet law. After all, all forms of charity were forbidden in the USSR and were called “unearned income.” It could carry a prison term of up to 5 years.

But somehow all this passed Radchuk by. (Author’s note: for such cases, a KGB agent always had at hand the service telephone number of the KGB officer with whom he was in contact. The agent would show the number in his notebook to the militiamen, and they would immediately understand. After all, no identity card exists for an agent-informer. Although in Stalin’s time there was one: a special kind of pass to the NKVD building. K.P.)

Thus Radchuk even got into closed zones—Yakutia and again Nakhodka. There I met him once more after my release. At that time I was invited to a nighttime meeting with certain preachers. I was then under police supervision after my first prison term and had no right to leave the house after eight in the evening, but I was secretly driven there by car. How great was my surprise when I saw a grown-up Radchuk surrounded by several young men who were listening to him with reverence. Radchuk began offering me a portable printing device for seventeen thousand! And I had indeed been looking for such equipment at one time. And how did he know that? How did he have this equipment? After all, at that time it could only be obtained illegally and only from abroad. And if he got it from abroad, he got it for free—and how?—but was selling it for crazy money? And where would I, an ex-con, have money? The conclusion was obvious: if I were to collect money, I would be put away for unearned income (there was such an article then), and with the equipment—all the more so, it all depended on what term they wanted to give. It was a clumsy and brazen provocation. But I already knew that Radchuk was an informer and provocateur.

— Who called you to Nakhodka, a closed city? After all, they don’t let you in here without a call! And secondly: where could you have gotten this equipment? — I asked.

But Radchuk so masterfully feigned indignation and offense.

— You have no faith! The Lord opens doors for me and closes the eyes of the cops! — he angrily declared, and I understood that Slavik was now well trained.

After that, two months later, I was arrested anyway and spent three years in the Kolyma labor camps. After my release in 1986, I heard: Radchuk was already active in the struggle against anti‑Soviet religious emigration, taking an American, George Davidyuk, a representative of the “Assemblies of God,” around the churches where emigration sentiments were strong, where the latter would tell how hard life was in America. But George had no idea that things were worse in the camps! Now guess: who was entrusted with such matters in Soviet times? And why did Radchuk concern himself with this issue? And not only him.

The next time I met Radchuk was in the USA, where he came to visit in 1988, still under Soviet rule.

“How did you get to America?” I asked, surprised. “You’re a KGB man, you betrayed believers and, on KGB orders, fought against emigration sentiments among believers.”

But Slavik, looking at me with his clear eyes, convincingly declared that he was seeing me for the first time, and those around seemed to believe him, not me. Moreover, the old émigrés, who had little understanding of our harsh reality, admired his rhetorical demagoguery.

“I’ve been a preacher since the age of fourteen and fought the Soviet regime!” — he spins his tall tales to the Americans. Here, in America, Slavik Radchuk speaks on behalf of unregistered Pentecostals. (Author’s note: The KGB has long used this method, recruiting agents among dissidents and human rights activists. Today, the figure of a former Soviet dissident praising the KGB and Putin has become commonplace. These people frequently visit the West. —K.P.)

In 2002, Radchuk even had the honor of attending a prayer breakfast in the presence of U.S. President George Bush, along with many congressmen and senators. For what merits—surely not those of an informer?—and how could Slavik end up in their company? Who recommended him there, and what kind of tall tales did he spin to whom? And isn’t there someone behind this? Who is pushing him forward, and for what purpose? After all, if you succeed in spinning yarns that don’t sag, you can gain access to influential figures. I think this is a very interesting question for American intelligence services.

Slavik Radchuk is no figure of significance at all. He has no merits. He was neither a dissident, nor a political prisoner, nor a prisoner of faith; he was never persecuted for his faith. His life in the USSR was exactly the opposite. And he deftly uses religion for personal gain, and is quite successful at it: “Faith without money is dead.” Moreover, in the USSR he actively engaged in anti‑American activity. And now he is in the “Assemblies of God,” representing the Slavs! So the circle has closed.

Collaborators from the VSEKhB and agents planted in unregistered churches, like Slavik Radchuk, formed the backbone of the local agent network. These people entered the United States one by one, so as not to attract attention, but they operate as a close‑knit, tightly‑welded team—like a wolf pack ready to tear apart those who did not become traitors in the Soviet era.

(Author’s note: The agent‑operational tasks of the Chekist pastors appear to be the following:

Discrediting and blocking the human rights activities of former Soviet religious dissidents. Incredible but true: for the entire nearly half‑million‑strong contingent of Protestant émigrés from the former USSR there is only one human rights organization: the American‑Russian Aid Center. The organization has no budget and operates on enthusiasm. Just as it was in Soviet times.
Penetrating the highest echelons of the U.S. legislative and executive branches.
Identifying promising recruitment contingents among young believers working in institutions and companies of interest to intelligence, and organizing recruitment approaches to them. In the KGB, this line of activity is called by Russian officers “work on acquiring promising agents.” Every intelligence officer stationed abroad is supposed to engage in it. —K.P.)

At the end of the interview, I reminded Boris Perchatkin of the now quite fashionable call “not to stir up the past.” This sly slogan can be heard from figures of the Slavic emigration. The slyness of this slogan is that one can move forward without repenting for betrayal of the Lord and without condemning one’s own bowing and scraping before the godless Communists in the past.

Boris Perchatkin: Alas, this is not the past, but the present!… Why does the spiritual crisis continue in the CIS republics and there are no economic successes? Because old communist cadres are in power there. They are interested in preserving Soviet ways. However, Poland and the Baltic states are experiencing spiritual and social renewal. They are breaking with the Soviet past and its main symbol, the KGB. And in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Soviet cadres who stained themselves through cooperation with the organs of communist dictatorship are not permitted to come to power at all. That is why the socio‑economic development of these countries has gone upward.

Our Chekist pastors in America undermine the spiritual work, just as they did in Soviet times. They have not founded a single new church through personal evangelism; instead, they only travel the world like evangelist tourists and live off the backs of believers, rolling in dollars.

Such activity breeds unbelief among the flock, drains spirituality, and encourages conformism and sycophancy: did the apostles really live like this? The Chekist pastors must repent! Yes, I realize how difficult it will be for them to do so. After all, if in order to undergo training merely for a choir director in the VSEKhB (I have read that questionnaire myself)—one had to obtain approval and collect signatures from the KGB, the district party committee, and the district executive committee, then it is easy to imagine what kind of signed pledges to work for the satanic regime the pastors gave. But I call on them not to create federations and brotherhoods, but to repent, which they fear so much. Do not be afraid! Take courage, take courage, your soul will be light! And that is worth more than cheap authority and free, easy money.

Then the image of Slavic Protestants will begin to change, and only then will true evangelization begin, and, before long, spiritual expansion as well,” Boris Perchatkin noted.

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