Konstantin Preobrazhensky's book 'The KGB in the Russian Emigration'

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An Address by K. Preobrazhensky to Readers in Russia

Dear Russian readers!

At last my book “KGB in Russian Emigration” has found its way to you. This has happened thanks to the Russian All-Military Union, thanks to its faithfulness to its historical duty. Otherwise the path to Russia would have been closed to it. For we have again returned to the times of Soviet censorship.

Book by Konstantin Preobrazhensky “KGB in Russian Emigration”

Yet even here, in America, some Russian bookstores refused to sell “KGB in Russian Emigration.” They feared Moscow’s displeasure. Meanwhile the walls of those stores were hung with red flags and pennants bearing the inscription “USSR.” Unfortunately, the West is already to a large extent under the influence of Putin’s KGB empire. That empire proved to be astonishingly resourceful in foreign policy.

In 2008 the American Orthodox Publishing House of St. John of Kronstadt issued this book in English. But it is still being silenced here: America does not want to spoil relations with the Russian Federation!

I tried to publish it in some European countries, but my friends there waved their hands: it’s impossible! There Moscow’s influence is even stronger than in America!

The whole West grovels before Putin’s KGB empire, whereas it treated the much more powerful Soviet Union with contempt and ridicule. Nothing like this has ever happened in world history.
It is simply amazing how easily “Putin’s Russia” achieved this in just ten years! Its current rulers are more cunning than the Soviet ones. Alongside oil blackmail they masterfully exploit the weaknesses and prejudices of the West: its gullibility and misplaced gentlemanliness, political correctness and tolerance, softness and love of comfort, inability to overcome life’s difficulties.

One would think a Russian patriot should rejoice at the growing influence of the RF, but my heart is not in it. For the current influence of the RF is based on falsehood. It boomerangs against Russia.
Now the West no longer defends our dissidents. It is no longer our helper or defender. It would be only half the trouble if it had sold itself for our oil. But no: very many people in the West believe Putin’s propaganda; they think that the Russian people have thrown off the yoke of communism and joined the West.

Yet Russia is returning to Soviet times. How hard it is to feel deprived of all rights in one’s own native country! The Chekists will never give up state power, and there is no one to take it anyway: our feeble opposition is thoroughly penetrated by FSB influence.
In this favorable climate, the Lubyanka no longer doubted that it would succeed in boarding the Russian Church Abroad in 2007. Indeed, the entire Russian emigration had been prepared for this.

But on the eve of that event a multitude of revealing publications appeared in various countries, among them my book “KGB in Russian Emigration.” Very many Russian émigrés around the world have had their eyes opened. And the long-awaited “unification” did not take place. About one third of the parishes refused to come under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate. The Russian Church Abroad has been preserved…
Still, the liquidation of its greater part inspired the Lubyanka. The Kremlin’s foreign policy became even more aggressive, while at home persecution fell upon the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church.

And all the same this book has not been forgiven me. And not only in Moscow!
– It has brought you many friends, but even more enemies, – my like-minded associates, old White émigrés, informed me.
Both of these I feel in America every day. But why haven’t they killed me, as they did Sasha Litvinenko?

I decided to ask my American lawyer friend about this question. He is a member of our Church and therefore understands everything. He answered my question thus:
– If they kill you, people will read your books and understand that you were right. But as long as you are alive, they can silence you and put spokes in your wheels!..
Which is what I feel at every step here.

Take heart then in spirit, dear Russian readers! Heavy trials await us all. Set an example of personal honesty and faith in all the temptations that the triumphant forces of evil here create for you.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake!..

Konstantin Preobrazhensky, November 25, 2010.

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Book by Konstantin Preobrazhensky “KGB in Russian Emigration”

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Interview with Konstantin Preobrazhensky by Subdeacon Nathanael Kapner in 2007

Retired KGB Colonel, independent publicist, layman of ROCOR, Konstantin Preobrazhensky:
“It seems that Laurus was recruited during his trips to communist Czechoslovakia”
The Liberty Publishing house has released the book “The KGB in Russian Immigration.” This is the first book to be written on such a topic. We offer to your attention an interview with the author of the book, retired KGB Colonel Konstantin Preobrazhensky, conducted by Subdeacon Nathanael Kapner in the USA.
Subdeacon Nathanael Kapner: Can you briefly tell us about your book “The KGB in Russian Immigration?”
Konstantin Preobrazhensky: Now that Putin has eliminated all opposition in Russia, he wants to become the tsar of all Russians living abroad. His KGB officers, following his instructions, intend to play on the nationalist feelings of Russian people and recruit them to work as a “fifth column” that will promote Russian interests in the countries where they reside. This book describes in great detail and with many particulars how this happens.

• Does your book discuss the approaching unification of the Russian Church Abroad and the Moscow Patriarchate?
• Yes, of course. Chapter 2 is called “Operation Russian Church Abroad.” In this chapter, I talk about how the KGB is conducting an extensive intelligence operation to merge the Russian Church Abroad with the KGB-controlled Moscow Patriarchate…
  Putin’s goal is to make the ROCOR church buildings the property of the Kremlin. Thus, Putin will turn all ROCOR property into outposts of Russian state interests in America and other Western countries.
• Does your book tell about the leaders of ROCOR who are actively working toward unification with the Moscow Patriarchate?
• Yes. First of all, I recount that Metropolitan Laurus (Shkurla) has calmly, step by step, been surrendering ROCOR to the Moscow Patriarchate over several years. It seems that Laurus was recruited in the 1970s during his trips to communist Czechoslovakia during the Cold War. Laurus made these trips in order to visit his brother, a well-known leader of the Communist Party.
  How could Laurus so easily obtain a visa to Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, when that country was a satellite of communist Russia? At that time, only those with close ties to the KGB could do that.
  I also say that Archbishop Mark of Berlin, the main driving force that pushed Laurus to unite with the Moscow Patriarchate, is with a very high degree of probability working for the KGB. Many do not know that priest Vasily Fonchenkov, who lives in Austria, is a close friend of Mark of Berlin. Vasily Fonchenkov is a KGB agent operating under the code name “Friend.” I know this from the “Mitrokhin” KGB archive, which mentions many clergymen working for the KGB and their code names.
• Does Putin believe in God?
• No, he “puts on a show” of being Orthodox in order to win the sympathies of Russians abroad, as well as the peoples of the Western countries where they reside. But in reality, Putin is vengeful, cruel, and merciless. Two recent contract killings testify to that. (…)
• Are you now afraid for your own life?
• Of course I am afraid. But that is the price I am willing to pay to tell the truth about Putin and his deeds—especially about his activities regarding ROCOR, the Church that I love and worry about. While most of Putin’s critics are atheists, I am not. I believe in God and I believe that He will protect me. Besides, I do not meet with anyone from the Russian Federation, I do not meet with official representatives of the Russian embassy. And I am careful about where I eat, with whom I eat, what I eat, and I do not smoke.
• Will you leave ROCOR if the unification takes place on May 17 of this year?
• Yes. But I am still fighting for this unification not to happen. There is still a chance that this union will not take place. I cannot make public everything I know right now, but I can say something. Laurus has the chance to lose a large portion of his flock if he carries this unpopular union through to the end.

PREFACE TO THE PRINT EDITION

Three years ago, I had to move to the USA, where I received political asylum. In Moscow, they were already beginning to put pressure on me for my exposé articles and books about the KGB published in the nineties. With the professional intuition of an intelligence officer, I sensed a grave danger. After all, as soon as Putin came to power, he began to crack down on Chekist dissidents who had dared to criticize their native agency.
Having merged into the milieu of Russian émigrés in America, I was struck by how unceremoniously Putin’s intelligence operates among them. It is trying to merge the Russian Church Abroad with the Moscow Patriarchate, which is run by KGB agents and completely controlled by the state. In this way, the Kremlin subjugates the Russian emigration, turning it into an instrument of pressure on the West, just as foreign communists were in Soviet times. A threat of recruitment by the Lubyanka agency hangs over every Russian émigré.
I felt sorry for my new brethren, and to help them I decided to write this book. It will help protect against recruitment, and will tell how to recognize an intelligence officer. Some of its chapters, published in the press, have already caused an espionage scandal in Moscow.
Russian émigrés themselves, priests and laypeople from all over the world, helped me to write this book. They supplied me with unique exposé material that had been waiting for its hour.
Thank you to them.
Konstantin Preobrazhensky, 2007

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Preobrazhensky Konstantin Georgievich. Russian. Born in 1953 in Mos­cow to a military family.
After graduating from secondary school in 1970, he entered the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University, from which he graduated in 1976. In 1975–76 he interned in To­kyo at Tokai University.
In 1976–91 he served in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB of the USSR.
In 1980–85 he was a TASS correspondent in Tokyo.
In 1985 he was forced to leave Japan as a result of a spy scan­dal.
His last position in the KGB was referent to the head of scientific and technical in­telligence for China work. Author of the books:
“The KGB in the Russian Emigration” Washington, 2007.
“The KGB in Japan” Moscow, 2000.
“The Spy Who Loved Japan” Tokyo, 1994.
“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 “A Very New Old Pagoda,” writ­ten by the author at age 22, were included by the Leningrad Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the academic anthology “Soviet Writers on Japan,” Leningrad, 1987.
Since 2003 he has been living in the USA.

WHEN WILL PUTIN BE JUDGED?

K. Preobrazhensky’s book “The KGB in the Russian Emigration” was already ready for print­ing when a scandal erupted over the poisoning of former FSB Colonel A. Litvinenko, who lived in London. The Liberty publishing house asked the au­thor to write a few lines on this matter.

My many years of service in the KGB, and later my struggle against it, sharpened my sense of danger. So a couple of weeks ago, when I stopped receiving emails from Alexander Litvinenko, a feeling of alarm stirred in my soul. Soon afterward, news came of his poisoning and death.

His letters had been arriving almost every day. They contained his articles scourging the Putin regime, accounts from like-minded people, and even beautiful English-language poems written by his teenage son.

We were friends, though we had never met in person. When Sasha’s book Blowing Up Russia, co-authored with Y. Felshtinsky, was published in 2002, Moscow-based BBC correspondents came to me with a perplexed question: could everything described in it really be happening in a normal democratic state—the kind of country some emigrants still consider Russia to be?

“Alas, it’s all true!” I confirmed, knowing by then that it had been the FSB, and not any terrorists, who blew up apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999. My admission spread around the world.

As I later learned from Litvinenko, Vladimir Bukovsky reacted to it with these words: “Our ranks are growing! Soon this Preobrazhensky will find himself in the West…”

That is exactly what happened. My persecution flared up with new intensity. Sensing mortal danger, I flew to the United States. Litvinenko immediately called me here and thanked me for my support. We talked for several hours—two Chekist lieutenant-colonels with difficult fates. That was how our friendship began.

When I served in intelligence, we spoke little about poisons. And not because the subject was classified. It was simply that scientific and technical intelligence, to which I belonged, dealt with industrial espionage, not the liquidation of political opponents. Besides, there are many other ways to kill people or exert influence on them. For example, when a Soviet intelligence officer defected to the Americans here in the US, the KGB rezident would gather all his officers at the embassy in Washington and instruct them to run the traitor down with their car if they saw him crossing the street or even walking along the sidewalk.

Far more common were psychotropic substances that loosened the tongue. They were used to test the sincerity of foreign agents. They were called “truth serum.” Sometimes the use of this serum led to curious incidents.

In the late 1980s, the chief of our Eastern Department, Viktor Papushin, went on assignment to Burma to check up on a local Chinese agent. But while northern Chinese are strong and tall like Russians, southern Chinese are of slender build. However, the KGB chemists, as usual, either did not know this or it was kept secret from them. So they gave Papushin a standard Russian dose of the “truth serum.” He discreetly slipped it into the Chinese man’s tea during a friendly dinner. But the next morning, the Chinese man showed up at Colonel Papushin’s hotel room and cried out:

“Yesterday I had dinner with you, and today my legs are going numb! What is the meaning of this?!”

White with fear, the portly Papushin rushed to the airport, bought a ticket for the first available flight, and flew away. Fortunately, the population of Burma lives in a state of constant nirvana, but it is terrible to imagine the espionage scandal, tinged with criminality, that would have erupted had this happened in the West!

I came by all this information accidentally, in fragments. Because in the KGB, you were not allowed to ask about anything. By asking a question, you fell under suspicion. That is how I learned the dramatic story of a young officer in our “T” Directorate whose wife died of cancer; he swore to find a means of fighting it. And it seems he did—after all, many scientists work in scientific and technical intelligence. But this remedy was not made available to millions; on the contrary, it was classified. Once, he came into our office to see one of his friends, and from there he called Admiral Usatov, the deputy chief of the entire intelligence service, on the operational communications line. In a joyful voice, he reported that he was developing a “military application” for his drug. And what might that be? Healing our soldiers from cancer? But such patients are not yet drafted into the army. So, most likely, the military application consisted of infecting undesirable persons with cancer.

And once, while waiting in line to see the doctor at the intelligence service’s clinic, I struck up a conversation with a female officer. Red eczema spots covered her face.

“This is because I have to examine potent substances under a microscope!” she complained.

It was forbidden to ask questions. But could such substances really be found here, in this sacred place visited by the head of state? As it turns out, they could.

Within the Information Department of our “T” Directorate, there was also a medical-biological section—after all, this directorate also engaged in medical espionage. And while other departments mainly received written reports from intelligence officers and details of secret mechanisms, here, tightly sealed little jars arrived from all over the world.

A newly assigned officer once took one of these jars out of a package and was about to put it in the refrigerator.

“Don’t touch it with your bare hands—you know it’s from Africa!” his comrades warned him.

But this new officer had previously served in a provincial district party committee and, like all party functionaries, was poorly educated. He dismissed his colleagues’ warnings as intellectual chatter and grabbed the jar, after which he fell ill with leukemia. And why would scientific and technical intelligence even need residencies in Africa? There are no advanced technologies there! But there is plenty of raw material for poisons.

However, we Soviet intelligence officers did not think much about this, because we knew that poisons, for us, had temporarily become a thing of the past. They were characteristic of the Stalin era, when the opinion of the West was of no interest to our country. Brezhnev’s leadership, on the other hand, was concerned about the prestige of the Soviet Union in the eyes of the international community and therefore made little use of poisons. But now Putin has returned to them as one of the many elements of Stalinism being restored in Russia.

Putin no longer fears the West, just as his idol Stalin did not fear the West. If Stalin could cripple the West with a nuclear strike, Putin is capable of cutting off its oil pipeline. All Western leaders are Putin’s friends. They are all in his pocket.

When the FSB recently killed Anna Politkovskaya, Putin was on a visit to Germany. At a press conference, journalists asked him about Politkovskaya’s murder. In his usual mocking and boorish manner, Putin expressed himself to the effect that, “well, she got what she deserved.” Just imagine if Blair or Bush had spoken that way about one of their own journalists—killed while carrying out her professional duty, and a woman at that. Public opinion would have hounded them out of the world. But Putin is forgiven everything. Even Angela Merkel modestly lowered her eyes instead of cutting Putin short. The gas pipeline evidently seemed dearer to her. Putin, in turn, assessed the favorable climate for the next political assassination.

Shortly before his poisoning, Alexander Litvinenko received British citizenship. After that, my telephone went bad. It became harder for me to reach my Moscow friends; the sound quality dropped. This did not surprise me in the least. The KGB is irritated when its former officers accept Western citizenship. And the Chekists know about our friendship from the press and, most likely, also from tapping our telephone conversations between London and Washington.

Why did Putin decide to poison a subject of the British Crown in her own capital? London, after all, is not Chechnya, where anything can be done to people. Scotland Yard, having taken up the investigation, will inevitably uncover the hand of the Russian “special services.” And no one will be able to order them to close the case, as often happens in Russia. But what position will Putin’s friend Blair take? What will be more important to him—the gas pipeline or public opinion? In short, it is high time for us to unite with the Soviet church!

I. THE TREACHEROUS CITY OF KITEZH

1. FROM DZERZHINSKY TO PUTIN

Tucked away in central Moscow, not far from Lubyanka, lies quiet Varsonoftyevsky Lane. When you step into it, it’s as if you’re returning to the past. On the left rise tenement houses from the beginning of the last century, and on the right — the gloomy gray building of the KGB polyclinic and several old buildings belonging to the Ministry of Internal Affairs motor pool. In the 1920s, right here, in the subsequently demolished Varsonoftyevsky Monastery, was one of the first Soviet concentration camps. In it, the VChK mowed down the estates of Tsarist Russia with machine guns.
In the 1990s, I used to love bringing foreign journalists here, arranging secret tours for them “Through Chekist Moscow.” But under Putin, this became unsafe, and I moved to the United States.
But back then, in the distant year 1971, as a first-year student at Moscow University, I came to the KGB polyclinic to see a dentist. As a general’s son, I had this privilege — a highly dubious one, actually, because the doctors there worked poorly, lazily. However, no patient risked making remarks, because all the female doctors were the wives and daughters of high-ranking officials. And so today, instead of seeing patients, they crowded around a plump little old man, sprawled out in the dental chair, listening to his tales of Chekist exploits. Flattered by the universal attention, he clearly had no intention of leaving.
“I also took part in Operation Trust! I hope you’ve heard of it?” he said in a pleased voice, and everyone around gasped in admiration. I shuddered too: after all, a film under that very title had just played on the country’s screens to immense success. With unexpected force, I felt that the past lives among us.
“Did you see how the young man twitched?” the old man grinned, without turning toward me. It seemed he could observe even with his back.
Operation Trust was a grandiose provocation. Under this name operated a fictitious White Guard organization created by the Chekists. It drew former White officers into anti-Soviet activity within the country and abroad, delivering them up for slaughter. It also revealed the readiness of many of them for agent collaboration with the Bolsheviks, against whom they had so recently fought on the fronts of the Civil War. They saw in the Bolsheviks the continuers of the imperial tradition of old Russia. I believe this delusion had the same cause as the Russian revolution itself — the departure of educated society from religion and the Church, the loss of moral bearings, the inability to distinguish God from the devil. Is it truly all the same who stands at the head of the empire — a pious anointed one of God or a gang of nihilists who deny all moral norms?
This thought was expressed most vividly by Vasily Shulgin in his book The Year 1920. He believed that “…it only seems to the Reds that they fought for the glory of the International… In reality, albeit unconsciously, they shed blood only so that the ‘God-preserved Russian Realm’ might rise again.”
Shulgin wrote about “God-preserved” precisely in that very year when the Bolsheviks were killing priests en masse, in fanatical ways, shooting up religious processions. And this was not only not concealed, but on the contrary, publicized. How did Shulgin fail to notice all this?..
Instructors at the KGB intelligence school proudly told us that Soviet intelligence, starting in the 1920s, received audio recordings of all meetings from its agents within White Guard organizations.
“And can you imagine how difficult this was in the 1920s? These days, you can place a listening device in a wall or carry a tiny tape recorder into a meeting. But back then, you needed a gramophone with a horn; recording was done onto phonograph records using a needle that could screech. Nevertheless, our agents managed all this!” they exclaimed.
Now, in the Russian emigration, entire dynasties of KGB agents have grown up. The grandfather helped Soviet intelligence abduct White generals, the son explained the charms of Soviet life to Western readers, and the grandson fights for the subordination of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia to Chekist Moscow. And all the while, they think they are helping Russia, although they are helping the communists. Even now, when it is no longer the CPSU in power, but the reborn KGB.
This agency is not at all the same thing as the CIA or the Secret Intelligence Service, as many in the West believe, but a department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. In Soviet times, the Chekists proudly called themselves the “armed detachment of the party” and received far more for it than other military personnel. Overfed and rotten, the party apparatus failed the test of strength in 1991 and vanished into oblivion, but its armed detachment survived. Their ideology, however, is shared.
And the intelligence school instructors also noted that although the Soviet Union as a whole was not ready for war, its intelligence was ready. It had collected the addresses of all figures of the anti-Soviet emigration in order to arrest them immediately after the Red Army conquered foreign cities. From which it followed that the Soviet Union was, after all, preparing to attack Europe.
The Chekists’ plans were realized in the spring of 1945. Many émigrés, however, knew about them and fled without delay as soon as the victorious army captured Prague, Berlin, Budapest.
*
Quoted from the article “KRO OGPU: People and Fates” by V. Merzlyakov in the newspaper Intelligence and Counterintelligence News, No. 24, Moscow, 1997.
In June 1941, Count Alexei Grabbe, the future Bishop Anthony, was studying in the Russian Cadet Corps in Belgrade. He told me that as soon as the Germans attacked the USSR, someone in the corps raised the cry: “We’re going to the motherland to fight Marxism!”
The boys got fired up by this vague goal. Only young Count Grabbe and two other boys, who had heard from their parents about the treachery of the Bolsheviks, refused to go. All the rest were dropped by the Germans with parachutes onto Soviet territory, where battalions of the NKVD were already waiting for them.
Thus did the Chekists manage to lure romantic youths into a trap. But why did old émigrés rush there with such readiness in the first post-war years?..
Their children told me that the decisive argument was the election of the Patriarch. This meant, they thought, that the persecution of the Church had ceased, everything had returned to normal, and one could go back. But there was no one to elect the Patriarch — Stalin appointed him. Yet no one wished to delve into these details! Additionally, many émigrés in the West lived poorly, sometimes facing discrimination. In the motherland, they hoped to find solid ground beneath their feet.
Nor was Soviet propaganda, directed by the NKVD, silent. I remember, in the Museum of Intelligence History, where outsiders are forbidden entry, I saw a poster from those years. On it, an elderly peasant woman with a wise face stretched out her arms invitingly. “Dear compatriots, come back home!” it said. And at her feet flowed a quiet little river, a sandy bank shone golden. How one wanted to bathe there after a long journey! Even I, a referent to the head of scientific and technical intelligence, was deeply moved by this scene. What then of the émigrés, exhausted by war!
And yet rumors reached them that upon arrival in the motherland, everyone was arrested and sent to camps. A group of émigrés in Harbin gathered for a council to decide whether this could be believed. And they decided it could not. Yes, someone might be arrested, if guilty before the motherland. Well, serves them right! But how could they arrest everyone?! After all, an indictment must be formulated for each, a lawyer provided. It is technically impossible! And they decided to go…
The spiritual torments of the Russian émigrés in Harbin are vividly described in Natalia Ilyina’s novel The Return. She was one of the few who escaped repression after her own return, and in Soviet literary circles, she was suspected of working for the KGB. As far as I know, Natalia Ilyina’s father was a Soviet intelligence officer, infiltrated into Harbin in the 1920s to subvert the Russian emigration.
Stalin viewed the émigrés as military opponents. He enticed them back in order to bleed the emigration dry in case of a future war. These were mass repressions carried out abroad.
The method of enticement is still used by Russian intelligence to this day. Its latest victim, in 2003, was retired Foreign Intelligence Service Colonel Alexander Zaporozhsky, who had settled in the USA shortly before. Old friends invited him to Moscow for a Chekist celebration, but right at Sheremetyevo airport, he was arrested and sentenced to 18 years. He was accused of having revealed KGB agent Robert Hanssen, deputy director of the Soviet section of the FBI intelligence division, to the Americans. I do not believe this was true, for then Zaporozhsky would not have risked appearing in Moscow. Most likely, he was arrested “for show,” to close the case and report to the authorities. This happens very often in Russian law enforcement agencies. In Russia, after all, there is no independent court, although the West believes there is.
The Chekists work in the émigré community brazenly and crudely, as if recruiting prisoners in Russian jails. Among genuine foreigners, they behave far more cautiously. Evidently, deep down, the Chekists are certain that émigrés will forgive them any blunders out of patriotic considerations.
Recently, I came across the correspondence of old émigrés concerning a Soviet intelligence officer, N., who had nested in their ranks. Even today, it is dangerous to name his name, for he is one of the pillars of the Russian emigration and may sue, although he himself appeared in the West under very strange circumstances.
At the beginning of the war, the NTS, with the help of German intelligence, sent its agent across the front line somewhere near Pskov. As usual, he disappeared, because the NKVD was usually informed of such infiltrations in advance. And in his place, an unknown young man safely crossed through the network of fortifications to the Germans, calling himself N. He said that the Chekists had seized the NTS agent, but before the arrest, the agent had managed to recruit him, ordering him to go to the Germans.
Despite such a suspicious and completely unconvincing legend, N. immediately got a job in the Gestapo, not as a freelance informer, but as a staff officer, receiving the rank of lieutenant. Russians were accepted there with great caution; even White officers were refused, but an exception was made for a young defector from the USSR with an unclear biography. This can only be explained by the work of Soviet agents and German communist underground members. Such invisible support constantly accompanied N.
Having become a Gestapo officer, he began to persecute White émigrés who fought on the German side. One of them managed to survive a concentration camp, return to France, and tell all his acquaintances about N., but this had no effect whatsoever on his position in the émigré community.
He himself, meanwhile, was busy with another matter — traveling around Italian camps of former Soviet prisoners of war. Many of them intended to remain in the West, for the camps were located in the British occupation zone. N. persuaded a detachment of 500 mountaineers to stop passing themselves off as Turks and to confess their Soviet citizenship. For this, supposedly, the British would enroll them in an anti-communist regiment, but they handed them over to the Chekists, and the mountaineers committed suicide.
Having moved to Paris, N. began to incite the French political police against the most obvious anti-Soviet figures among the White émigrés, presenting them as Moscow agents. Everyone knew that the French Communist Party, whose cells then operated legally within the police, helped him in this. Finally, one of the Russian Parisian women recognized in N. an NKVD officer she had met in pre-war Riga, and openly told him so.
“Yes, I served there and even shot people! What’s so strange about that?” N. joked it off, and again it did him absolutely no harm. Finally, a group of émigrés demanded that the leadership of the NTS investigate his biography, but met with a resolute refusal…
Moscow also helped N. with “cover operations,” publishing articles about him as a traitor and fascist lackey. Now, however, she dotes on him! Need it be said that N. is an ardent supporter of Putin, and that there are many such N.s among the émigrés?
Just as self-confidently and brazenly, almost without disguise, Russian intelligence is now taking over the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. And it is proving just as right in its impunity! Many old émigrés, in private conversations, condemn the absorption of the Church Outside of Russia by Putin’s state, but in public — they support it.
“How can I go against Russia?” they ask, spreading their hands.
After the war, Soviet intelligence succeeded in emasculating the most militant White Guard organizations, turning them from anti-Soviet into pro-Soviet, as happened with the NTS. Veterans of the surviving associations told me that the KGB often sent agents among them as well. These people presented themselves as coming from White émigré families, but their Soviet accent gave them away. Nevertheless, they infiltrated White émigré organizations and began to sow discord among everyone, in order to dampen the anti-Soviet fervor.
At times they succeeded, since the young émigrés were rather weak in behind-the-scenes intrigue, lacking experience working in Soviet institutions. Additionally, their parents taught them to help any Russian without subjecting him to an interrogation. Prying into a newcomer’s past was considered indecent in the émigré community. Yet they still squeezed out KGB agents, branding them with the nickname “podóslanny” (the sent one).
The ones sending them were the 4th Department of Directorate “K”: counterintelligence within intelligence. It neutralized the enemies of the KGB, recruiting foreign intelligence officers and rooting out traitors in its own midst. The 4th Department worked against the hostile Russian emigration.
In 1978, the head of intelligence, Kryuchkov, proposed creating another department for working with émigrés, but not within the framework of Directorate “K,” but on the scale of the entire First Chief Directorate of the KGB. It was supposed to recruit friends of the Soviet Union.
“Why is a new department needed, if we have been dealing with emigration since 1917?” wondered General Oleg Kalugin, who headed Directorate “K.”
“To expand the ranks of our supporters, to create a ‘Russian lobby’ in the West!” Kryuchkov retorted and had his way. Thus appeared the 19th Department of the FCD.
Shortly before this, Kryuchkov had visited San Francisco, where he was warmly received by Russian émigrés, and decided to thank them in this manner.
“Why does the KGB need to recruit us, if we are friends of Russia?” many émigrés ask in bewilderment.
“Because the 19th Department is pining for you!” I answer them. Now it has been expanded into a huge directorate, since Putin proclaimed work with émigrés one of the most important tasks of Russian intelligence. It is called the “EM line.”
For with the collapse of Soviet ideology, the recruitment base abroad sharply narrowed. The current Foreign Intelligence Service can no longer attract ideological supporters of the USSR and convinced communists to agent collaboration, what was called “recruitment on an ideological-political basis.” It is unable to offer the Western everyman an idea for which he would agree to risk his neck, and there is not enough money for everyone.
Although the Chekists remain communists in their hearts even now, they no longer risk proposing to a liberal Western intellectual to fight for the cause of Lenin. He will not understand them, for he is firmly convinced that Russia is done with communism. True, now the Chekists phrase the recruitment proposal differently: “Let us together fight US hegemonism!” To this, many agree.
Putin’s intelligence bets on enemies of America and patriots of Russia. It proposes that foreigners spy for Moscow out of love no longer for the Land of the Soviets, but for Russia as a state. And who in the West now harbors filial feelings for it? Only the émigrés.
They are Putin’s headache. After all, there are already several million of them, and the number will grow. This is a whole Russian state, beyond the Kremlin’s control. And what if they start criticizing their historical motherland, especially as reasons for doing so become ever more numerous?
This state is spiritually nourished by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. It too may return to denouncing falsehood and injustice in Russia. To once again raise the voice of Christian conscience, as in Soviet times.
In the Church Outside of Russia, an amazing atmosphere of Tsarist Russia, of the White Movement, has been preserved. I remember how it struck me when I first entered its church. It was as if I had plunged into a past in which I had never been. The stories of grandmothers about a wondrous pre-revolutionary life came to mind. Oh, how since childhood I had dreamed of visiting that life, that Christmas fairy tale! And now the impossible dream had come true. I sensed the aroma of that life, which had departed forever.
In Russia, this atmosphere exists nowhere. It left together with the émigrés.
That is why the Church Outside of Russia must urgently be disavowed, connected to Putin’s state machine, like the Moscow Patriarchate. The “EM” directorate is currently doing all this. It also holds congresses of foreign compatriots.
Putin enjoys speaking at them, like the patron of all Russians. Not only his own, but also those abroad, holding Western citizenship. Having crushed the Russian Federation under himself, Putin has taken on Tsarist Russia, which, as it turns out, has gone nowhere and now stretches across the most coveted countries of America and Europe. He wants to come there with the rights of a co-ruler, with the help of a co-opted Church Outside of Russia, receiving instructions from Moscow, and a hand-tamed Russian emigration, drilled by the KGB.

2. HOW TO RECOGNIZE A SPY

The Russian emigration has been flooded with agents since the Civil War. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, their numbers did not decrease, as one might expect, but grew even larger.
A huge contingent of Soviet scientists resettled in the West, and among them the number of KGB agents was always especially high. Alas, such was the way our science was built: if you didn’t get recruited, you couldn’t travel abroad or become the head of a laboratory. Only lone geniuses were allowed to remain above this, but they were under the constant surveillance of agents from among their own colleagues.
Humanities scholars most often served as agents of the ideological Fifth Directorate, identifying dissidents in their midst. When they went on foreign assignments, they placed themselves at the disposal of political intelligence. Leading figures in the natural sciences were used in industrial espionage, which was the purview of Directorate “T” of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate. Most of its departments were aimed at operating abroad, but the 3rd and 7th Departments conducted scientific and technical intelligence right at home.
Officers of the 3rd Department recruited Moscow scientists. It was they who, disguised as clerks of the Foreign Department of the Academy of Sciences, processed the travel documents of Soviet scientists, releasing them on coveted foreign assignments. The condition was a single one—recruitment. I remember how I couldn’t help laughing when I saw a list of members of a Soviet scientific delegation compiled for the head of Directorate “T”: it consisted entirely of agent code names! Even famous academicians were KGB agents.
The 7th Department of Directorate “T” recruited scientists in provincial institutes; its branches existed in the KGB of all Union republics. There was no escape anywhere.
Mass collaboration with the KGB was not only the fault but also the tragedy of Soviet scientists. They were ashamed of it and hid it. Including from the U.S. authorities, where many emigrated in the 1990s. It seemed to them that their agent work belonged to the Soviet past, which had been finished with forever. But that past has revived and returned to Russia. And now many of these scientists pick up the telephone with dread, expecting to hear the painfully familiar words: “Greetings from Ivan Petrovich!” That is how the KGB reestablishes contact with an agent. The name of one of the operational officers with whom the agent was in touch is given.
A multitude of Soviet intelligence officers settled in the West under the guise of businessmen. The foundation of their capital was that very “party gold” about which Russian journalists made noise not long ago, only to fall silent unexpectedly. These intelligence officers make money for their superiors in Moscow, patronize the Russian mafia, but they also do not forget their main work.
A good number of genuine businessmen have also gone into emigration because honest business in Russia is crushed by taxes. Yet the Russian state “plucks” them in the West as well. For this purpose, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is used.
To recruit businessmen, it devised the following method. On the street, an SVR officer approaches one of them and offers to become a spy. The businessman, of course, refuses. Then the Russian intelligence officer says with a sarcastic smile:
“Then we’ll put you on the international wanted list through Interpol! We’ll lie to them that you’re a member of the Russian mafia. Let’s see what becomes of your business!…”
And the unfortunate entrepreneur gives in. He already knows how mercilessly Russia deals with his colleagues and that Putin indeed uses Interpol in the fight against political opponents.
It has now become fashionable in Russian embassies to arrange festive receptions for Maslenitsa with pancakes, caviar, and vodka. It is hard to believe that intelligence is also behind them.
These receptions are part of an operation to seize control of the Church Abroad. At them, one can quietly lead an agent-priest into a room protected from eavesdropping, hand him a wad of tax-free cash. There intelligence officers also meet émigrés worthy of attention and invite them to restaurants.
“Where did you meet this Russian diplomat?” their colleagues at work will ask.
“At the embassy, at a church reception!” they will proudly answer.
Well, that sounds respectable, you can’t find fault with it. And it would look completely different if an intelligence officer called an émigré at home and proposed a meeting in a restaurant. That would resemble espionage.
Can it be that all these likable young people, lavishing smiles on you at an embassy reception and offering friendship, are intelligence officers? Alas, yes, because a real diplomat has no need of you. What if you have been sent by the local counterintelligence and that harms his career?
For a career diplomat, extra acquaintances are dangerous. His business is to rustle papers in the office from nine to six and then race home to the television. He may also go to a social event, but he must behave strictly according to protocol so as not to be taken for an intelligence officer. For a diplomat, that is the most terrible thing, because if a scandal-ridden intelligence officer has his own agency to stand up for him, then a diplomat who is an outsider to the service will receive no such help.
Yes, diplomats also work with the Russian emigration, but only in the general and the whole, in the form of gatherings and meetings, without getting personal. And only an intelligence officer tries to strike up a personal friendship with you. If he invites you to a restaurant outside working hours, spends his weekends on you, then you are dealing with a serviceman whose working day is not regulated. And you yourself are under recruitment development. You must break off this acquaintance as soon as possible. But how?…
After all, Putin’s intelligence works openly and brazenly. It no longer fears the West, because all its leaders are Putin’s friends. They are all in his pocket. In Soviet times, one could threaten a Chekist intelligence officer with public exposure, and he would retreat in fear, inwardly thanking you for not ruining his career.
Today, a spy scandal is nothing to him, because then Putin will simply send him to another country. It is not for nothing that he is seeking visa-free entry into Europe for “certain categories” of Russian citizens. And a scandal cannot be stirred up now anyway! No one will take an interview with you about Russian espionage. After all, Russia is an ally of the West in the fight against terrorism! Under the guise of this mythical struggle, Putin is intensifying intelligence against the West.
So how do you get rid of an annoying spy-friend? Perhaps it would be worth delicately telling him this: “I understand who you are… But I know no secrets; you are wasting your time on me. How about we forget our acquaintance?”
Of course, you will be guided by a noble patriotic desire to avoid a scandal, so as not to harm Russia’s prestige. But with those very words, you will enroll yourself as an agent! Because you will declare your readiness to keep contact with the intelligence officer secret from the authorities of your own country. And that is the main requirement made of an agent!
A jubilant report will fly to Moscow: “The subject of recruitment development ‘Émigré’ has on his own initiative declared his readiness not to disclose the fact of acquaintance with our operational officer.” And your development will proceed with doubled intensity.
Many émigrés say: “Why would Russian intelligence need me? After all, I have a peaceful profession!…”
You are needed because you are an American, an Englishman, a Frenchman. The recruitment of citizens of leading Western countries is considered a great success; it earns a promotion or a decoration. And recruiting people of Russian origin is easier than recruiting members of the native nationalities. Because they cry tears of gratitude as soon as they hear the magic words: “Help Russia!” Even though the help may not be needed by Russia at all, but by the intelligence officer’s career.
And the purpose of your recruitment can be written on paper any way you like: an agent of influence for spreading rumors in émigré circles, or a “prospective” agent. That is, your use is foreseen only in some vague future, but you can receive a reward for your recruitment right now.
After all, no one controls the intelligence service. There is no civil oversight whatsoever, and the Central Committee of the CPSU, which inspected it in Soviet days, no longer exists. But even a “phony” recruitment is dangerous for you. Because yet another defector from the KGB may pass your dossier to the West, and your own counterintelligence will take an interest in you.
However, even such a recruitment is not without use for Russia. It makes you a part of its state machine. Criticizing Putin will then no longer come so easily to you.

3. THE KGB OR THE MOTHERLAND?

Many émigrés are convinced that Russia considers them to be its own through and through solely because they are Russian. And life itself seems to confirm this: when they visit their historical homeland, they are welcomed in every possible way and praised for their Russianness.
But this happens only because they are Americans, English, French. They can provide hard currency, be used in propaganda or intelligence. Yet the Russian authorities treat Russian residents of poor countries like Tajikistan entirely differently. I heard with my own ears how a militiaman in the passport office said to them: “Where did you get the idea that you’re Russian? You’re Tajiks, because you were born there. So go back to your Tajikistan!” Only a bribe saved the situation.
The Russian authorities have a consumer attitude toward compatriots abroad. And they can be understood: if they don’t care about their own residents, why should they worry about émigrés? Every year Russia loses about a million people, but the government regards this with Olympian calm: it has more important things to do.
Now Moscow is seizing our symbolic relics. A procession of coffins of White émigré figures has been moving there, as if offering some kind of posthumous repentance before the KGB generals who now rule Russia. In this way, Putin subordinates our past, neutralizes it, repaints it in red. After all, Russia still supports the Bolsheviks. It has never equated the Whites with the Reds. The honorary title of Civil War Veteran, which confers benefits, applies only to them.
In the fall of 2005, General Anton Denikin and émigré philosopher Ivan Ilyin were reburied in Moscow’s Donskoy Monastery. Denikin is no longer a danger to the Bolsheviks. He no longer fights the Red Army; he has been laid to rest under its honor guard. And at the same time, Putin restored the red star to the cockades of Russian military caps, removing the double-headed eagle. There was no White Russia. It was always red.
What will Anton Denikin become for the new generation of Russians who have finished the simplified Putin-era school? I think, something like Marshal Zhukov. And, most importantly, they will know that it is impossible to be Russian and oppose the Russian state. It will catch up with you even after death and bring you back.
In Russia they are now building a monastery for a single icon — the Kursk Root Icon of the Mother of God — in order to draw it out of emigration as if with a powerful magnet. Here it is the sacred object of the White Movement, the main icon of the Church Abroad, the spiritual center of the Russian Diaspora, its Hodegetria, a unifying symbol.
Will it become the main icon of Russia? That is out of the question. There it will get lost among other wonderworking icons. Moscow does not need our White Guard relics. It needs us not to have them.
Because the Russia Abroad is growing! Russians are fleeing from Putin. Russia ranks first in the world in the number of its citizens who have requested political asylum in the West. That is why Putin wants to deprive us of spiritual support in advance, so that we feel unsettled, so that our souls yearn for Moscow. So that we travel there to venerate the holy places of White Russia under the television cameras of the KGB.
But it is we here who need Russian wonderworking icons! Patriarch Alexy, donate a few to us, since you have so many! But no, donations flow in only one direction.
We want to remain Russian outside the control of the Chekists. We have no time to wait for them to surrender state power. We will build the Russia Abroad ourselves, for an ice age has set in on the native land. This will be a free Russia without thieving bosses, corrupt and intimidated judges, without boorishness. The kind of Russia ours was supposed to become, but did not.

II. OPERATION “THE CHURCH ABROAD” TWO SECRETS OF ARCHBISHOP MARK
Archbishop Mark of Berlin is a key figure in the reunification of the churches. But if only someone could explain to me why.
Who authorized Archbishop Mark? Or is it a voluntary civic burden, as they used to say in Soviet times?
There is no answer. Just as there is no answer to some other biographical questions. For example, how he ended up in the West. Or why the KGB released him from arrest in 1979. This resembles the biography of Soviet Patriarch Pimen, from which the most interesting episodes were also omitted.

1. THE KGB DIDN’T RELEASE SUCH PEOPLE

In 1979, Archbishop Mark was arrested while crossing the Soviet border for bringing in anti-Soviet literature. No one knows the exact date. No one knows how long Mark was held in the KGB—whether for just one day or several. Everyone keeps mum as if they’d taken a vow of silence.

At that time, Archbishop Mark was an activist of the NTS (People’s Labor Union)—once a militant White Guard organization, later heavily infiltrated by KGB agents.

Some Russian émigrés today say: “What if the KGB just gave Archbishop Mark a scare and then let him go, God bless him?”

I assure you as a retired KGB lieutenant colonel: that could not have happened. Because importing anti-Soviet literature fell under Article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, “Anti-Soviet Agitation and Propaganda.” It was considered an especially dangerous state crime and carried a substantial prison term.

And how would the Chekists who arrested Mark have reported on their work? By saying they let him go? Where is the concrete result so valued in the KGB? Or, as they say there, the “net result”?

Besides, no one would have allowed them to let him go!

After all, any foreigner who, by fair means or foul, fell into the hands of the KGB was regarded as a fat, tasty chicken. He could be exchanged for a captured Soviet intelligence officer or used in communist propaganda.

All this was considered a major success and promised rewards for the Chekists. But if they let him go, there would be no incentives. The KGB is a military system. Every step here has to be coordinated with a dozen superiors.

They could only have let him go in exchange for an even greater reward. And that reward is given for recruiting a foreigner. It is considered the highest achievement in a Chekist’s work. His career takes off.

How to recruit arrested foreigners is taught at the KGB school in Minsk.

It is very easy to take in a naive Westerner. For this they use a “bad” and a “good” investigator. The “bad” one says:

“Well, now you’re caught! You’ve probably read Solzhenitsyn’s ‘The Gulag Archipelago’? And our camps haven’t changed since then. We’ll put you away for seven years, and order our agent network among the prisoners to rape you every day. You won’t last two months!”

But then the “good” investigator enters the conversation:

“Oh, don’t be so harsh with our friend! He’ll cooperate, won’t he?”

The foreigner, terrified to the extreme and never having encountered such treatment in his life, nods resignedly. And then the good investigator slips a piece of paper in front of him.

“Write a receipt: ‘I undertake to cooperate with the KGB’!” he says, his voice suddenly hardened.

If the foreigner refuses, the process can drag on for a long time.

They worked on Mark. He even had to spend a night in the KGB. But where—on the plank bunks of Lefortovo Prison or on the soft sheets of a safe house?

In 1979 I was already a KGB senior lieutenant, and I perfectly remember the wariness with which the KGB regarded the import of anti-Soviet literature.

Countering it was a task not only for counterintelligence, which caught people like Mark, but also for intelligence, which operated abroad.

It recruited salespeople in Russian bookshops in Western countries, forcing them to report on which Soviet citizens bought banned literature from them.

Absolutely all representatives of the foreign trade association “Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga” in Soviet trade missions were officers of the KGB political intelligence. It was they who recruited the sellers of Russian literature. And they were direct about it:

“If you inform us about your Soviet customers, we’ll conclude a contract with you at a loss to ourselves. Our state is rich.”

And when the Western entrepreneur, sometimes of Russian origin, effusively thanked them, the intelligence officers said to him in that same suddenly hardened tone:

“Write a receipt!”

After that, the trusting bookseller lived the rest of his life under the Damocles’ sword of arrest by his own country’s counterintelligence.

To re-enter the atmosphere of those years, I called a well-known human rights activist in Moscow, Sergei Grigoryants. He spent nine years in camps after being convicted under that very Article 70—“Anti-Soviet Propaganda.”

And for some reason, the KGB did not let him go, as it did Archbishop Mark. On the contrary, the FSB, the KGB’s successor, still hates the human rights activist with a sacred hatred.

At the end of the 1980s, on the wave of perestroika, Sergei Grigoryants managed to create the “Glasnost” human rights foundation. Its goal was to expose the KGB’s activities. The FSB ground its teeth at the international congresses he organized, “KGB: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow,” but could do nothing: democracy! Although even in its brief period, Sergei Grigoryants’ son was killed, and the Chekists repeatedly hinted that they had done it.

However, with Putin’s rise to power, the FSB realized its hands were untied. At the end of 2003, amid outright provocations, “Glasnost” managed to hold its last conference, “The Role of the Special Services in Governing Russia.” After that, its activities were paralyzed.

Sergei Grigoryants told me the following:

“If in the 1970s someone was found with anti-Soviet literature when entering the country, that person would be charged with anti-Soviet propaganda. Investigations of such cases fell under the KGB’s jurisdiction.

If a foreigner nevertheless had to be released for political reasons, it was done in a scandalous manner. The foreigner would be expelled from the USSR and permanently banned from obtaining an entry visa.

The fact that the KGB treated Archbishop Mark so ‘humanely’ suggests that an amicable agreement might have been reached between them.”

Recently issue No. 2741 of the newspaper “Nasha Strana” fell into my hands, in which my article “The Unequal Marriage” was also published.

In the same issue I read an article by Nikolai Kazantsev, “The Role of Solidarists in the Surrender.” The following lines struck me immensely, as a former Chekist:

“The NKVD men inserted their agents into the ranks of the NTS by various methods. One of them consisted of working on the ‘couriers’ who fell into their clutches.

In this connection, one highly significant detail in the biography of Archbishop Mark of Berlin demands serious reflection—he who now, with fanatical obsession, seeks to subordinate the Church Abroad to the Moscow Patriarchate, which is directed by KGB secret informants.

In his youth, Herr Arndt was a very active solidarist and, while still a layman, traveled to the USSR carrying NTS literature. There he was arrested. And although several of his comrades were released after a few hours of interrogation—Mark was held much longer!

It seems that if the Synod under Metropolitan Philaret had found out about this extremely suspicious episode, Mark would not have become a bishop of the Church Abroad.”

What does that mean? Does it mean that Mark did not inform his church superiors of such an important circumstance as his arrest by Soviet counterintelligence?

But that is so strange! The man was released from the KGB’s dungeons. So there is no charge, he is legally clean. Yet instead of asserting his rights, he keeps completely silent. In doing so, he plays along with his tormentors and confirms the fact of an amicable agreement with the KGB. Is this not a clear sign of recruitment?

“Where is the proof?” they will ask me.

There can be only two types—the aforementioned receipt of agent cooperation or evidence obtained by another country’s counterintelligence.

After all, even if someone were able to look at Mark’s agent file, it would not serve as proof. You won’t find real names there, only pseudonyms:

“Today Ivanov met with ‘Petrov’.”

In quotation marks—the agent’s pseudonym. Without quotation marks—the intelligence officer’s. Try to guess who is who.

Only the names of the superiors who put their resolutions are genuine. It is precisely because of them that the files of even long-unmasked agents are never shown to foreigners.

As for the receipt, a recruited foreigner can also refuse to give one. That is allowed. Then, in the recruitment report, the intelligence officer includes this phrase: “The receipt was not obtained for operational reasons.”

But the leadership does not like it. After all, in the KGB no one trusts anyone. What if there is no agent at all, and the intelligence officer simply pockets the government money? There are countless such cases. A special term was even invented for them—“dead souls.” A receipt, on the other hand, reassures the leadership.

Theoretically, Mark’s receipt can be seen. If it exists, it is kept in the archives of the 15th Department of the Foreign Intelligence Service. On the first floor of the huge building in Yasenevo, whose windows look out onto a green meadow overgrown with wildflowers in summer. True, you can’t jump out onto it—bars prevent that.

But the receipt can be copied secretly. It is filed in an envelope in the first volume of the agent file. I many times wanted to do this while reading the personal files of other agents, but I was afraid of the surveillance cameras installed in the ceiling.

Putin has certainly seen this receipt. It was brought to his office. Not in the Kremlin, but right there, in Yasenevo. On the second floor of the main building, behind an inconspicuous door reached by a red-and-green carpet runner. This used to be Andropov’s office.

Foreign counterintelligence can also prove that a particular citizen of its country secretly cooperates with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. But only if he breaks the law. For example, by stealing secret documents.

But there are different kinds of agents!

The most important among them are informants. Risking their lives, they steal state secrets of their own country and pass them to Russia. Why—that is a separate discussion in each case.

But there are other categories of agents as well. For example, mail drop operators. Their duties are much simpler—receive a letter and take it where they are told, without asking questions.

Some agents are disparagingly called auxiliary. They, of course, do not know this themselves. They are recruited to carry out individual intelligence assignments—from a phone call to a murder.

And then there are agents of influence, who influence their country’s policy in a direction beneficial to Russia. As a rule, however, they do not break the law.

If Archbishop Mark really is a KGB agent, then he belongs precisely to this category. Does his activity correspond to the foreign policy goals of the Putin administration? Absolutely, yes. It helps to subordinate the Church Abroad to Moscow, so that the FSB can take control of the Russian emigration.

And does it correspond to his personal aims? After all, newspapers write that Mark wants to become the head of the German Metropolia of the Moscow Patriarchate.

But I fear that won’t happen. Because Archbishop Mark, however cunning he may be, does not know the KGB’s main rule.

That rule dictates getting rid of agents who have completed their mission. They know too much, and therefore become dangerous. Now it is not they who depend on the intelligence service, but the service, on the contrary, trembles in anticipation that the former agents might blurt out something extra.

Suffice it to recall the fate of the English intelligence officer Kim Philby. In his youth, in the 1930s, he was recruited by Soviet intelligence. He believed in the communist idea, but had never been to the USSR. Thirty years later, after his cover was blown, he came there for the first time, escaping his former colleagues. Seeing the grim reality of the Khrushchevite 1960s, he realized that the KGB had been leading him by the nose all his life.

Philby took to drink. And died in oblivion.

I cannot help remembering the unlucky American naval lieutenant, Souter. He also managed to flee to Moscow after working for some time as a Soviet spy.

As soon as he plunged into Soviet life, he became an ardent opponent of communism. Accustomed to American freedom of speech, he imparted his dangerous views to young intelligence officers at the Red Banner KGB Institute, where he taught English.

The KGB leadership became seriously alarmed and transferred him to the senior leadership courses, where the audience was considered more ideologically steadfast.

But Souter did not fall silent there either. Then it was announced that he had committed suicide by suffocating on the exhaust fumes of his own car. A note was found nearby: “I ask to be buried in the uniform of a KGB major”—which was done with great pomp. All this, however, seems very strange.

It appears that the truth-loving Souter was simply disposed of.

With its vast experience, Russian intelligence subtly takes into account the changeability and ingratitude of human nature. Yes, today Mark is fully satisfied, but what about tomorrow? What if he takes offense at Moscow and gives an interview that turns the Berlin rezident of the Foreign Intelligence Service gray?

Such things have happened even in the thoroughly filtered Moscow Patriarchate! At the end of the 1980s, at the height of Gorbachev’s perestroika, Metropolitan Chrysostom publicly announced that he was a KGB agent.

But he is a Soviet man, who went through the harsh school of survival in a totalitarian state. What, then, can be expected from Archbishop Mark, accustomed to Western freedom of speech?

So, why create problems for yourself in the future? Wouldn’t it be simpler to appoint another Archbishop of Berlin and Germany to the position of German metropolitan? His name is Feofan, and he has been appointed by the Moscow Patriarchate. It cannot be ruled out that it deliberately created this parallel post in Germany. In order always to have a replacement for Mark. A reliable double, like the cosmonauts have.

And Russian metropolitans have no need for a new competitor, especially a foreigner. They may well begin to murmur, saying: “What, couldn’t they find a Russian?” In the atmosphere of nationalism and xenophobia that has gripped Russia, both the authorities and the flock will heed such a protest.

And if Mark is retired, let him give as many interviews as he likes. No one will listen to him. They’ll say he’s just offended.

2. ARCHBISHOP MARK — A CITIZEN OF RUSSIA?

In the biography of this archbishop, there is another secret, worse than the first.
No one knows how Mark ended up in the West. Nikolai Kazantsev in his article “The Role of the Solidarists in the Capitulation” (“Our Country”, No. 2741) writes about it this way: “Moreover, he, a product of Communist Germany, volunteered for its army, where he became an officer. I wonder what branch of the military he served in?”
Let us forgive the author his ignorance of the subtleties of our military service. In none of the socialist countries could one become an officer after military service. For that, one had to graduate from a military academy or complete a civilian institute with a military department.
All this is also very strange. As is the emphasis on the voluntary nature of Mark’s enlistment for soldier’s service.
After all, the GDR had universal military conscription! Willingly or not, everyone was obliged to go to the soldiers’ barracks after school. I know that Archbishop Mark himself constantly harps on this voluntariness, which had no legal significance whatsoever.
But at the same time, no one knows how he got to the West. They say that Mark moved to the FRG in 1963. But it was impossible to do this legally, especially for an officer. If Mark had fled, he would have been considered a traitor. But then he would never have risked going to the USSR under threat of immediate arrest.
But he did risk it. And even an arrest took place. But not for that. And he was immediately released. Believe me, an old Chekist: all this is very strange. That does not happen.
For clarification, I turned to General Oleg Kalugin. He confirmed that Archbishop Mark could not have legally left the GDR in those years except with the assistance of state security agencies.
Young people from socialist countries were not allowed to go to the West under any circumstances. Even more so for officers.
In the context of the GDR at that time, an officer could go to the West only as an intelligence agent.
Here, many things fall into place. The strange conferment of an officer’s rank without graduating from a military academy may be explained by training at an intelligence school, which also awarded the rank of lieutenant. The soldier’s service, most likely, is eliminated, becoming the same intelligence school.
In that case, Mark’s arrest in the USSR in 1979 also takes on new versions. There are two of them.
The arrest was the result of ordinary Soviet confusion, of which there was enough even in the KGB. When Mark declared his affiliation with the GDR intelligence (or ‘friends’ as we said in the KGB), they checked him against the records. An expedited check took exactly about two days — after all, the papers had to be sorted through by hand! Having sorted it out, they quietly released Mark and agreed to forget about this episode.
Mark was arrested demonstratively, wanting to show that the Soviet authorities did not like him. This was practiced with respect to fake religious dissidents. Some of them themselves asked the KGB to put them in prison in order to acquire a martyr’s halo.
But if we assume that Archbishop Mark is a veteran of the East German Stasi intelligence, then the question immediately arises: which country’s citizen is he now? If the FRG is only a cover?
As far as I know, many GDR intelligence officers were granted Soviet citizenship after the collapse of socialism there. What if Archbishop Mark is now a citizen of Russia as well?
That completely changes the picture.

SPY CHURCH

1. THE CONFESSION OF ALEXY II

I wonder why our episcopate so stubbornly refuses to repent of its agent collaboration with the KGB. After all, Metropolitan Chrysostom did so, and nothing happened to him; no one dismissed him. Why then do the rest remain silent?
I used to think it was from fear of new exposures. If you admit to working for the KGB, then your membership in the CPSU might also come to light. How would the Church Abroad react to that?
General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee L. Brezhnev, Patriarch Pimen (Izvekov), Metropolitan Alexy (Ridiger), and Chief Rabbi of the Moscow Choral Synagogue Yakov Fishman celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917.
Yes, the top leadership of the Patriarchate were members of the CPSU, and this fact is still kept secret. They say that the first communist was Patriarch Pimen, a senior officer of the Red Army who joined the party at the front.
And there could be no believing officers there, not even non-party ones. Moreover, they were all obliged to fight against religion. This means that the future patriarch renounced his faith.
High-ranking officials of the CPSU Central Committee, who once revealed this secret to me as an intelligence officer, used to practice a crude joke. Having caught a person in bishop’s vestments at a Kremlin reception or a peace conference, they would slap him on the shoulder and loudly ask: “Tell me, father, in which pocket of your cassock do you carry your party card?” The hierarch would smile sheepishly but not object: after all, everyone around was part of the circle!..
And yet they remain silent for another reason. The famous KGB General Oleg Kalugin recently told me about it. In 1990, he became a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and was the first to start exposing agents in cassocks.
The Patriarchate became seriously alarmed. They feared not individual exposures, but the revelation of the main secret. The secret that the Patriarchate had been deliberately created by Stalin to be a communicating vessel with the Lubyanka, just like other Soviet institutions. No one would ever think of identifying KGB agents in our Foreign Ministry, where everyone is an agent. But if you accept that the same is true in the Patriarchate, what then becomes of its holiness?
Soon General Kalugin was invited to a private dinner with the patriarch, where Alexy II said the following: “Well, why do you keep harping on this topic? Yes, we collaborated with the organs, and I did as well. But that was the struggle for peace, for disarmament! What is so bad about that?”…
To pass off informing for the KGB as a struggle for peace — no one had ever come up with that before! Besides, we never had such a line of work as the struggle for peace. These words are propaganda nonsense. On the contrary, we struggled for war! As a result of our activity, military conflicts erupted one after another — in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola. This led to the incredible bloating of the military-industrial complex, of which intelligence was a part. The country could not bear this burden, and the USSR collapsed.
Alexy II made it clear that he does not consider his informing for the KGB something shameful and has absolutely no intention of repenting of it. On the contrary, he is proud of it, just as Putin is now proud of his work in the KGB during the Soviet years. The absence of such repentance builds a bridge to the continuation of the Patriarchate’s collaboration with the KGB in our days. And why is the high-born nobleman Ridiger so devoted to Soviet power? What firmly bound them together?
In the now distant year 1996, journalistic fate brought me to a communist rally in Novocherkassk. Presidential elections were underway in the country, and a serious rival to Yeltsin was the head of the CPRF, Zyuganov. He came seeking support in this Cossack region, where his predecessors in the 1920s had carried out “decossackization” and mass shootings. But now pro-communist sentiments are strong there.

Also speaking at the rally was an elderly priest of the local cathedral, Father Vladimir. He too called for voting for Zyuganov, which caused great astonishment among foreign journalists. But Father Vladimir firmly declared: “In order for us to study at the Theological Seminary, we were recalled from the front! We are still grateful to the Communist Party for this! Therefore we perceived our study at the seminary as a front-line assignment. We have called ourselves non-party communists all our lives!”
Patriarch Alexy (Simansky) and Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich)
And what agency had the right to recall people from the front, especially in a critical year of the war, when even the sick and infirm were swept into the army? Only the NKVD. And to whom could it give this unheard‑of privilege, which saved from death? Only to reliable and proven agents.
Stalin created the Patriarchate through the hands of the Lubyanka! That agency became its mother. The genetic link with the KGB is as much a family trait of the Moscow Patriarchate as the connection with the White Movement is for the Church Abroad.

2. THE LUBYANKA CHIROTONY

The Patriarchate’s informing for the KGB is a serious argument against union with it for the Church Abroad: what if it continues to this day? Who can guarantee that it is not happening now?
Supporters of unification try in every way to minimize this informing and reduce it to isolated cases: supposedly, only some priests became KGB agents against the background of a generally independent church life. Here in the West, people swallow this bait easily.
The rector of St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Washington, Archpriest Victor Potapov, writes in the August issue of the magazine “Parish Life”: “Within the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, heated debates are going on about her future paths and about reunification with the Moscow Patriarchate. In connection with this, one hears sharp attacks against certain hierarchs and church figures. Objections sometimes boil down to the fact that one cannot unite with the church in Russia because there some clergymen are corrupted and collaborated with the KGB and have not repented of this. Can the holiness of the Church be darkened by the shortcomings of individual people?”
Not at all individual, dear Father Victor! The individual ones are precisely those who escaped recruitment. But absolutely all bishops and the overwhelming majority of priests collaborated with the KGB. For the Church was considered a hostile environment and had to be controlled through agents. Even the very mechanism of consecrating bishops allowed only agents there.

Bishops were part of the nomenklatura of the Central Committee of the CPSU, so each one had to be approved by the Ideological Department. And which agency sent documents there for important personnel appointments? Right, the KGB. A background report on the prospective bishop was prepared by the Fifth Directorate, which oversaw the Church in general, and by the intelligence service if he had ever been abroad. Each report ended with one phrase: “Has been cooperating since such-and-such year.”

It was precisely this phrase that mattered most to the CPSU Central Committee! It testified that the future bishop was not only loyal to Soviet power but was also on its hook: after all, compromising materials were sure to exist on every agent! This meant that no dissident antics could be expected from such a bishop. The validity of this rule is confirmed even today: all the bishops keep a sacred vow of silence.

As for a candidate’s church merits, not only were they of no interest to the Ideological Department, but they were actually hostile to it. The fewer the merits, the better. After that, the Central Committee authorized the consecration. But can it really be considered one?…

However, the matter did not end with the consecration. After it, one had to obtain registration as a bishop with the Council for Religious Affairs. This was granted after a confidential conversation with its chairman, Kuroyedov, a KGB lieutenant general.

He liked to come for lunch at the generals’ dining room at Lubyanka. Upon entering, he would show everyone his pass to the Kremlin dining room and say: “See? I could have lunch with Brezhnev himself! But I prefer to do it with my own guys!”

The generals would respond with a welcoming buzz and push back their chairs, each inviting Kuroyedov to their table. Often his lunchtime conversation partner was my father, deputy head of the KGB Border Troops. In the evenings, he would retell to me amazing stories from church life, which was completely closed at the time. And all the bishops blessed by Kuroyedov still hold their posts and are even trying to absorb the Church Abroad.

All of them still remain in the agent network. They would have been expelled from it for compromise if they had made a public confession, but there was none. This means their files still lie in the safes of Lubyanka. And not in the archive, but in the operational offices.

Our hierarchs not only snitched on each other to the KGB but also engaged in espionage. First and foremost — among Russian émigrés. Even metropolitans did not disdain it. For example, Metropolitan Irenaeus of Vienna and Austria recruited in 1969 an American military intelligence officer, George Trofimoff, who is now serving a life sentence in the United States.

For about thirty years, the KGB residency in Israel was housed in the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission of the Moscow Patriarchate. There were no other Soviet institutions in the country after the severance of diplomatic relations in the mid‑1960s. On the staff of the Mission, intelligence officers worked as priests and laypeople, while the “genuine” clergy served as agents under their contact. The secretary of the Mission, KGB Major Lomov, fled to the West at the end of the eighties, and the Patriarchate did everything to avoid publicity.

3. THE CHURCH OF SPECIAL PURPOSE

Priests in epaulettes are not that rare in the Patriarchate. I met one on the very first day of my work at KGB intelligence headquarters in Yasenevo in 1977.
I remember being struck by its enormous corridors, almost a kilometer long, bustling with hundreds of men in civilian suits and ties. Their jackets were neatly buttoned, hair parted exactly in the middle, and their entire slicked-down appearance was meant to testify to supreme loyalty. But then an officer with a big ginger beard marched past me. What an defiant appearance, utterly impermissible for a Communist Chekist?!
“Don’t worry, he grew the beard on orders from the chief of intelligence!” a friend working in personnel explained with a laugh. “Right now this operative is interning in the foreign department of the Patriarchate, and soon he’s leaving on an overseas assignment”…
He concealed precisely where, following the KGB’s rule of secrecy, but instead told me about a professor he knew at the Red Banner KGB Institute (now the Foreign Intelligence Academy), in whose wardrobe a cassock hung next to a colonel’s uniform. When Patriarch Pimen traveled abroad, the professor-colonel donned the cassock and joined his entourage.
In those same years, the young chief of foreign counterintelligence, General Oleg Kalugin, came to inspect the KGB residency in East Berlin. One day Colonel Ivan Nazarovich Gumeniuk approached him and invited him to stop by the Russian cathedral in the evening.
“I’ll be officiating there,” Colonel Gumeniuk explained.
He did it so professionally that parishioners coming to him for a blessing were convinced they were kissing the hand of Father Ioann, not Colonel Gumeniuk.
“Man, you’re just like a real one!” General Kalugin told him admiringly the next morning at the residency.
Such “just like real” priests were part of the staff of Moscow Patriarchate churches all over the world, but in friendly Arab countries they practically made up the entire clergy. The local Muslim counterintelligence services turned a blind eye to this, because the Chekist priests worked against the West.
The fates of these men did not always turn out happily. The Lord subjected them to severe trials. In some cases their children began to believe in God, something considered unacceptable in a Chekist family; in others they themselves came to know God’s existence. Their Chekist colleagues immediately sniffed this out and put an end to their careers. I have told in detail about the lot of these would-be priests from intelligence in my book The KGB in Japan (Moscow, Tsentrpoligraf, 2000).
Well, and now—where are these would-be priests? Do any remain among the clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate?
The common view in the West is that they evaporated. But why? Has a single Russian institution carried out a lustration of Chekists? Alas, it was crushed by a powerful Communist lobby. Even more so, there was no lustration whatsoever in the Patriarchate, today’s chief eulogist of the Soviet past.
I know of only one such attempt. It took place at the newspaper Izvestia right after the failure of the August 1991 putsch. The editor-in-chief at the time, Igor Golembiovsky, summoned to his office all the Chekists who worked at his paper as journalists and offered them the choice of resigning either from Izvestia or from the KGB. He no longer intended to tolerate dual employment.
Golembiovsky was not forgiven this liberty, and he is persecuted in Putin’s Russia. Alexy II, on the contrary, enjoys the zenith of glory. From which one may conclude that he did not expel Chekists from his ranks.
The Patriarchate’s collaboration with the KGB, alas, has not remained in the past, as many in the West think; under Putin it is even on the rise. The reason for this is the new type of social order that Putin has managed to create in Russia: a state of the special services. Domestic policy and propaganda are in the hands of the FSB, foreign affairs in those of the SVR. All other agencies are subordinate to them. Taking part in today’s Russian political life makes it simply impossible to avoid contact with intelligence and counterintelligence. The Patriarchate willingly uses its Soviet experience in this.
For instance, Putin’s flirtation with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il is kept in terrible secrecy so the Americans won’t find out about them, yet the Patriarchate is privy to them and takes a very active part.
Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR I. Käbin awards Metropolitan Alexy (Ridiger) of Tallinn the Order of Friendship of Peoples, 1979.
In Pyongyang in August 2006, a patriarchal church of the Life-Giving Trinity was opened, even though religion is banned in that country and faith is considered a political crime. But Kim Jong-il made an exception for his Russian friend. Construction was funded mainly with Russian money, but Kim Jong-il also kindly allocated about a million dollars from the budget of his impoverished country. That gave him the right to be called “the Founder of this temple.”
“Let us pray to the Lord for the founder of this temple!” the Russian deacon will now proclaim at every service. Making a North Korean dictator an object of religious veneration—no foreign president has yet pulled this off! The appearance of a Russian church in the capital of the DPRK, whose first stone was laid in June 2003, is a sign of Kim Jong-il’s enormous personal friendship with Putin, in defiance of the Americans.
Kim was so kind that on this occasion he even founded a new state institution—the Orthodox Committee of the DPRK, although there has not been a single Orthodox believer in that country for more than half a century.
A delegation from this phony Committee recently traveled to Moscow. In the Patriarchate it visited only one department besides the Department of External Church Relations. Which one would you think? The Department for Cooperation with the Armed Forces and Law Enforcement! What could they possibly have wanted there? It seems that Kim Jong-il views the Patriarchate as a militarized organization meant for carrying out special tasks.
The appearance of a Russian church in Pyongyang creates a channel for secret contacts between the two leaders, beyond international oversight. After all, no one will know what messages silent priests in black cassocks will bring to Pyongyang.
This channel is especially valuable because all the others may be officially questioned by the Americans. For example, Bush might ask Putin at one of their meetings:

• Tell me, friend Vladimir, aren’t you having behind-the-scenes dalliances with Kim Jong-il?..
  And Putin will be forced to explain himself, because all this can be verified by intelligence means. But when it comes to church contacts, Putin can rightfully answer:
• Now that is none of your business, buddy! Faith is a sacred thing!.. And Bush will have nothing to say, because his government truly does not interfere in church affairs.
  And now students from the DPRK are studying at the Moscow Theological Academy. One wonders where they came from? After all, if they were real believers they would be imprisoned. The answer suggests itself—only from the Ministry of State Security. Kim Jong-il is setting up an Orthodox church in his country according to the Stalinist model, by Chekist hands.
  But all officers from friendly special services accredited in Russia are under the unobtrusive patronage of the Foreign Intelligence Service. They are invited to holiday homes, to closed meetings, banquets. I wonder, when they leave the Lavra for Moscow, do North Korean seminarians say to their spiritual father: “Bless me, father, for a trip to the SVR Reception House in Kolpachny Lane”?
  The Patriarchate was also “exposed” in the spy scandal caused by the murder of former Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev by Russian intelligence agents in Qatar. In February 2004, they blew up the car Yandarbiyev was getting into as he left a mosque, after which they were arrested.
  One of them turned out to be the local GRU resident. Diplomatic immunity kept him from staying in prison, and he was released. But the other two remained there for a long time. They immediately admitted their GRU affiliation, becoming living proof that Russia engages in international terrorism—the very thing it so fervently urges others to fight. Putin was furious. He made titanic efforts to rescue the luckless terrorists, but all was in vain.
  And then a stream of Russian representatives rushed to them. Numerous officials under various pretexts tried to get into the cell, but the Qatari authorities let no one in for security reasons. And they were right: hired killers are supposed to be liquidated! All it takes is to spray a tiny ampoule of colorless substance hidden under a fingernail in the cell. And—no person, no problem, as Comrade Stalin used to say.
  In desperation, Moscow decided to use its most reliable assistant for delicate assignments—the Patriarchate. Bishop Feofan of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz rushed to the cell. Allegedly, the officers languishing there were such deeply religious people that they would crawl on all fours just to hear the bishop’s admonition. And precisely Feofan, known for his contacts with intelligence. Prior to this he served for many years in the Department of External Church Relations, where he was the closest aide to Metropolitan Kirill, who appears in Chekist files as agent “Mikhailov.”
  The Qataris did not let him in either. Perhaps they knew that the Patriarchate is used in espionage. And the faith of our intelligence officers is highly dubious! After all, Yandarbiyev’s young son was also in the car they blew up. A believing Christian would hardly dare to kill an innocent child. Even the SR terrorists who blew up Moscow Governor-General Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich in 1905 initially refused the assassination several times, seeing that he was traveling with children. Yet our would-be terrorists had previously gone through Chechnya, where the GRU tortures and kills people. Precisely because they were appointed as the perpetrators, it is reasonable to assume that they did all this with their own hands. In what happened to them, one can rather see the punishing hand of God. And Bishop Feofan would do better to enter the prisons where thousands of people in Russia are unjustly condemned!
  The Moscow Patriarchate is astonishingly merciful toward murderers who carry out the president’s behest. Recently Alexy II awarded the Order of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir to Colonel Alexander Pavlichenko of the Belarusian special services, the known organizer of “death squads.” They eliminate political opponents of President Lukashenko. Patriarchal Exarch in Belarus Metropolitan Filaret personally petitioned for the award, citing the fact that a church had been built in the garrison under Pavlichenko’s command. Such a pretext clearly did not match the high status of the order.
  Novaya Gazeta reported this in an article titled “Church of Special Purpose” in August 2004. “Awarding Dmitry Pavlichenko the Order of St. Vladimir defies any logical explanation. Because there’s no need to go to Belarus for churches built on military unit grounds and even in prisons—there are more than enough of those in Russia itself. Yet for some

HOSTILE ABSORPTION

In Russia, the attitude toward the Church Abroad is hostile. Its parishes are fiercely driven out of the country, even as its hierarchs are warmly received. Here in the West, for some reason, people try not to notice this contradiction, but churchly Moscow makes no secret of its hostility.
“On the territory of Russia, the actions of ROCOR are schismatic and uncanonical in nature, and therefore its churches may not be visited by parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church,” Hieromonk Adrian (Pashin) explains to the faithful on the website Pravoslavie.ru.
And that website is published by Sretensky Monastery, whose abbot, Archimandrite Tikhon, is the most ardent negotiator with the Church Abroad regarding reunification. Yet he recently published a book extolling Patriarch Sergius—the very man the Church Abroad so vehemently rejects. The Patriarchate, for its part, named Archimandrite Tikhon’s work the best Orthodox book of the year, thereby just as openly revealing its own attitude toward Patriarch Sergius. It simply boggles the mind!..
But many priests of the Russian Church Abroad, for some reason, regard these strange contradictions with humor, as if they were mere misunderstandings or “excesses,” as they used to say in Stalin’s time. As if they are nothing compared to the enormity of the political tasks before us. When you point this out to the priests, they merely give a condescending smile.

ECUMENISM AND INTELLIGENCE

Russian intelligence accompanies each of its major political actions with a wave of lies in the world press. This is created by Disinformation Service “A”. It fabricates false talking points and injects them into the press through bribed journalists and its agents. Honest people then reproduce them in their articles and interviews, taking them at face value.
At a meeting of the World Council of Churches, Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev) conducts an ecumenical “worship service,” “assisted” by the WCC president, the pagan Priyanka Mendis from Sri Lanka
The intelligence service’s handwriting can be recognized only by the frequent repetition of talking points. After all, Service “A” pays extra for each repeat.
In the operation “Foreign Church,” there are two such talking points.
The Moscow Patriarchate is ready to break with ecumenism and is about to leave the World Council of Churches. Only a small step remains. The question of the impending withdrawal is already widely discussed in parishes.
Putin needs “his own” patriarch. Stalin had Sergius, Khrushchev had Alexy, Brezhnev had Pimen, and Putin wants to see Metropolitan Lavr as patriarch. But for this, the Russian Church Abroad must first be joined to the Moscow Patriarchate.
Both these talking points are false. Upon careful examination, this house of cards collapses.
Myth No. 1. Russia is breaking with ecumenism.
Both talking points are aimed at Russian emigrants who sincerely love their historical homeland but do not know many of its unwritten laws.

Alas, this issue is not a matter of public interest among us. If only because the majority of our believers are elderly village women, who do not even know a word like “ecumenism.” They rely entirely on the opinion of their priests.
And those sometimes admit with a sigh that they were forced to join the World Council of Churches by the KGB. But for what purpose — they do not explain.
But the Soviet era seems to have ended, yet Russia is still there. Therefore, the current intelligence service also needs this membership. But for what?
The answer is simple: in order to influence Western political figures through recruited foreign clergy.
After all, in many countries among devout parishioners there are parliamentarians, defense ministers, and intelligence chiefs. Why shouldn’t Russian intelligence try to recruit them through one of the bishops or cardinals?
This idea is quite realistic. Only first, these hierarchs themselves must be made our agents. This is what the entire huge mission of the Moscow Patriarchate is engaged in under the leadership of the Geneva intelligence residency.
A huge gathering of clergy saves Russian intelligence officers from having to spend money on travel. And the pretext for acquaintance is quite convincing: they say, I am interested in your activities in the Council of Churches. Tell me about yourself, give an interview!
And a foreign bishop may well agree to a heartfelt conversation with a Russian friend: after all, preaching is his pastoral duty.
And that friend hands over an expensive gift. Or, conversely, shows a photograph whose publication in newspapers would ruin the bishop’s career. After that, recruitment goes like clockwork.
Sometimes it happens differently. The foreign bishop himself recruits our intelligence officer and converts him to his faith. Such cases have occurred. In recruitment, the one who is spiritually stronger wins.
And it is not at all easy to establish initial contact with the same bishop in his home country. If a Russian journalist, suddenly inflamed with interest in religion, asks for an appointment there, the bishop’s reaction will be wary: “Why are you interested in me specifically, and not one of my other colleagues?”
Representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate in the WCC also have a lot of work. The Foreign Intelligence Service uses them as facilitators for contacts with foreign clergy.
“This is my friend from the Russian embassy! A very worthy person! I wholeheartedly recommend him to you!” — the Moscow priest says in a convincing deep bass, introducing a barely familiar Russian diplomat with darting eyes to a Lutheran pastor. And the pastor, raised in the hothouse conditions of bourgeois democracy, firmly believes it.
After all, no one has ever deceived him: in the West, lying is considered a sign of bad manners. The pastor simply has not had time to learn to recognize it.
But in Russia, lying is the norm of life. Soviet people were brought up in an atmosphere of universal lies. It is harder to deceive us.
The pastor smiles with flattery upon hearing the proposal to continue the conversation in a restaurant. There he blushes in embarrassment at the sight of an excessively luxurious array of dishes.
And, naturally, agrees to fulfill the small request of his interlocutor not to call each other on the phone, but to set the time and place of the next meeting right now.
And this is the first sign of espionage. The intelligence officer knows that Swiss counterintelligence is listening to his phone and tries to hide his acquaintance with the pastor from them.
However, everything that the Russian intelligence officer has just done with the pastor is also within the capabilities of a spiritual person from the Moscow Patriarchate. If, of course, he is an experienced KGB agent. In Soviet times, only such people were sent to the World Council of Churches.
But the clergy is getting younger. After 1991, mass recruitment of them was no longer carried out. Does this hinder the work of our intelligence now?
No, because it knows that any priest working abroad must carry out all the assignments of the Russian embassy. After all, the Moscow Patriarchate has taken a course of supporting the state in everything. Even in things that do not agree with the Christian conscience.
And therefore, even without being recruited, a Moscow priest will do everything as ordered by a Russian intelligence officer.
On his instructions, he will personally invite the pastor to restaurants and start conversations on sensitive topics there, looking for weak spots. Then more risky assignments will follow — for example, getting the pastor drunk and taking his fingerprints. Or his keys.
Thus, gradually, a young Russian priest himself becomes an intelligence agent. Without hesitation, he signs a cooperation pledge and takes the politically literate pseudonym “Patriot.” And the embassy intelligence officer receives a double bonus from Moscow.
It is no coincidence that Solzhenitsyn called the World Council of Churches “considerably Sovietized.” This is the result of many years of joint work by the KGB and the Moscow Patriarchate.
Its participation in the ecumenical movement is nothing more than a screen for Russian intelligence.
Work on the World Council of Churches is the most important task of the “PR” line (political intelligence) of the Geneva residency of the Foreign Intelligence Service. A dozen and a half officers are busy with it alone. Each one has a multi-year plan and a replacement in Moscow, dreaming of spending four happy years in Switzerland.
What, should we now be told to give all this up in order to please the Russian Church Abroad? Wouldn’t it be easier to go another way: to dissolve it into the Moscow Patriarchate, as the Chekists once dissolved the White General Kutepov in a bathtub of acid? And kidnapping him in Paris was helped by the same White generals!
And the Russian clergy also does not object to trips to Switzerland.
It is hard for people living in the West to imagine the poignant joy that the thought of going abroad brings to Russians. And to live there for several years in comfortable conditions seems to many to be an unheard-of happiness.
Imagine yourself as a priest of a rural church in the Russian North, where in spring and autumn there is impassable mud, and only children come to church because their parents drink heavily. And suddenly one day the bishop hints to you that there is an opportunity to take a trip to Switzerland, with your whole family, for several years… And returning from there to the rural wilderness is not at all necessary.
Here, tears of happiness will flow down your haggard face.
Let us also remember that many priests have sons who have followed in their fathers’ footsteps. Work in the World Council of Churches will not hinder their career at all.
Therefore, the Moscow Patriarchate will continue to assure the Church Abroad with a serious look of its impending withdrawal from the World Council of Churches, without taking a single step toward it.
For the same reason, I think, it will very soon restore relations with the Episcopal Church, broken off at the end of 2003 due to the election of a homosexual bishop.
The Episcopal Church is needed by the intelligence service! It is too strong in the USA, there are too many American generals, major politicians, secret scientists, and other persons of recruitment interest among its adherents.
And there are plenty of homosexual bishops in the Moscow Patriarchate as well. Only they keep quiet about it. Homosexuality here is allegorically called “Nicodemus’s sin.”
After all, for 70 years the KGB promoted precisely homosexuals to the highest church posts. Even Patriarch Sergius, they say, was one too. Constantly under the sword of Damocles of exposure, homosexuals were easily manageable.
At the same time, the KGB practiced false accusations of homosexuality against recalcitrant bishops. Here is what Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) writes in his book “The Russian Church in the Face of the Dominant Evil,” telling about the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1971: “One bishop remarked about Archbishop Paul of Novgorod: ‘The whole fault of Vladyka Paul is that he attracts young people, and so they want to stick pederasty on him. They will ruin Vladyka Paul, they will ruin him. Once someone has taken a direct stand, they will ruin him!’ And so it happened. They removed him, and nothing more is known about him.”
Homosexual scandals are played out in the Moscow Patriarchate only when they come from outside. The hero of such a scandal, which happened in 1999, was Bishop Nikon of Yekaterinburg.
The Patriarchate ignored numerous priests’ complaints for a long time but could not pretend not to notice the loud newspaper outcries. By a decision of the Holy Synod, he was sent “into retirement” at the Pskov-Pechersky Monastery.
But already in 2002, Bishop Nikon appeared in Moscow as the rector of the church in Veshnyaki, one of the richest in the capital. He was saved by the influential homosexual lobby of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Myth No. 2. A foreigner can become patriarch. The seeds of this lie fall on fertile ground. After all, the Kremlin really has not yet settled on a new patriarch!
To Metropolitan Kirill, who has scattered all his competitors and recently became the sole candidate for the patriarchal throne, the Kremlin treats without enthusiasm. I think the reasons for this lie far from questions of faith. Most likely, it is about a struggle of power clans.
In Metropolitan Kirill’s place, the Kremlin would like to see another metropolitan — Methodius. They say that he is not even a KGB agent like all the other Soviet bishops, but a career officer of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense. Which, however, does not prevent him from being a KGB agent, since the army is also under its control.
In our country, such people are called “deep cover officers.” There are few of them in the Moscow Patriarchate, but they are very influential because they have an agent network among the clergy in their contacts.
For Putin, Metropolitan Methodius is one of his own. When alone with him, one can communicate without ceremony as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
But here’s the trouble — Metropolitan Kirill managed to send Methodius far off to Kazakhstan. Although he was respected by believers for managing to raise the Voronezh-Lipetsk diocese from ruins.
Now Metropolitan Kirill’s entourage spreads rumors that, having become patriarch, he will sharply raise the Church’s prestige and make it equal to the state. That is, he will repeat the experiment of Patriarch Nikon, who ruled in the 17th century. Even then it ended in failure. In Putin’s Russia, where the FSB controls everything, it will be nipped in the bud.
And Metropolitan Kirill has not been noticed for anything like this before. On the contrary, something else is characteristic of him: a neglect of church administration in favor of business, to which his heart clearly leans.
And one should not overestimate the degree of the Kremlin’s displeasure with Metropolitan Kirill. After all, he is also a KGB agent! His code name is “Mikhailov.” This means that Putin knows his entire private life. He is completely defenseless.
In the safes of Lubyanka, many folders with compromising documents against Metropolitan Kirill are stored. They are supposed to have such on every agent. This is required by KGB rules.
If the agent is a crystal-clear honest person, drawn into cooperation by deceit, compromising materials are created deliberately. They are either fabricated by forcing other agents to write false denunciations, or they draw the honest person into dubious situations, compel him to commit crimes. Then they lay out the evidence before him and say: “Now you’re on our hook! Don’t even think of acting up!”
In KGB language, this is called “consolidation of cooperation.” The point about the necessity of obtaining ever new “consolidating materials” is in the annual work plan with each agent.
And for Metropolitan Kirill, there is no need to invent any compromising materials! His civil marriage, which everyone knows about, is enough.
And as for secular law, if Kirill takes a wrong step, they will do to him the same as they did to Khodorkovsky: lock him up for financial machinations. Russian laws are arranged so that any entrepreneur can always be held criminally liable.
And obliging Russian journalists will joyfully exclaim: “You see, everyone is equal before Russian law! Even metropolitans!”
This is the essence of Putin’s “selective justice.”
Therefore, Metropolitan Kirill, having become patriarch, will toe the line and carry out all the Kremlin’s instructions.
The election of the talented businessman Kirill to the patriarchal throne will cause deep disappointment among Russians. A significant part of them will switch to other Orthodox churches, including the Russian Church Abroad. That is why Metropolitan Kirill has already joined the ranks of its furious persecutors. Yes, yes, the very same Church Abroad with which the Moscow Patriarchate so dreams of uniting!
In March 2004, Kirill summoned Bishop Eutychius of Ishim and Siberia, who belongs to the Church Abroad, to Moscow and gave him an ultimatum — either become a patriarchal vicar or get out of Russia.
How strangely this agrees with the principle of separation of Church and state!
And by the way, who issues or cancels visas in our country? The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they will tell me. Well, that is so, but only after a check conducted by the FSB. It is the FSB, not the Foreign Ministry, that actually issues visas. It was with this that Metropolitan Kirill threatened Bishop Eutychius.
The FSB is the recreated KGB of the Soviet era. After the democratic reforms of the nineties, the Chekists managed to bring everything back. The current FSB includes all the directorates of the Soviet KGB, except two: the First, the intelligence one, and the Ninth, which guarded members of the Politburo.
But they also maintain close ties with the FSB. They still share the life-support organs of the Soviet KGB — clinics and hospitals, rest homes, the pension system, and most importantly — the operational communication telephones — OC. Through them, Chekists can talk about anything without fear of being overheard. They all consider Chekist Day, celebrated on December 20, their common professional holiday.
The former First Chief Directorate of the KGB is now called the Foreign Intelligence Service. It is successfully conducting the operation “Foreign Church.”
And the former Ninth Directorate is now called the Federal Protective Service. It guards Putin, a number of other high dignitaries, and — the Patriarch of All Rus’…
“Well, what is so bad about that?” they may object to me, “the president cares about the life of Alexis II…”
Oh no, the presidential guard is not intended for that at all! It is assigned according to a different criterion — the degree of access of the protected person to state secrets. The more he knows them, the higher the probability that he could be kidnapped and all the secrets extracted through torture or psychotropic drugs.
It is not the life of the protected person, but the secrets that he knows — that is the true concern of the presidential guard.
And life? The same guard can also take it away.
When a dignitary falls out of favor, his arrest is also entrusted to the guards.
How heavy it must be to feel how hands that a minute ago carefully supported you by the elbow, treacherously and roughly grab you from behind and shove you into a car.
The creator of Soviet spacecraft, Academician Sergei Korolev, spent many years in Stalin’s camps. Having again achieved fame, he confessed to friends that he could not get used to his guards. “Going to bed, I expect when they will burst into the bedroom and shout: ‘Get ready, scum!’.”
He had already had to experience all this once.
The main thing for the guard is to prevent the leak of secrets. Therefore, it listens to the conversations of the protected person and watches him day and night. It is impossible to get rid of them.
No, I will tell you, protection from the KGB is not such great happiness at all!
Patriarch Alexis II is guarded at the highest level, like the head of the most secret service. Because he knows the main thing — the secrets of the Kremlin court, sometimes vile and terrible. Any one of these secrets could cause an international scandal.
The Kremlin also handles the patriarch’s medical care. Alexis II is treated in the Kremlin Hospital together with the highest state officials. And indeed, they treat excellently there. But here’s the trouble: treating high-ranking patients is not the only task of the Kremlin Hospital doctors. There is another one — their elimination on orders from above.
This side of hospital life is shrouded in darkness. God alone knows how many people’s commissars and party secretaries ended their earthly existence in the experienced hands of the Kremlin Hospital doctors! It is known only about Frunze, Stalin’s People’s Commissar of Defense. He was given an unnecessary operation on Stalin’s orders.
Spiritual persons were also eliminated there. After all, the top of the Moscow Patriarchate was also attached to the Kremlin Hospital back in Stalin’s times. It is unclear what value the life of hierarchs represented for the communist authorities, who openly set the goal of destroying religion and the church.
Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) writes in his book “The Russian Church in the Face of the Dominant Evil”: “The Holy Synod pronounced excommunication and anathematized all ‘former Orthodox’ who openly blasphemed the Name of God. Then, at the beginning of 1963, Patriarch Alexis delivered a courageous speech at a meeting of the All-Union Congress in the Kremlin, in which he quite clearly hinted at the oppression of the Church by the government.
For these two acts, Metropolitan Nicholas (Yarushevich) of Krutitsy paid with his life. This was the first victim of the Khrushchev persecution.”
Metropolitan Nicholas was also dealt with in the Kremlin Hospital, by inducing a heart attack.
So does Alexis II, undoubtedly knowing all this, not find the strength in himself to refuse the Kremlin Hospital? It turns out, he does not. And is it fitting for him to use any guard at all? Would it not be better to rely on the Will of God?
And what if Metropolitan Lavr, if he becomes patriarch, does not like being shadowed day and night by Putin’s guard?
What if he decides to use the services of private doctors instead of obediently lying down on the operating table in the Kremlin Hospital?
And most importantly — what if he refuses to call Russians to vote for Putin, as Alexis II recently did?
What do you order to do with Metropolitan Lavr if he refers to the fact that the Church here is separated from the state?
In KGB language, such people are called “unmanageable.” But Metropolitan Kirill, on the contrary, is quite manageable. And therefore — it is better that he be patriarch. The rest is a matter of technique!

“THE ‘FRIEND’ OF ARCHBISHOP MARK

1. THE MITROKHIN ARCHIVE EXPOSES

‘Friend’ is the agent pseudonym of Archpriest Vasily Fonchenkov, a priest of the Russian Church Abroad. In the 1970s, he helped the KGB put anti-communist priests in prison. Now this does not prevent him from remaining in the clergy of the Church Abroad. The KGB feels so confident in it that it does not consider it necessary to hide its agents. ‘Friend’ serves in Salzburg.

Don’t believe me? I refer you to the book ‘The Mitrokhin Archive,’ co-authored with Professor Christopher Andrew. Vasily Mitrokhin, head of the KGB archival department, managed to smuggle a multitude of secret documents to the West in 1992. For decades, risking his life, he secretly copied them and carried them out of the KGB building. Mitrokhin’s face is familiar to me; I encountered him in the corridors of the Lubyanka. He gave the impression of a stern, orthodox communist. Apparently, such a stolid appearance saved him from suspicion.

Mitrokhin’s high professionalism allows us not to limit ourselves to labeling the priest as an agent without evidence. Here are the facts he presents.

“The Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights tried to protect itself from KGB infiltration, partly by keeping its numbers small, never exceeding four people. However, in May 1979, Fr. Vasily Fonchenkov joined it, and the Committee was unaware that nine years earlier he had been recruited by the Fifth Directorate of the KGB as an agent under the pseudonym ‘Friend.’ As noted in his personal file, he ‘was used in developing persons of operational interest (in the Orthodox Church), carried out his assignments conscientiously, and showed initiative.’ Since 1972, Fonchenkov had worked as a teacher at the Theological Academy in Zagorsk, while simultaneously holding a position in the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate. In 1976–77, he was the priest of the Church of St. Sergius in East Berlin and publisher of Stimme der Orthodoxie (‘Voice of Orthodoxy’), the journal of the Central European Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate. His contacts in foreign churches could well have recommended agent ‘Friend’ to unsuspecting colleagues in the Christian Committee.

The KGB’s campaign to suppress open dissidence in the Orthodox Church peaked in 1979–80, marked by a wave of arrests of leading dissidents — chief among them Fr. Gleb Yakunin — who were subsequently imprisoned or persuaded to publicly repent. Possibly to save Fonchenkov from exposure, he was summoned to the KGB for interrogation, after which he issued a statement that he had been threatened with arrest, although no charges were ever brought against him.” (Here and further cited from Christopher Andrew’s book “The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB.”)

The mere fact that Fr. Vasily Fonchenkov worked in the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate allows us to speak of his agent collaboration with the KGB. After all, this department is uncanonical. It was created by the Soviet KGB to use external church contacts for its own purposes. The true bosses of this department do not sit in the Patriarchate at all, but in a small pink building near the ‘Prospekt Vernadskogo’ metro station. There is the RT Directorate of the Foreign Intelligence Service. This acronym stands for ‘razvedka s territorii Rossii’ — intelligence from the territory of Russia. The RT Directorate also sends Russian scientists and public figures on spy assignments. Some of its officers work under the guise of laypeople in the Department of External Church Relations.

‘But maybe not everyone there is an agent?’ you might ask. Alas, all are. Because anyone could inadvertently witness secret intelligence operations and other violations of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. The KGB can only protect itself from exposure if it firmly ties each person to a pledge of cooperation.

Further, the author of ‘The Sword and the Shield’ notes that in 1979 the KGB succeeded in persuading Priest Dmitri Dudko to publicly repent, but it was impossible to achieve the same from Fr. Gleb Yakunin. Therefore, he writes, ‘only Yakunin’s wife was allowed to attend the trial. Other family members, friends, as well as Western journalists, were not admitted… Among those denied access was Fonchenkov. Possibly this was done to save him from exposure.’

On the official church website ortho-rus.ru, this period of Fonchenkov’s biography is presented in a different tone: ‘In 1973 he was ordained a priest, in 1976–77 he was the rector of the Sergius Church in Karlshorst (Berlin) and editor of the journal Stimme der Orthodoxie. In 1979 he joined the Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights, and is currently under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. He serves in Salzburg.’ Here his joining the Committee looks like some kind of merit, like editing a journal in German. Unwary people might form the opinion that Fonchenkov is still a member of this Committee, courageously fighting for the rights of believers. It would never occur to them that he joined it to destroy it and to put its members in prison.

2. TESTIMONY OF FR. GLEB YAKUNIN

‘And what will the main protagonist of the events described, Gleb Yakunin himself, say?’ I thought, and dialed his Moscow number.

‘I took the appearance of Fr. Vasily Fonchenkov in our Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights calmly,’ recounted Fr. Gleb. ‘After all, we had known each other for a long time, and I knew he was anti-Soviet in outlook. I was not bothered by the fact that he was the son of an old Bolshevik, after whom a street in Moscow is named. In those years, children of dyed-in-the-wool Stalinists often became opponents of the regime. True, now I understand that I underestimated the ease with which he communicated with us and debated. Contacts with dissidents were dangerous for Soviet people. However, I had no firm certainty that Vasily Fonchenkov was a KGB agent, even though he taught at the Theological Academy, which was under the strictest control of the “organs”. The KGB department that handled it was located opposite the entrance to the Lavra, right behind the cinema.’

* Andrew, Christopher and Mitrokhin, Vasili The Sword and the Shield. The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. New York, Basic Books, 1999, pp. 495-496.
“I bear no grudge against Fr. Vasily and am even grateful to him that, by a cautious hint, he warned me of the impending arrest,” stressed Fr. Gleb. “Besides, he did not testify against me. For some reason, he and several other people were spared from interrogation, although logically they should have been interrogated. That is how the KGB protects its agents. After I was imprisoned, Fonchenkov took a leading position in the Committee, but the following year his activity was wound down. We learned that the Politburo had adopted a resolution to root out the entire dissident movement through repressions, and we decided not to risk people.”
“After my release from prison I did not meet with Fr. Vasily Fonchenkov, but he phoned me after the Mitrokhin book came out. His voice was alarmed. He asserted that everything written in it was disinformation, and asked if I wanted to issue a refutation. I refused, explaining that I considered the Mitrokhin book a serious source of information. He asked if I was the initiator of its publication. I replied that I was not, and even thanked Fr. Vasily for letting me know about my impending arrest. He did not like that, and stated that he had never warned me about anything. Incidentally, he called me from Moscow. He had to return there after some priests wrote indignant letters to Metropolitan Laurus. But when the small uproar died down, Vasily Fonchenkov returned to the West again,” Fr. Gleb smiled bitterly.

3. TWO OF A KIND?

“Friend” is far from alone. It is simply through him that the Lord sends us understanding. The KGB long ago stuffed the Russian Church Abroad with “friends.” It has no shortage of priests with similar biographies. At first, all of them worked in the Chekist External Church Relations Department of the Patriarchate. Then, for unclear reasons — most likely on KGB assignment — they transferred to the Church Abroad, and this transfer was accompanied neither by repentance nor by a break with Moscow. What its point was then is unclear. And here, in the Church Abroad, these priests openly work for Moscow. But for some reason this surprises no one around them.
It is easy to imagine what would have happened to the Soviet spy Stirlitz, hero of the famous film “Seventeen Moments of Spring,” if he had walked the corridors of the Gestapo and agitated for Stalin. But in the Russian Church Abroad this somehow passes. So powerful are the KGB’s positions in it.
Preparing to absorb the Russian Church Abroad, the KGB closely monitors the mood in the emigrant milieu. Now it is concerned that talk has begun there about recruitment of priests. Therefore the KGB has tossed out yet another disinformation thesis: “Yes, all Soviet priests who worked abroad were KGB agents! So what? That’s how times were!” I recently heard this fresh thought from several Russian emigrants at once.
Its falsity lies in the fact that it pushes the agent work into the past. Say, the Soviet regime collapsed, and it ended too. But the KGB did not collapse! And now it has seized all state power.
All those who were agents in the Soviet era remain so to this day. There is only one way to stop being a KGB agent: to renounce publicly, in print, and then the KGB itself will expel you for being exposed. Such cases have occurred, even among priests. But “Friend” did not do this.
I have not seen his personal agent file, but I am sure that it contains the following entry: “Used in cases that ended in the arrest and conviction of operational development targets.” This means that he is a combat agent, not like some rural priest who, for appearances, signals to the KGB that other priests drink. “Friend” can be used in acute operations. And in this sense it is not at all accidental that he is in Austria.
After all, this country is very important for Russian intelligence. It has a soft counterintelligence regime, because neutral Austria is of no interest to foreign intelligence services. Therefore the KGB has long been accustomed to carrying out risky operations here, for which in other countries one could get a rap on the knuckles.
As a rule, these are meetings with especially valuable agents who are hanging by a thread in their own countries — generals, parliamentarians, classified scientists.
Here is one of them announces to his workmates:
I have a hankering to go to Austria! To ancient Salzburg! To walk, you know, in Mozart’s footsteps!…
Well, go then, that’s a fine thing! — his comrades nod. A couple of days later our hero meanders through the old streets of Salzburg and at a pre-arranged spot meets a Russian diplomat. But what if the diplomat is being watched? No, better to drop in on a picturesque Russian church! And at the end of a polite conversation with the priest, hand him an envelope with a roll of film. No counterintelligence would dare to poke its nose into a church: faith is a holy thing!
Fr. Vasily Fonchenkov is the right hand of Archbishop Mark. Can the latter really know nothing about Mitrokhin’s book? Or, on the contrary, does the mention in it serve as a positive characteristic for him? After all, the biography of Mark himself is full of omissions, just like that of an illegal intelligence officer. It is unclear how he, a native of the GDR and an officer of its army, moved to the West in the 1960s, for it was impossible to do so legally. In the 1970s, the future archbishop was detained in Moscow for importing anti-Soviet literature, but the KGB soon quietly released him, although by law this was impossible. I have analyzed all these inconsistencies in the article “Two Secrets of Archbishop Mark.” It can be found on the Internet.
There I also read that the Emperor Nicholas II appeared to Fr. Vasily Fonchenkov in a dream. I wonder what he said to him? “Why are you, friend, serving the Cheka that killed me?”

METROPOLITAN LAURUS AND THE CHEKISTS

1. A DARK DEPENDENCY

With what money was the podvorye of the Jordanville monastery in the Moscow region built? When you ask Russian emigrants in America this question, their jaws drop: they have no idea about any podvorye at all. Some, however, have heard something — either about it or about Metropolitan Laurus’s luxurious dacha near Moscow.

Meanwhile, the podvorye has a precise address: the settlement of Velyaminovo in the Istra district of Moscow region. This is a most prestigious dacha area in the Novorizhskoye direction, where outsiders are not allowed. Here live high-ranking embezzling officials and wealthy Russian entrepreneurs, many of whom, as is known, have mafia roots. Next to the Jordanville podvorye rises the palace of a vodka king.

The podvorye occupies a spacious three-story mansion with a mansard and a beautiful house church, painted by Archbishop Alipy. According to experts, its cost clearly exceeds one million dollars, especially considering bribes to local authorities, so widespread in Russia.

The podvorye also has a telephone, known to few. So when the monk of the Russian Church Abroad, Nicholas Savinov, picked up the receiver, he was very courteous. He explained that the podvorye was built in the year 2000, but for now it operates illegally, as a private house. For a blessing for a full-fledged interview, he advised contacting Metropolitan Laurus.

Some private house, from which they redirect you to America, which in Russia is considered more and more hostile with each passing day. And they refer you to Metropolitan Laurus, although he is not listed as the owner: the house, as I found out, is registered to a group of other clergy of the Russian Church Abroad.

The existence of a foreign podvorye under the Moscow Patriarchate presupposes concelebration with it. According to the rules of the Department for External Church Relations, only the superior of the podvorye is sent from abroad, while Russian priests serve there. But the Russian Church Abroad has no Eucharistic communion with the Patriarchate! And the podvorye was built over five years ago. Did someone really throw money to the wind?..

Not hoping for luck, I called Metropolitan Laurus in Jordanville. And I was connected! That day, an American monk who did not know Russian and, apparently, had not read my articles about the KGB’s work in the Russian Church Abroad was on phone duty. If he had been replaced by one of the Russian monks openly working for Moscow, I would not have been able to speak with Laurus. In what happened, I saw God’s providence.

At first, Metropolitan Laurus was good-natured.

“The podvorye has not yet been opened,” he said.

“When will it open?”

“When we come to an agreement.”

“And when did the podvorye appear in its current form?” I asked.

“Several years ago,” Laurus replied.

“Will it be officially opened after the establishment of Eucharistic communion with the Moscow Patriarchate?” I asked.
“Maybe later,” Lavr explained. “We need people there. Possibly the question of the metochion will be discussed at the bilateral commission…”
But when I asked him to explain whether the existence of the metochion was in accordance with canonical rules, Lavr became wary.
“Why do you need this?” he asked again. I honestly answered that it was for an article.
“That is not to be written about!” Lavr snapped, and the interview ended.
The last time I received such an answer was at the headquarters of the Russian communists. I called there to ask in which hotel Zyuganov, the head of the CPRF, was staying.
But the Russian authorities, primarily the FSB, which monitors American organizations in Russia, already know about the metochion. Why hide it from their own parishioners? After all, there can be no secrets in the Church.
But how can one explain that the construction of the metochion began in the late nineties, when there was no talk of concelebration with the Moscow Patriarchate? That means the matter was decided then, behind the backs of the faithful. And that means the negotiations with it, which began in 2003, were a fiction, or, as they said in Soviet times, a deception of the working people. And that is a scandal.
Moscow archpriest Mikhail Ardov told me that back in 1994 he came to Jordanville and offered the monastery publishing house his book denouncing the Sergianism of the Moscow Patriarchate. Lavr did not bless its publication. Now they say that at that time the monastery publishing house did not print books by unknown authors from Russia, fearing to be taken in. But Mikhail Ardov at that time was a priest of the Church Abroad and even received money from it for his church in Moscow. I think the reason for the refusal was different.
And the New York archpriest Sergiy Klestov related how he reproached Metropolitan Lavr for his joint prayer with Alexy II in May 2004 at the Butovo firing range near Moscow, where mass executions took place in the 1930s.
“How could you, Your Eminence,” he said, “concelebrate with the Sergianists at the place of the death of the new martyrs, for which the Sergianists themselves are to blame? You mixed the new martyrs with those who betrayed Christ!”
“But I did not serve in vestments,” Lavr meekly remarked.
“Did it matter to the new martyrs whether you were in vestments or not?” Fr. Sergiy Klestov continued, but to this Lavr said nothing.
“Lavr had long been planning to create a base for himself in Russia, and this palace in Veliaminovo he was building for himself,” one well-known Moscow priest, who had close contact with Lavr in the nineties, told me.
“Lavr always stifled any initiative that led to the strengthening of the Church Abroad,” he continued. “At that time, many prominent figures of the Moscow Patriarchate came to him for talks, asking to be received into the Church Abroad. But he did not accept a single one. However, with guests he was amiable, and just as amiably sent them back home. And with his own he was often rather rude, pretending to be very tired, displaying cunning inventiveness.”
“In the first years after the collapse of Soviet power, many abandoned church buildings and other premises remained in the expanses of Russia. The Church Abroad could have obtained them almost for free. But Lavr sabotaged all proposals about that. Immediately, a Jesuit smile would appear on his face, which, as is known, is a sign of a double life. He pretended to be uncomprehending, drowsy. But the most blatant example of sabotage was Lavr’s refusal to take the magnificent ancient church in the village of Bekhovo, near Polenovo, the ancestral nest of the great Russian artist. This parish could have become a pearl of the Church Abroad in Russia. If we assume that Lavr is an agent of Moscow’s influence, with the aim of undermining the Church Abroad from within, then one could not find more characteristic behavior,” my interlocutor sighed bitterly.
And he also told me that several years ago, when Alexy II’s health sharply deteriorated, the “Orthodox Chekist and banker” Pugachev and entrepreneur Boris Jordan proposed Lavr’s candidacy to Putin for the post of Russian patriarch. They did this through Putin’s political technologist Gleb Pavlovsky, and to console the current patriarch they bought him a villa in Switzerland.
The wealthy Jordan family was always close to Lavr. Boris Jordan’s father, the now deceased Alexei Borisovich, in 1999 created the Fund for Assistance to Cadet Corps in Russia. But not under the Church Abroad, which would have been logical, but under the Patriarchate, about canonical communion with which there was no talk at that time. The spirit of the White officer corps does not smell in this fund; it is run by Soviet communist generals. Why does the Church Abroad need it? And what does Metropolitan Lavr think about this?
In the biographies of the hierarchs of the Church Abroad who advocate for submission to Moscow, there are oddities that make one think of the KGB. For example, no one knows how Archbishop Mark, a native of the GDR and an officer of its army, moved to the West in the 1960s. Legally, he could not have done so. And why did the KGB quietly release Mark from arrest for bringing in anti-Soviet literature in the seventies, even though the law did not permit it? I have described these biographical oddities in detail above in the chapter “Two Secrets of Archbishop Mark.”
It is said that Archbishop Hilarion initially tried to enter the Leningrad Theological Academy, but there he was recommended to go and study in Jordanville. According to some sources, he applied to the Patriarchate through the rector of its cathedral in New York; according to others, he himself traveled to the USSR. Be that as it may, studying at the seminary of the Church Abroad on the recommendation of the Soviet side is the same as studying at the CIA school on a KGB assignment.
There are also biographical oddities about Metropolitan Lavr. These are his regular trips to relatives in Soviet Czechoslovakia.
“But he didn’t travel to the USSR!” some will object.
Alas, it’s the same thing! Because the intelligence services of the socialist countries had a unified system with the KGB for registering the entry of Americans. They did not overlook former citizens of “bourgeois Czechoslovakia” and anti-Soviet activists. And Metropolitan Lavr belonged precisely to them. For the figures of the Church Abroad were called in KGB language “activists of the emigrant anti-Soviet center.” As soon as such an “activist” applied for a visa to Czechoslovakia, a call followed from Prague to Moscow on a secret HF phone:
“Would you like to make use of him?”
The Moscow Chekists could make use of an anti-Soviet emigrant activist to get an order or a promotion in rank. For by KGB order, no such activist was to remain without attention. It was necessary to harm him – to recruit him, compromise him, or, at worst, to frighten him so that he would not come again. This was called “to put him under operational development.”
Lavr fell into it every time, coming to Czechoslovakia, but always returned in peace. And again he received a visa – they say, even after the introduction of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968, when the regime there became sharply stricter. In those years, my parents often went on vacation to Karlovy Vary at the invitation of the Czechoslovak KGB, and upon returning my father told me what a heavy struggle the Czechoslovak Chekists were waging against internal enemies.
Our comrades could not fail to “approach” Lavr. Not only from the Czechoslovak KGB, but also from the Soviet one, whose huge representation in Prague exceeded in number the local colleagues. The Chekists could latch onto one of Metropolitan Lavr’s human weaknesses.
It is said that Lavr’s brother held a major post in the Czechoslovak Communist Party. And a party worker was required to be ideologically pure. He could not have a brother who was an anti-Soviet priest, and an American to boot. Otherwise, at a party meeting they would say to him:
“You are educating the working people in the spirit of devotion to the ideals of Marxism-Leninism, but you couldn’t educate your own brother?!”
The only possible answer was:
“My brother is on our side. Those who need to know, know about it…”

2. AMERICAN LAW — NO OBSTACLE FOR THE KGB

In the KGB, it is customary to give gifts to the leadership. That is its tradition, going back to Stalin’s times. What can one give Putin in connection with the subjugation of the Church Abroad? The chief resident of Russian intelligence in Washington is racking his brain over this question. But the answer suggests itself: St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Washington. It will be a symbol of Russia’s unattainable victory over America, a bastion of Russia’s strategic interests right under the nose of the White House! Putin will come here not as an honored guest but as the owner, as if to his own home. Just as he enters the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the main church of Russia’s ruling power. Here, in the US, the Washington Cathedral of John the Baptist must become that. Let Bush lord it in his White House! And our Russian president will do the same thing a stone’s throw away, in a Russian church, on a patch of native soil in a hostile American encirclement! Can you imagine the propaganda effect this will have in Russia? After that, Putin will sit in the presidential chair for several more terms! Right now the parishioners are certain that nothing threatens them, that the cathedral belongs to them, and that their interests are protected by American law. But the KGB will not take them to court! It will resort to other methods. Illegal, but effective. People raised in the West have an ingrained conviction in the invincible power of the law. We Russians have no such certainty. Would it be difficult to replace the parishioners? They are only a handful, while behind the KGB stands the might of a vast state. Many rely excessively on the fact that among the parishioners there may be trust owners, or trustees, called “trustees” in American jurisprudence. Supposedly, these trustees will defend the cathedral with an iron wall against hostile encroachments. But they too are living people! Some of them may be seized by an inexplicable love for Putin, as many priests of the Church Abroad recently did. Others, less amenable, will be neutralized in other ways. The scope for KGB operational activity here is wide. The Washington residency, located, by the way, not far from the cathedral, in the Russian embassy, will draft a multi-page plan of operational measures, obtain “forces and means” for it, as they euphemistically say in intelligence, and begin to act. To seize the cathedral, a mechanism perfected during the elections in Chechnya will be applied, where Russian soldiers vote instead of Chechens. In Washington, officers, both male and female, will do this. Like locusts, they will descend in the guise of emigrants and vote to transfer the cathedral to Russia. And property abroad belongs here to the presidential administration, that is, personally to Putin. To please him, the KGB stops at nothing, even at war, as the war in Chechnya attests. Putin’s intelligence is intoxicated with impunity. Complacent Western leaders forgive their friend Volodya everything. They will only come to their senses when he makes them accomplices to his crimes. The Chekist parishioners will act expertly, in accordance with an approved plan. They will flood the cathedral treasury with offerings, compared to which the current parishioners’ contributions will seem trifling. After all, over the past seven years, the Russian budget for defense and security has grown fivefold, and no expense is spared for the needs of the motherland. Such brazenness will provoke a sense of protest among the parishioners, and they will recoil with disgust, as is customary in America. And that is exactly what the KGB wants! Yes, the operation to seize the cathedral will be carried out brazenly, crudely, and roughly, but is the seizure of the entire Church Abroad not happening in the same way right now? There is no defense against the crowbar. Every former Soviet person knows this truth. But an American must be told it. “Here, Comrade President, your personal cathedral in Washington! Grabbed just recently from the local simpletons!” the intelligence resident will report to Putin, and he will nod approvingly with a smirk. The resident will receive a Hero’s star. And soon after, Putin will say to Bush with a touching intonation: “How glad I am, George, that I now have my own church in Washington! I have come to love praying there in the evenings…” And Bush will nod respectfully: of course, religious freedom is a paramount thing! And then he will add that he saw in Putin the soul of a true Christian. Americans will not notice the annexation of the Church Abroad to Soviet intelligence. They will see in it merely an intra-church problem. With a radiant smile, American lawyers will observe the transfer of the cathedral to Russia, their ally in the anti-terrorist coalition. Because the letter of the law will be observed, and among lawyers there are also KGB agents. American authorities not only do not interfere in the activities of the church, but are terrified to do so, lest they inadvertently offend anyone’s religious feelings. Russian authorities, however, are not at all afraid of this and behave in religious organizations like masters, like a bull in a china shop. The current cathedral clergy will be swept away by a mighty hurricane. The master here, as at all presidential properties, will be Putin’s personal security, and they have no need for foreign priests. They lack the clearance to secrets. I foresee their indignation and questions to the new owners. But under Putin, the security forces are accustomed to standing on ceremony with subjects; they can also strike with a rifle butt. The priests of the Church Abroad, who so admired Putin, will now become personally acquainted with the boorishness of his subordinates. They will feel the same helplessness before them as ordinary Soviet people did. And they will finally understand that the Church Abroad was not joined to the Moscow Patriarchate at all. When attending services in the ancient Dormition Cathedral in Vladimir, Putin unashamedly stands on the Tsar’s Place. This means that something similar could be set up in the Washington cathedral as well, ostensibly as a sign of the coming revival of the Russian monarchy. Part of the Russian emigration will greet this with enthusiasm. The Tsar’s Place will be constructed by craftsmen from the KGB. Standing on it, Putin will feel a vengeful joy that the cathedral was once founded by an implacable opponent of Soviet power, as was Saint John of San Francisco.

3. THE HUMILIATION OF JOHN OF SAN FRANCISCO

The mockery began when the hierarchs of the Church Abroad entered into a treacherous conspiracy with Putin. At a meeting with him in New York in September 2003, they presented him with an icon of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna.
— And why not of our holy hierarch John of San Francisco? That would have been more logical! — many later exclaimed in parish meetings.
The official explanation was: one of Putin’s numerous residences is located in the palace in Novo-Ogaryovo, which in 1917 was requisitioned from the Grand Duchess. Allegedly, a small chapel dedicated to her has even been opened there, though no one can verify this.
Such an explanation sounds like mockery. Putin’s Chekist predecessors threw Elizabeth Feodorovna out of the palace, subjected her to a torturous death — and for all this, Putin is rewarded with her icon. Such a gift could be understood if Putin had condemned the bloody history of the KGB, renounced the crimes of the Chekists. But no — today the Chekists are again considered heroes.
The reason is different. John of San Francisco was a staunch anti-Soviet and anti-communist, and such people are not loved in Putin’s Russia. As a symbol for the Church Abroad, the politically neutral Elizabeth Feodorovna, who did not manage to do anything against the Soviet regime, is more suitable.

On July 3, 2004, in the Holy Sorrowful Cathedral in San Francisco, where the relics of St. John rest, his icon, which had been peacefully lying on an analogion, fell. Its glass cracked. This happened when Fr. Peter Perekrestov (who is now increasingly called “Comrade Perekrestov”) declared at the Eleventh All-Diaspora Congress of Orthodox Youth: “We need to leave the past behind and move forward.” The inexplicable fall of the icon was a divine sign, testifying that St. John disagreed with this.
A video recording came into my possession of how this event was discussed at a meal on the patronal feast day in the Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov, on August 1, in Sea Cliff, New York. Metropolitan Laurus was present at the discussion. His reaction was telling.
The first to speak was the young priest Seraphim Gan. With a tearful voice, he tried to convince
The Icon of the Hierarch the parishioners that it was not a sign at all, but a
Saint of Shanghai private incident; there had simply been a storm. It was terribly
hard to watch a lying priest, especially a young one. But that is how he defended the “party line” for union with Moscow. Oh, how many such speeches I saw at party meetings in the Soviet Union!
An angry rebuke came from the rector of the parish, Archpriest Sergei Klestov.
— How can we leave our past behind? — he said, agitated. — We received succession from Patriarch Tikhon. From our New Martyrs and confessors. And we must renounce all of this?! From Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky, from Metropolitan Anastassy, from Archbishop Averky, from Metropolitan Philaret? When the icon fell… A great sign was given to us in this, and to laugh at it is a very great sin…
At the very first seditious words of the rector, Metropolitan Laurus hurriedly began to gather himself; they even brought him his klobuk. And soon Archpriest Sergei Klestov was removed from the parish.
Supporters of union with Moscow are characterized by a penchant for lies and behind-the-scenes maneuvers, as if they had been trained in the party-Soviet apparatus. For example, Archpriest George Larin not long ago went to Archbishop Alypy of Chicago, who does not sympathize with the Patriarchate, and threatened that if he dared even peep against the subordination of the Church Abroad to Moscow, he would be immediately sent into retirement in the Jordanville monastery.
And lies and coercion are the tools of the devil.
By God’s allowance, it is precisely San Francisco, where the relics of St. John rest, that has become a hotbed of capitulationist sentiments. In this, one can see the many-year work of the San Francisco KGB residency, which became adept at dealing with Russian emigrants. That is why it is here, and not in New York where the synod is located, that the All-Diaspora Local Council is planned to be held. It is implied that it will ratify union with Moscow, although the ways of the Lord are inscrutable. But can one imagine a more blatant mockery of St. John of San Francisco than when over his relics they triumphantly proclaim that his beloved child, the Church Abroad, is being handed over to the Stalinist Moscow Patriarchate?
And soon General Denikin will be buried in Moscow under a red banner. Putin will not deny himself the pleasure of playing over his grave the Hymn of the Bolshevik Party, as the current Stalinist anthem of Russia was originally called.
This is how the short, red-haired boy from a poor working-class family will fully sate his class hatred.
P.S. At Denikin’s funeral, that is exactly what happened, but the All-Diaspora Local Council did not go according to Putin’s scenario. It preserved the independence of the Church Abroad, for too many of its parishioners and clergy oppose coming under the authority of Chekist Moscow. But Moscow has also not calmed down. The struggle continues.

FR. VICTOR POTAPOV OFFENDED ON BEHALF OF PUTIN

At a meeting of parishioners of St. John’s Cathedral in Washington, a representative of the Russian Embassy was present.

1. THE COUNTERFEIT EPISCOPATE OF MOSCOW

«A crude provocation by «Voice of America»» — so called my appearance there on August 17, 2005, the agency «Russian Line», close to the Patriarchate. So familiar from these words was the smell of the seventies, when I, a young Soviet intelligence officer, worked at TASS and edited exactly the same phrases there.
The agency accused me of slinging mud at the episcopate of the Russian Orthodox Church. But I merely said that during the Soviet period all bishops were appointed by the communist state and according to church canons are subject to deposition from their rank.
But with whom, then, does the Church Abroad intend to unite? With the Chekists? Yes, precisely with them. That is what I wanted to emphasize.
«Attempts to torpedo the process of the Russian Church’s reunification do not stop!» — sternly warns «Russian Line», as if the matter has been finally settled. But this is not so, and the protest movement is gaining strength all over the world. Events may go entirely not according to Moscow’s scenario, which is happening more and more often now.
However, in Moscow they unofficially consider the Church Abroad already annexed, and only a few papers need to be signed, intended to pull the wool over the eyes of the Russian emigration.
«Shoot and process through a tribunal!» — as Marshal Zhukov liked to put it. But it turns out that the one who was shot dares to thrash about. Disorder!
The property of the Church Abroad has been distributed among serious uncles who do not like to joke. If they let the spoon slip past their mouths, someone in Moscow may get a bullet in the forehead. Therefore any mention of such a possibility provokes a panic reaction.
The rector of the Washington St. John the Baptist Cathedral, Archpriest Victor Potapov, participated in the Voice of America broadcast. And although he advocated for unification, Moscow suspected him of disloyalty and demanded that he resolutely dissociate himself from me, as in Stalinist times. Fr. Victor hastened to do so by publishing an article «The Sin of Blanket Condemnation».
«I must object to the esteemed Konstantin when he sweepingly says that all bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia are KGB agents,» he wrote. «First of all, it should be said that since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, there have been over a hundred consecrations of new bishops. And this is the post‑Soviet period, when the KGB no longer decided who could and who could not become a bishop…»
Nevertheless, KGB agents are among them. For example, Bishop Feofan (Ashurkov), whose connection with intelligence is widely known. For many years he was the right hand of Metropolitan Kirill, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations, agent ‘Mikhailov’. Among the new bishops there are also other secret KGB collaborators recruited in their youth.
«Moreover,» Fr. Victor continued, «even in the dark Soviet times, Vasily Furov, deputy chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs, in a secret report addressed to the Central Committee of the CPSU that found its way to the West, wrote as early as 1973 that there are three groups of bishops. There are bishops who really collaborate. There are bishops who collaborate halfway. And there are bishops who do not collaborate at all and are enemies of the Soviet Union. So even then there were many bishops who refused to collaborate, or perhaps only pretended to be ready to collaborate.»
But Furov characterizes the third group of bishops quite differently! He writes thus: «The third is that part of the episcopate which at various times has shown and continues to show attempts to circumvent the laws on cults; some of them are religiously conservative, others are capable of falsifying the situation in the dioceses and the established attitudes of the authorities toward them; among others, attempts have been noted to bribe commissioners and slander them and officials of local government bodies» (The Real Face of the Moscow Patriarchate. — Edition of the Brotherhood of St. Job of Pochaev of the New York and Canadian Dioceses of the Russian Church Abroad. New York — Montreal, 1991, p. 8.).
Yes, apparently these are people with a difficult character, squabblers or, on the contrary, truth‑seekers. But by no means anti‑Soviet dissidents. Moreover, Furov specifically notes that «long‑term observations, a deep study of the moods of the ruling hierarchs once again confirm that the episcopate is loyal to Soviet power.» There are no «enemies of the Soviet Union» whatsoever! How so, Father Victor?..
Fr. Victor’s article creates an image of the Church that is dear to the Western reader’s heart — a Church that, although dependent on the state, still decided for itself who would become a bishop. But could it be otherwise? Yes, at times the KGB pressed bishops with recruitment. Some refused, others did not — well, all people are sinful!

But in the USSR the order was reversed! You first had to become a KGB agent, and only then a bishop. Not the other way around. Bishops were expected, after all, to meet with foreigners and even to travel abroad. Could they do that without being KGB agents?
The secret Furov report was passed to the West in the seventies by Fr. Gleb Yakunin, who was jailed for it. He also appeared in that “Voice of America” broadcast and said: “Any monk who wished to become a bishop first had to sign a pledge of cooperation with the KGB and choose an agent’s code name. Only then could he become a bishop!”…
Or does Fr. Victor also disagree with him?
Metropolitan Sergius’s “Temporary Patriarchal Holy Synod” was likewise formed at the Lubyanka. In 1927 the NKVD offered the Holy Martyr Archbishop Seraphim of Uglich, who governed the Russian Church for one hundred days, to take that synod, but he refused and proposed his own, for which he was arrested. Metropolitan Sergius, however, accepted this Chekist gift. He illegally seized church power with NKVD help while the locum tenens Peter was still alive and imprisoned. What doubts can there be after this about the Chekist origins of the Moscow Patriarchate?..
The topic of priest recruitment still disturbs the Russian clergy. Recently Deacon Andrei Kuraev stated that in the seventies he would have considered cooperation with the Lubyanka normal, because it would have helped strengthen the unity of the USSR.
But back then that goal was not seen as primary. It is characteristic of our own day, when Russia is genuinely threatened with disintegration. With this statement Andrei Kuraev is calling on the Russian clergy to cooperate with the Lubyanka in our time.

2. SOVIET PATRIOTISM IN THE CHURCH ABROAD

The conductors of the union with Moscow have found themselves in a most foolish position. In order to show that by merging with the Patriarchate they are not merging with a Soviet institution, they are forced to retroactively praise the Soviet Union, even though in Soviet times they reviled it. They have to prove that there existed a Church that was at least somewhat independent, even though back then they flatly denied it. Putin is dragging Russia back into the Soviet past, and our unifiers are leading us there right along with him.

At the parish meeting held on August 22, Fr. Viktor was also very kind to the Land of the Soviets. There was more order back then, he reminded everyone, and no pornography. And although in Soviet times he used to say the opposite, his words were the honest truth.

But this is precisely what Putin’s propaganda harps on! And it draws the logical conclusion: the collapse of the Soviet Union was a historical mistake, all our current troubles began after that; the USSR must be revived…

Yet the entire strategy of the émigré unifiers rests on a sigh of relief that the Soviet Union collapsed and that “enormous changes” took place in Russia. But those changes are heading in the opposite direction! Putin’s Russia now resembles the Brezhnev era, only with longer prison terms.

Putin’s pro-Soviet policy kicks the stool out from under our unifiers, stripping them of their arguments. They are forced either to deny the Sovietization of Russia or to explain it away as incidental slip-ups by high-ranking officials.

The Patriarch blushes right along with Putin. Not only does he fail to protest against the return to communism, but he also provides it with ideological support. Meeting with young people in Kaluga in August, Alexy II directly praised the “Moral Code of the Builder of Communism,” claiming it supposedly corresponds to Christian norms. How many lances were broken in the 1990s to prove that this is not the case!

And this means that the Moscow priests who come flooding to the West after the unification of the Churches will tell good-natured émigré youth about how wonderful life was in the Soviet Union. Those who wish to learn more will be invited to contact Comrade So-and-So at the Russian Federation’s embassy. The next stage will be recruitment on an “ideological basis.” Communist ideology and espionage are closely linked.

Fr. Viktor began our parish meeting by criticizing opponents of the union, and first and foremost the “rag Nasha Strana,” specifically for publishing my article “Laurus and the Chekists.” This article rendered our meeting, dedicated to discussing the decisions of the “concordance commission” of the Church Abroad and the Moscow Patriarchate, completely meaningless.

In the article I revealed the secret that a representation of the Jordanville Monastery has already been operating near Moscow for a long time. It was built in 2000, when there was no talk of Eucharistic unity. That means this matter was resolved back then, in the Soviet way, behind closed doors, “within a narrow circle of restricted individuals,” as semi-literate provincial Chekists like to say. It means that all the negotiations about the unification of the Churches, which began in 2003, were nothing more than throwing dust in the eyes of the Russian emigration.

Why discuss an obvious lie? As if these were genuine negotiations and not a rigged game. As if on both sides of the table there were not players from the same “Ridiger’s team.” As if they were not trying to square the circle—criticizing Metropolitan Sergius while simultaneously praising him, condemning ecumenism while the Patriarchate is a member of the World Council of Churches. As if those ambiguously worded documents signed there were addressed to believers both in the diaspora and in Russia. But our devout old ladies won’t understand a single word in them! However, they are not meant for them, but are designed solely to lull the vigilance of Russian émigrés. Hieromonk Tikhon (Kozushin), rector of the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in Aleksin, called them “the export version of Sergianism.”

Yet Fr. Viktor never tired of repeating that the members of the Church Abroad demanded something from their Moscow colleagues, set certain conditions for them, as if their weight categories were equal. But what can a platoon commander demand from an army general? What conditions can a little mouse set for a cat that is about to eat it? And can one even imagine Archbishop Mark defending the interests of his Church when he always merely surrenders them?

But Fr. Viktor produces an ironclad argument: it was under our pressure that in 2000 the Patriarchate glorified the New Martyrs!..

“How could the Church Abroad have pressured the Patriarchate when no negotiations were being conducted back then? Only Archbishop Mark was establishing back-channel contacts,” Archpriest Mikhail Ardov, rector of the Church of the Holy Royal Martyr and All New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Golovinskoye Cemetery in Moscow, told me. “The Patriarchate went along with it under pressure from the Russian flock, which had begun the spontaneous glorification of the New Martyrs and the dissemination of their iconographic images. But even here, the Patriarchate mixed the sheep with the goats, glorifying also the Sergianists, through whose fault the New Martyrs perished,” he emphasized.

“This example, rather, testifies to how readily the patriarchate’s bishops are prepared to change their opinion on command,” Hieromonk Tikhon observed with a smirk. “After all, not long before that the Bishops’ Council voted almost unanimously against the glorification of the New Martyrs, and first and foremost the Royal Family. The bishops made pro-Soviet speeches. And then suddenly—such a turnaround. Did Archbishop Mark secretly persuade them otherwise? No, it was Putin who began taking the Russian emigration in hand!..”

3. PUTIN IN A CASSOCK

Moreover, in the article “Laurus and the Chekists” I explained the method by which the KGB would select St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Washington after the unification of the Churches. Situated close to the White House, it would become a symbol of an unattainable Russian victory over America, Putin’s personal church. For this, a mass of Chekists would infiltrate the congregation and vote to hand the cathedral over to Russia.
Fr. Victor tried to ridicule this idea as absurd. But has Moscow never seized churches from the Church Abroad? It has, and brutally. So my thought, no matter how much it is mocked, does not seem so far-fetched.
“Then why aren’t your embassy colleagues joining our parish in droves?” — with a playful smile, Fr. Victor addressed the silent woman sitting in the next row, calling her by her first name and patronymic. The embassy employee did not answer the question and only silently noted it in her notebook.
A painting by Elena Flerova, member of the USSR Union of Artists, president of the ABOP Union of Artists — “His Holiness, the Most Holy Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II and President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”
It turns out, she was also at our meeting! Well, I’ll be! We, opponents of unification, are accused of excessive politicization, yet Fr. Victor invites an employee of the Russian embassy to a parish meeting. But the unification of the Churches had not yet happened!
As Archpriest Mikhail Ardov wittily suggested, the Russian diplomat wanted to monitor the tone in which Fr. Victor would conduct the meeting and whether it was time to find a replacement for him back in Moscow. There would be no shortage of willing candidates!
“Be careful writing about that diplomat! She might be our parishioner. You know, the path to church is not closed to anyone!” — parish friends warned me.
That’s true, but a foreign diplomat, wherever he goes, even to a bathhouse, can always be suspected of gathering intelligence. That is his job — to be the eyes and ears of his government. And the current Russian government is based on Lubyanka Square.
Can a Russian diplomat be a parishioner of the Church Abroad? Of course, yes, but it might raise questions from his superiors. After all, the Church Abroad is still considered foreign and anti-Soviet. Yes, its parishes exist in Russia, but the authorities persecute them, shutting them down at every opportunity. They cannot even dream of the privileges enjoyed by the Moscow Patriarchate.
A Russian diplomat’s unsanctioned visits to the Church Abroad could be seen as a hint of disloyalty and even a challenge to the authorities. That is ruinous for a diplomat.
“If she goes to an emigrant church, does that mean she intends to become an emigrant herself? But then how can state secrets be entrusted to her? Can she remain in diplomatic service?” — counterintelligence officers at the Russian embassy in Washington might quite naturally pose such a profound question. I think that our guest’s visits are coordinated with the Foreign Intelligence Service, the lead organization working to subvert the Church Abroad.
“Why do you say that Putin does not believe in God? Only God can know that!” — Fr. Victor attacked me. Sincere indignation bubbled in his voice.
Yes, I did say so on the Voice of America. And I even revealed Putin’s main secret: that he began his career not in intelligence at all, but in the “fifth line” of the Leningrad KGB Directorate, which also worked against the Church. Putin carefully conceals this fact from foreign church leaders. You won’t find it in official biographies.
I reminded Fr. Victor of Putin’s mendacity, vengefulness, and cruelty, which a believing Christian should not possess. But what does it matter if we have separation of Church and state?
The myth of Putin’s piety is important for supporters of the union. It allows them to portray him as an Orthodox emperor Constantine, taking the dying Church Abroad under his royal wing. For this mercy, one is supposed to stretch out one’s hands with tears of gratitude. But if he is not a believer, why does he meddle in church affairs? That means he is guided by worldly motives. And what kind of motives could the leader of the “St. Petersburg Chekists” have? Only things like property seizure and espionage — they know how to do nothing else.
How did Brezhnev thank KGB Chairman Semichastny, who brought him to power by overthrowing Khrushchev? He fired him on the very first day. How did Putin thank the Russian oligarchs who made him president? He set the FSB on them. Why should he act any differently toward those who helped him conquer the Church Abroad? Who can force him?
But Fr. Victor said that unification must happen anyway, and even gently threatened that the train might leave and we would miss our happiness. And I even know the name of that train: a third term for Putin. It will not be liked in the West, but preparations for it have already begun.
Fr. Victor reminded us that at every liturgy we pray “for the unity of all.” Therefore, we must unite with the Moscow Patriarchate. It has now freed itself, been reborn, many new churches and seminaries are active. He particularly highlighted the St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Institute, a wonderful educational institution. But the churches of the Moscow Patriarchate still belong to the state! How can one speak of its independence?
We pray not in order to unite with just anyone. The meaning of that prayer is that heretics must enter Orthodoxy through repentance. The heretical Moscow Patriarchate, having repented, must enter the Church Abroad, which has preserved true Orthodoxy, — Fr. Mikhail Ardov explained to me.
The opening of new churches is not rebirth. The Patriarchate’s functions were simply expanded, — he continued. — All the new seminaries are Sergianist. The Patriarchate did not free itself, it became unshackled. It is ruled by “oligarch-bishop” Metropolitan Kirill, whose fortune is estimated in billions of dollars. The position of rector of a Moscow parish costs up to 50 thousand, and Metropolitan Isidore of Yekaterinodar and Kuban paid 750 thousand dollars for his white klobuk.
The Patriarchate cannot exist without state support. After all, there are few truly Orthodox believers in Russia, no more than two percent of the population, — Fr. Gleb Yakunin noted in an interview with me. — The Patriarchate’s trouble is empty churches, yet it keeps seizing new ones. Its grasping reflex is overdeveloped, and it will exert all its strength to seize the churches of the Church Abroad. I hope that under the threat of its disappearance, a sober view will prevail among the parishioners, but I fear this sobering may come too late, — he emphasized.
The parishioners of St. John the Baptist Cathedral were also quite skeptical.
“We, children of the White Guards, do not believe Putin, who is returning Russia to Soviet times. We do not believe the Patriarchate either. I am against unification,” — one parishioner declared.
“And if the Council of Bishops nevertheless decides to unite?” — Fr. Victor quickly asked again.
“I will not accept that decision,” — the parishioner firmly answered. Disappointed, Fr. Victor indicated that the old emigration is disappearing, while the new one gravitates toward the Moscow Patriarchate. But it is precisely the new emigrants who want nothing to do with it! They know it too well.
This opinion was expressed by one of the new emigrants.
“I am a priest’s daughter, and therefore I beg you — do not trust the Moscow Patriarchate! We must not unite, because the Church Abroad is the only one that has remained pure. Only here have I found true Russian Orthodoxy,” — she said, comparing the Patriarchate to a barrel of fragrant honey, at the bottom of which lies a dead rat of Sergianism.
But Fr. Victor assured her that the Patriarchate had renounced Sergianism in the materials of the conciliation commission — that it condemns it, and in this one can even see “some kind of repentance.”
Some repentance that is! — Fr. Gleb Yakunin exclaimed indignantly after listening to my account. — Judas could also say: I condemn my act, take me back!
It is impossible to repent in some obscure document or interview, — Fr. Mikhail Ardov explained to me. — One must go to the Dormition Cathedral and do it publicly, as Patriarchs Job and Hermogenes repented for the sins of the Russian people during the “Time of Troubles.” And even the future Metropolitan Sergius, when he left the Renovationist schism, did not repent in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, but publicly, in church, — he emphasized.
Will Alexy II dare such an act? It would erase the entire Soviet period, and Putin calls on us to take pride in it. Will the Patriarchate leave the World Council of Churches as a sign of repentance for ecumenism? On the contrary, it now has even more work there! In Europe, Putin’s image is fading, and it urgently needs to be refurbished with church gilding. Is there no freedom of speech or elections in Russia? But there is freedom for the Patriarchate! Fr. Victor with his story about the St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Institute would be just the thing here.
As they spoke, parishioners criticized the Patriarchate, but Fr. Victor consistently took its side.
When the Patriarchate seized our monastery in Hebron, did the Palestinian police roughly drag elderly nuns down the stairs? But now Moscow can send many nuns there, and besides, the monastery belongs to the Russian people after all!
When the Patriarchate seized the church in the Italian city of Bari, a young priest of the Church Abroad died from the distress? But he had been sick even before that!
Parishioners reminded Fr. Victor that Alexy II had recently congratulated Vietnam on the 30th anniversary of victory over the USA, calling it “brotherly” in a communist manner. But Fr. Victor immediately downplayed the Patriarch’s role in this, claiming that he did not congratulate them himself but merely signed a text that others had drafted. After all, hundreds of papers are brought to him for signature! Supposedly, he signs whatever is put in front of him… In the KGB, such a trick is called “shifting the blame.”
And yet, not so long ago, the same Patriarch demanded from the American authorities the dismissal of Fr. Victor from the Voice of America for his anti-Soviet broadcasts. Yes, since then Fr. Victor has reformed, but the Patriarch never even thought of changing his convictions. What if he reminds Fr. Victor of his anti-Soviet past on the second day after unification, in order to seize the cathedral?
When Fr. Victor could find no arguments to defend the Patriarchate, he pointed out the mistakes of his own Church.
“But our Metropolitan Anastasius sent a letter of thanks to Hitler!” — he said with noble indignation in his voice, not resorting to this argument for the first time. And how many letters did Stalin send to Hitler? Moreover, it did not stop at letters. The German army was rebuilt in the USSR in the 1930s. Hitler and Stalin concluded a military alliance to fight against the democratic West.
Recently, Putin fully revived Stalin’s interpretation of World War II and is ready to quarrel with his neighbors over it. The Patriarchate fully approves of it and foaming at the mouth explains it to clueless foreigners. By castigating his own Church for supporting Hitler, but not the Soviet Union, Fr. Victor retrospectively whitewashes the image of Stalin’s empire, to which his father refused to return after the war from captivity.
After this, Fr. Victor painted a sweet picture of the Church Abroad flourishing under the thumb of the Moscow Patriarchate. It sounded as if the Patriarchate wanted to incorporate the Church Abroad only in order to grant it the freedom it already has.
But who would be the guarantor of this idyll? Where to complain if Moscow destroys it? Alas, there is no institution on earth to which one can complain about Putin.
“And do you yourself trust the Patriarchate?” — the parishioners inquired. Fr. Victor admitted that he also does not trust it much, but still, unification must happen. But then why call the meeting? Oh, how many secrets there are in this unification! And secrecy is a sign of the involvement of special services.
Supporters of unification pointed to the flourishing of church life in Russia. “What is wrong if that flourishing comes to us in America?” — they wondered.
“What is wrong is that the Patriarchate is too closely tied to the state, and this threatens both US national security and each of us. Under church cover, Putin will come to America in a cassock,” — I explained.
A retired history professor from Georgetown University stated that the unification of the Churches is historically inevitable. That was a purely materialistic argument. Only the Lord knows what is inevitable and what is not. Not so long ago, they spoke about the historical inevitability of the union of the brotherly peoples of Russia and Belarus — where is it now? It seems the Belarusian dictator Lukashenko was frightened of the “broad autonomy” that Putin promised him.
But opponents of Church unification spoke more often. And they were by no means a bunch of extremists, but the most respected and longstanding members of the parish. Fr. Victor looked visibly upset: the Soviet-style “we support and approve” had not happened.
Fr. Victor has guided very many emigrants from the Soviet Union and Russia onto the path of true faith. He and Matushka Maria help the sick and the poor. But Fr. Victor found himself facing the same choice as Soviet priests in 1927 — whether to swear allegiance to Metropolitan Sergius?

IS THE CHURCH FREE IN RUSSIA?

In March 2004, Patriarch Alexy II appeared on state tele­vision and called on the country’s residents, believers and non-believers, to come to the poll­ing stations for the Putin election. Of course, he didn’t say it that directly, but the candi­date was the only one left. All others had been weeded out.
“The Church is separate from the state, and the Church and religious organizations do not interfere in political struggle, but we are citizens of the country, and therefore our duty is not to stay on the sidelines but to actively take part in the presidential election,” he de­clared.
The Internet site Grani.ru prefaced the Patriarch’s speech with a witty comment:
“It’s curious, after all, that every political statement by clergymen is seasoned with the obligatory: ‘the Church is separate from the state.’ They feel that something is off. That they shouldn’t be speaking out. But civic duty takes its toll. So does Alex­y.
Actually, the reminder about civic duty and the very fact of addressing ‘believ­ers and non-believers’ indicates that the hierarch is speaking precisely in his civ­il capacity. But in that case one must conclude that either the Church is not all that separate from the state, or the citizen is abusing the official posi­tion of a clergy­man. Thus, in this round of the struggle between the devil and the Lord, victory is clearly on the side of the former. But what can you do when turnout becomes such a problem. And Caesar is nervous. And civic duty gives no rest. And citizen Patriarch, put­ting on his formal attire, calls on ‘old and young, believers and non-believers to make the right choice.’
But there was no choice at all! The Putin administration was seriously afraid that voters would not come to the polling stations, and summoned the Patriarch himself to help.
But why didn’t he answer like this: “Mr. President, I cannot agree to your request to appear on television, because this could be regarded as direct campaigning for you!”
Would they have shot him for that, as under Stalin? So why then is he so compliant that he twists the concept of Christian duty, which does not at all require participation in presidential elections?
Because he is bound hand and foot by the state. After all, it is the state that owns all the churches of the Moscow Patriarchate and can seize them at any moment. But here in the West, for some reason they don’t know this.
V. Putin and Patriarch Alexy II (Ridiger). use.
Here they believe that in Russia the church is as financially independent as it is here. That Russian parishes can also dispose of churches at their own discretion. But that is not the case at all.
To this day, all churches in Russia belong to the state, ever since they were national­ized by the Bolsheviks in 1917. Now, they have seem­ingly van­ished from the political scene, but the present Russian sta­te for some reason sacredly preserves their precepts.
The 1997 law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations” (Article 21, Paragraph 3) permits the transfer of churches by the state into the ownership of religious organizations, and more­over, free of charge. But it also contains Article 22, Paragraph 2, which likewise permits the free transfer of churches, but — only to

The state took the second path. Article 21 remained on paper. The context of both articles shows that in 1997 all church buildings belonged to the state.
Since then the situation has not changed. It has only worsened.
The 2002 Law on Objects of Cultural Heritage made it even more difficult to transfer church buildings to the Orthodox Church.
The journal Church Herald, an official publication of the Moscow Patriarchate, asked two members of the Historical‑Legal Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church to comment on this law — its executive secretary, Candidate of Juridical Sciences Yuri Kunitsyn, and its expert, State Counsellor of the Russian Federation First Class, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences Genrikh Mikhailov. They replied:
“Now the possibility of transferring to Church ownership cultural heritage sites that were confiscated from her by the godless regime has been reduced to a minimum, which unquestionably violates her rights and contradicts Russia’s international obligations. Furthermore, the very fact that a church building is state property and may be used for purposes other than its direct function infringes on the right of ordinary citizens to join in confessing and spreading their religion.”
Since the mid‑eighties the Moscow Patriarchate has been unsuccessfully requesting the return of the Church of St Clement, Pope of Rome, on Pyatnitskaya Street, where part of the State Library’s holdings are stored. That beautiful church has still not been returned.
The law designates absolutely all religious buildings and structures — except newly built ones — as objects of cultural heritage. Consequently, they are subject to a special legal regime.
But above all, hopes that a start would be made on a genuine process of returning property seized by the Soviet state to the Church have not been fulfilled.
The new law creates conditions under which state bodies can transfer religious cultural heritage sites to secular organizations and even to private individuals for use free of charge or on lease without agreement from religious organizations. The absence of a priority right for religious organizations to obtain this property will in practice mean the loss of these sites not only for them but also, possibly, for society as a whole.
“Some cultural heritage sites that formerly belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church or to Old‑Believer communities are now no longer even state property. Regrettably, they are sometimes used for highly questionable purposes. The unlawfulness of these transactions is obvious. Yet the law that has been passed provides no grounds for the return of church buildings. Moreover, in our view, it even protects the interests of physical and legal persons who own any cultural heritage site, including a church one. Is it not sacrilege when a church is used as a storehouse, a factory, or is fitted out as a restaurant or some other entertainment venue?”
On 24 September 2002 the Publishing Council of the Russian Orthodox Church held a discussion of this law. It was reported on the reference‑information portal “Religion and the Media”.
Opening the meeting, the Chairman of the ROC Publishing Council, Archpriest Vladimir Silovyov, stated:
“As is well known, the problem is that church buildings and land have been given to the Church on the right of free and termless use. But on the agenda is the question of the mechanisms that will ensure that the Church holds buildings and land by right of ownership.”
Alas, this question seems to be completely off the state’s agenda! Alexei Komich, Deputy Chairman of the Methodological Council of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, declared at that meeting that the Church must understand the need for a special attitude towards monuments, and that this does not always happen. The Church must have competent restorers and work together with the state bodies responsible for monuments. Without this, monument‑buildings cannot be given to the Church, because they might be lost irretrievably.
In their turn, representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate called the Law on Objects of Cultural Heritage anti‑church. They also complained about the arbitrariness of local officials. But in Russia there is no cure for that disease!
The legal position of church buildings is highly precarious. At any moment the state can take them back, as soon as its political course changes.
In spring 2004 a process of deprivatization began in Russia. Enterprises that became private in the early 1990s are again passing into state ownership. The process is very painful, accompanied by unjust courts, the arrest of the wrong people, and murders from around corners.
But the people approve deprivatization. They see in it a sign of a return to the longed‑for Soviet past with its free education and medical care, and a meager yet guaranteed salary.
Deprivatization could also affect the Church. It would go off without a hitch, because the state would be taking back what already belongs to it. It is no accident that the Church is already being called a collective oligarch. And in this country it is customary to “liquidation” oligarchs. If you have been labeled an oligarch — be ready for a late‑night knock on the door. Meanwhile the real oligarchs, the generals of the FSB and the mafia, feel themselves masters of the situation. Nobody mentions their names in vain.
Everything Soviet is now being revived in Russia. What if the state decides to return to the kind of relations with the Church that existed in the Soviet period? And says to the Church the same thing the Church now says to wealthy entrepreneurs: “Don’t you gentlemen have a bit too much property? Isn’t it time to share?”…
And the Church will have nothing to reply, because the state knows its chief secret: in reality there are not so many parishioners. On weekdays many churches stand empty. Fewer than one and a half percent of Muscovites came to the midnight Christmas service in 2004. And Moscow is the capital of Holy Russia!
The Patriarchate keeps these figures secret, and the state, for its part, has no interest in making them public. For the time being…
As can be seen, relations between the Moscow Patriarchate and the state are far from cloudless. Nevertheless, every year, in autumn and spring, Alexy II sends a letter to the General Staff. It contains several hundred names of believing soldiers who are to perform their military duty kept away from worldly defilement. The General Staff ratifies the Patriarch’s instruction without a word.
The fact is that our Russian army long ago became a high‑risk zone. Experienced people say it is better to spend two years in prison than to spend them in the army. Even though Russian prisons are considered among the worst in the world. Amnesty International equates being in them with torture.
And in the army it is even worse. Since the Soviet era it has been afflicted by an incurable disease called dedovshchina — the systematic brutal hazing of junior conscripts. Its essence is that during his first year of service a young soldier is subjected to savage bullying, but in his second year he himself torments the newcomers. There is no way to break out of this vicious circle. The army will break a brave man. Officers encourage dedovshchina. They are almost never, with the rarest exceptions, held accountable for soldiers’ deaths.
Crowds of them flee the army, escaping the torments, and throw themselves at the feet of the “Soldiers’ Mothers,” a women’s human‑rights organization. But what can it do in Putin’s Russia, where the FSB controls everything? The soldiers are sent back to the army. What happens to them afterwards is impossible to find out.
In the nineteen‑nineties the Patriarchate managed to create small garrisons in the army where only believing soldiers serve. There nobody beats them, nobody forces them into dedovshchina, nobody pushes them to smoke — smoking being considered almost a must for a soldier in the Russian army: if you don’t smoke, you’re an outsider. And they also escape the temptation of hearing the filthy swearing that has become the main means of communication in the army.
These garrisons are located near monasteries, where the soldiers can remain in constant contact with a spiritual father. Properly speaking, that is what normal service should be. Faith, doing one’s military duty — and nothing else. As it was in Tsarist Russia. But in today’s Russia it is not so.
In general there are many more believing soldiers than those mentioned in the Patriarch’s letter. But they live far from Moscow and have no way of reaching the Patriarch. Only sons of priests, seminarians, and zealous young parishioners get onto his list.
To be included in the Patriarchal list, you have to bring a testimonial from your spiritual father to the Department for Cooperation with the Armed Forces and Law‑Enforcement Agencies of the Moscow Patriarchate. And then wait and see. There is no legal mechanism to control how this paper proceeds. They may agree, and they may refuse.
But if a future conscript brings a testimonial from a priest of the Church Abroad, he is thrown out neck and crop, and even with a mocking grin. The privilege of being exempted from dedovshchina is intended only for our own.
Is this good or bad? Unquestionably, it is good that several hundred well‑brought‑up boys, the hopes of Orthodoxy, are spared physical and moral suffering. It is bad that this is a privilege for the few, determined arbitrarily and legalized by the state.
But after this, can one still say that the Church in Russia is independent of the state?

DOES PUTIN BELIEVE IN GOD?

1. HOW THEY CROSS THEMSELVES IN THE KGB

In 2000, I received a rare opportunity to undergo training at the Kremlin museums, which entitled me to work as a guide for foreign tourists.
I still thank God for that! When else could I have explored every corner of the Kremlin grounds open to visitors, or heard the astonishing, sometimes mystical stories behind the exhibits in the Armoury Chamber!
But the curators complained. “Can you imagine,” they said, “Putin has taken to flying into the Kremlin by helicopter and landing right on Cathedral Square! The vibrations from the rotor blades cause the paint to flake off the icons. And some of them date back to the eleventh century!…”
The listeners were appalled. It would be understandable if some barely literate Soviet leader, like Khrushchev, had done such a thing. But Putin is a university graduate! Surely he knows what the Assumption Cathedral means to the Russian people. Yet he lands next to it as if it were his own dacha. You must admit, there is something sacrilegious about that scene…

There is a blank spot in Putin’s biography. It conceals the subdivision of the KGB in which he worked before joining the intelligence service. Putin’s Russian biographers carefully skirt around those few years.
After all, young university graduates were not accepted directly into intelligence! They had to gain experience, prove themselves in low-level operational work, and only then receive a recommendation for intelligence. The only exception was made for the sons of high officials, but Putin did not belong to that category.
In his book First Person, Putin let slip that the KGB unit that “dealt with” students was the one that recruited him.
That was the infamous Fifth Directorate, which fought dissent. It also persecuted the Church. Its work was not counterintelligence but political surveillance. It was created by Andropov on the model of the Secret Political Department of the NKVD, which had carried out mass repressions.

There is further proof. At the end of the 1970s, I studied at the Minsk KGB school along with the current Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Ivanov.
All the trainees already held civilian university degrees, so the course was brief—only ten months. One thing alone was taught there: how to recruit agents. Graduates of technical institutions studied separately from those with humanities backgrounds. The former were being prepared to safeguard defense plants; the latter, to work along the “Fifth Line.” It was precisely in that division that the future defense minister studied.
He later wrote with pride that he had started his KGB career in the same department as Putin, and that they were even friends. This confirms that Putin, too, worked along the “Fifth Line.” Besides, the KGB brass did not allow friendships between officers from different departments, to prevent information leaks. Fraternizing was permitted only within a single department.

Finally, I also heard about Putin’s “Fifth Line” work from General Oleg Kalugin—the famous KGB dissident who recently became a U.S. citizen. At the time described, he was the first deputy head of the KGB Directorate for Leningrad and the Leningrad Region, and Putin was his subordinate.

Now Putin is ashamed of his involvement in Soviet political surveillance and does not recall it. What did his work consist of?
Unearthing anti-Soviet sentiments among students. Exploiting young people’s naivety, Putin recruited them, forcing them to inform on one another.

“But he didn’t work directly against the Church!” someone might object.
No, the church and youth “lines” were tightly intertwined! Religious dissent was widespread among students. To detect it, Putin had to enlist partners from the anti-Church section, who had agents among the clergy.
And of course he took part in discussing their work at Party meetings.
Phrased in the dry, professional jargon, the reports sounded like this…

“During the reporting period, the Fifth Department of the KGB Directorate for Leningrad and the Leningrad Region carried out extensive work along the church line. Through agents among the teaching staff of the Leningrad Theological Academy, information was obtained that a student of the Academy, N., made anti-Soviet statements and criticized the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet state toward religion and the church.
He was ‘given prophylactic treatment’ (i.e., warned and intimidated—author’s note) by Academy professor ‘Vigilant’ (the quotation marks indicate an agent pseudonym—author’s note). Subsequently, ‘Vigilant,’ under a plausible pretext, introduced N. to Senior Operations Officer of our department, Captain Ivanov, whom he presented as a postgraduate student of religious studies. After several meetings in the city, Captain Ivanov induced N. to collaborate as an agent with the KGB. N. signed an undertaking to cooperate and chose the pseudonym ‘Judas.’ For recruiting an agent from a hostile milieu, Captain Ivanov is recommended for promotion to the rank of major…”

And Putin not only listened to this entire report without batting an eye but also raised his hand in unanimous approval, then, together with everyone else, clapped Ivanov amiably on the shoulder.
After all, he himself could easily have found himself in Ivanov’s place! The head of the Fifth Department had the right to deploy any subordinate, regardless of which section they belonged to—whether fighting the Church or writers, dissidents or Zionists—to recruit a student from the Leningrad Theological Academy. All officers had to be able to replace one another.

And, of course, Putin, like all officers of the Fifth Department, could not help being drawn into “ensuring security”
for the Easter Procession of the Cross. Mingling with the crowd of believers, the Chekists watched to see that no one shouted anti-Soviet slogans.
But the main task was different: never to take their eyes off the foreign diplomats invited to the Easter Matins, so that they would not use the commotion to exchange notes with any Soviet citizen. To do that, one had to stand next to the diplomats and skillfully impersonate a believer—cross oneself devoutly, bow, all the while scanning the surroundings with a sharp eye.
It was precisely there, in the KGB, that Putin learned how to make the sign of the cross properly…

2. THE EXPLOIT OF A SPY

Many Chekists, being cynics and atheists themselves, have a good understanding of the psychology of believers. This can be seen at least from how skillfully the current Russian intelligence service is carrying out its work to subvert the Russian Church Abroad.
This quality was also demonstrated by Putin at his meeting with its hierarchs on September 24, 2003, in New York. At this meeting, he carried out a full two active measures, and so subtly that one could not find a single flaw.
In KGB jargon, active measures are the disinformation of world public opinion. Service “A” of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service engages in this. In his dealings with the hierarchs, Putin conducted himself as one of its officers. He loves Service “A.” Many of its employees now work in his personal administration, using intelligence methods to manipulate Russian public opinion.
Disinformation is not always a lie. It can be the truth, only incomplete.
This technique is exactly what Putin used, straightaway reassuring the hierarchs that there would be no return to communism in Russia.
And formally, this is indeed true! The Communists are even in opposition, though they support Putin. And why should they criticize him if he has realized all their dreams and aspirations? The state is once again more important than the individual, there is no freedom of speech, militarization is in full swing, hated America is again the main enemy, and the few bourgeois who remain at large tremble with fear.
Only this is called something different — “statism.” But the subordination of the individual to the interests of the state is precisely the main idea of communism! It is enough to read Lenin’s book “State and Revolution.”
The revived Stalinist anthem and the red banner serve merely as the ideological decoration of the present Russian order. And recently, they have once again begun paying pensions for party and Komsomol work done in Soviet times. What is this, if not a return to communism? And this decree was signed by none other than Putin himself. But, of course, one cannot explain all this in two words during a social conversation!..
Putin handled the second “active measure” just as successfully. When the hierarchs proposed establishing a day of remembrance for the victims of godless terror in Russia, Putin dodged the question, merely saying that it was worth thinking about. But he concealed the fact that such a day already exists in Russia. It is the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression, October 30. Only now it is being hushed up, and rallies are banned.
When visiting the Solovetsky Monastery, Putin never once mentioned that under Stalin there was a concentration camp here where thousands of priests and laypeople perished. To speak of Stalin’s repressions in today’s Russia is unfashionable, unpatriotic. Information about them is being removed from school textbooks. And new repressions have already begun.
The Chekists especially dislike recalling this day. After all, it says that their entire history was criminal. In Putin’s Russia, however, Chekists are again considered heroes.
With this “active measure,” Putin achieved a twofold result.
He kept silent about the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression, contributing to its official oblivion.
He planted in the hierarchs the hope that a day of remembrance for the victims of godless authority in Russia might still be established. Although this hope is in vain, if only because under Putin, Soviet power is no longer called godless. On the contrary, it is customary to recall it with great respect!
The hierarchs were moved, seeing how the former communist reverently kisses an icon. But he was merely playing along, as befits a spy. For Putin never left the intelligence service! When he became prime minister and president, he remained in its ranks. Russian law does not require his resignation.
The hierarchs were received not only by the president, but also by an active intelligence officer. And therefore this meeting bore such clear features of an agent-operational event.
Putin personally directs the operation “Russian Church Abroad.” This means that it is now the most important one for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Forces and resources have been thrown into it all over the world, as we can observe.
Putin follows precisely the precept of the famous Soviet spy Rudolf Abel, who said: “The Germans always took me for a German, the Jews for a Jew, and the English for an Englishman.” And in order to please atheists, Putin can behave differently. Did he not state to CNN that he believes in man? That was his answer to the question of whether he believes in God.
“How does such an answer accord with Christian doctrine?” I recently asked a priest I know from the Moscow Patriarchate.
“Putin can say that. He’s a politician!” the priest replied with a respectful sigh.
“I too am a politician. Is it also permissible for me?” I asked again. The priest shrugged with a smile. He had no answer.

3. FALSE WITNESS

Putin’s character contains traits that should not be present in a believing Christian. He is cruel and vindictive, although a Christian should forgive his enemies and those who cause him offense. His predecessor Yeltsin acted in exactly that way, never persecuting his political opponents.
He encourages his own cult, indulging in pride and prompting Russians to create an idol for themselves. He is constantly caught lying, though a Christian should always tell the truth. But most importantly, Putin lacks a sense of Christian mercy.
Here is what former Kremlin journalist Elena Tregubova writes about him in her book The Kremlin Digger’s Notes: “The head of state’s relationship with children also didn’t go well from the start. In the Kremlin press pool, anecdotes circulated by word of mouth about how Putin’s attempts to be affectionate with kids had backfired.
In a Petrozavodsk hospital, instead of pitying a little boy on crutches who had been hit by a car, Putin told him:

• Well, now you won’t break the rules anymore!..
  No wonder that afterward a tiny girl whom Putin tried to kiss resisted and, in tears, confessed:
• I’m afraid of you!..
  Putin’s press service banned any mention of these episodes in news reports, under threat of immediate loss of accreditation. (…)
  In a Volgograd military hospital, which was on Putin’s visiting schedule, journalists were given white coats and positioned at prearranged spots. Wearing this theatrical costume, I accidentally walked into the amputees’ ward, where patients had recently been brought from Chechnya. I intuitively felt that what they needed most at that moment was for me to smile and not be afraid to talk to them, to look at them.
  Nineteen-year-old Alexei from Nizhny Novgorod told me that after being drafted into the army, he had managed to fight in Chechnya for only three months: an explosion tore off his hand and almost knocked out his eye.
  Then the door to the ward swung open and Putin entered. To avoid intruding on the delegation, I cautiously perched on the edge of Alexei’s bed, which allowed me to overhear the monstrous conversation of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief with this boy, maimed in a war that he, Putin, had unleashed.
  First, the generalissimo went around the ward, shaking everyone’s hand and handing out watches and a portable television. And when it was Alexei’s turn – he had no hand to put a watch on, and hardly any eyesight to watch television – Putin casually inquired:
• Does the eye see?
• Yes.
• And that scar on your face – that’s nothing! Surgeons nowadays can do everything so that afterwards nothing will be noticeable! — Putin cheerfully informed him.
  After that, the presidential candidate tried to retreat from the amputees’ ward as quickly as possible – the sight was far too unflattering for the cameras covering the election campaign.
  As he made his farewells, edging toward the door, Alexei did not even speak, but barely audibly breathed out:
• I can’t believe it… Putin… In the flesh…
  What I most wanted to do was stand up and slap Putin for the impassive expression on his face at that moment, for the lecturing tone with which he, who had never fought in a war, allowed himself to speak to this boy wounded in a war that Putin so needed for a victorious election. And also — for the Putin propaganda on all TV channels, which has so poisoned people’s minds that this young man, barely alive, is thrilled to have seen Putin in person.”
  Putin “does not approve” of his cult, as his aides proudly declare. When asked about it himself, he gives a strained chuckle, implying that it is merely somebody’s foolish overzealousness, nothing more.
  Such an answer brings tears of nostalgic tenderness to many elderly Russians, because Stalin commented on his own cult in exactly the same way, even with the same intonations. Putin generally often copies Stalin, for whom he holds sincere reverence.
  The cult of Putin’s personality is served by a powerful state machine. The higher the prices for food and utilities soar, the more Putin portraits appear around. Store shelves are piled high with white busts of Putin, very similar to those of Stalin and Lenin. Recently, even Tales of Putin have been published, in which he appears as a magical hero. On one of the books, Putin is depicted as a daring special forces soldier who eliminated the terrorist Khattab. Variety ensembles sing the bravura song “Putin and Stalingrad Are Behind Us.” The pro-Putin youth organization Walking Together is maintained at the expense of the presidential administration. Is all this just somebody’s foolish obsequiousness?
  A children’s presidential website was even launched recently. It inculcates the Putin cult into young, impressionable minds. On it, Putin appears as a romantic hero and, of course, a great man of modesty, like Lenin.
  For example, the site poses a question to children: “What should those who love the president too much and cannot live without him do?” And it answers itself: “Calm down.”
  But is such an answer clear to a child? Does it mean to calm down, to accept? Or, on the contrary, to stop singing Putin’s praises?
  “Calm down” — that is a favorite Chekist phrase, meaning nothing. It can be interpreted in various ways. But a child always needs clarity. Such an answer corrupts children’s souls. And with professional intuition, I sense that it was Putin himself who inserted this word.
  The idea of Putin’s infallibility has already been so hammered into people’s minds that doubting it is considered unpatriotic.
  “If I write that Putin will never become a world judo champion, will that also be unpatriotic?” – this question was asked by prominent journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin in the pages of Novaya Gazeta in the spring of 2003.
  Shortly thereafter, he died a strange death. Experts say he was poisoned by one of the poisons developed by the KGB. This is indirectly confirmed by the wall of official silence that still surrounds his death, despite the fact that he was a deputy of the State Duma.
  Yuri Shchekochikhin was a fierce critic of Putin, and suspected him of orchestrating the 1999 apartment building bombings in Moscow that served as a pretext for the war in Chechnya.
  Absolutely every politician who made the same assertion has been subjected to repression. Some were killed, others expelled from the country, still others are in prison. Perhaps Putin will succeed in blaming all this on someone’s bungling, as Stalin was able to do? But he is unlikely to persuade the world that he is following the Gospel commandment to “Love your enemy as yourself.”
  Examples of Putin’s lies are countless. I will give just two.
  The first lie was in Spain, in June 2000. At that time, the well-known journalist Vladimir Gusinsky was arrested. The Media-Most holding he headed not only criticized the war in Chechnya, but also personally mocked Putin. And Putin, as is known, cannot tolerate mockery.
  The international community demanded explanations, and Putin came up with nothing better than to claim that he had been unable to reach Prosecutor General Ustinov in Moscow by phone.
  The whole world laughed at Putin. The popular Russian satirist Viktor Shenderovich particularly stood out in this regard. Thereafter, whenever news came of yet another conversation between Putin and the Prosecutor General, Shenderovich would ironically announce on television: “Well, at last he got through!”
  But he joked only until the TVS television company where he worked was shut down and he himself was banned from the airwaves.
  The second example is even more cynical. In October 2003, Putin told American journalists that the nerve-paralytic gas from which hostages died in the Dubrovka Theater Center in October 2002 had been harmless! That it could not have caused any harm to people who fell victim to dehydration and their own chronic illnesses.
  The all-Russian movement For Human Rights issued a special statement that this claim of the president’s is completely false.
  Irina Khakamada, who attempted to save the hostages at Dubrovka, informed the press at the time that Putin himself had selected the gas.
  This was an act of particular cynicism. In the first place, Putin is not a specialist in gases; and secondly, he knew perfectly well that the gas he chose would kill the hostages or leave them disabled. This speaks of Putin’s cruelty and lack of mercy, so little in keeping with the precepts of Christianity.
  The parents of 14-year-old Nina Milovidova, who died at Dubrovka, filed a lawsuit in Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court against Putin and the weekly Kommersant-Vlast for protection of honor and dignity. They are demanding compensation for moral harm.
  The statement of claim says: “The published information that ‘the gas was harmless and could not cause harm to people’ does not correspond to reality, and moreover, causes the plaintiffs pain and moral suffering.”
  To sue Putin is considered in today’s Russia the height of civic courage. But the unfortunate parents, it seems, have nothing left to lose. It will be interesting to see how our loyalist court will fend off their lawsuit.
  P.S. On June 5, 2004, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow issued a mocking ruling that Putin’s lie applies exclusively to the deceased themselves and does not in any way affect the interests of their relatives. This meant that only the dead could sue Putin, who is not subject to any court in Russia in any case. The court refused to consider the lawsuit by the parents of Nina Milovidova and other victims of the storming of the Dubrovka Theater Center.
  WE DO NOT NEED PATRIARCH PUTIN!

1. A CLAW GOT STUCK — THE WHOLE BIRD PERISHES

I vividly imagine the scene that will play out in the parishes of the Church Abroad that pass to Moscow. A Moscow guest will knock on the pastor’s office door.
“Hello, I’m your new pastor!” he will introduce himself and hand over the patriarchal decree…
“Excuse me, I am the pastor!” the office’s occupant will object in bewilderment.
“And now I will be! Didn’t you yourselves dream of two Churches under one patriarch? So he appointed me…”
“And what about the promised broad autonomy? I will complain!” the former pastor will exclaim resentfully. “Complain where?!” the Moscow guest will ask sarcastically, and the office’s occupant will lower his beard guiltily.
Indeed, there is nowhere to complain. American law will not come to the rescue; it does not provide for such a situation.
And after the new pastor, not only a group of priests will arrive, but also the warden, the quartermaster, the treasurer, the driver, their wives. The current budget for defense and security is the largest in the entire history of Russia, and there will be enough money for everyone.
Now many priests of the Church Abroad say, smiling contentedly: “What will they do without us! After all, we know the local conditions, the parishioners…”
But the nearest Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) residency also knows the local conditions, and I assure you, no worse. And as for the parishioners, the Chekists will deal with them all the more, being themselves “doctors of human souls.” Mass recruitment of emigrants will begin.
The absorption of the Church Abroad is part of Putin’s administrative reform, leading to the consolidation of agencies and territorial entities in order to facilitate state control over them. In Russia now, everything is being brought back under the state’s hand, starting with business. The rebellious are destroyed.
The promises to give the Church Abroad broad autonomy ring with brazen falsehood. There is no autonomy—neither broad nor narrow—in Russia. Now they are uprooting the last remnants of local self-government. The election of governors has been abolished.
Maybe there is autonomy somewhere in the Moscow Patriarchate? But there, too, the power vertical reigns, strict military discipline. Ask any young priest what the Church most resembles from the inside, and he will say: “The army.”
Putin imitates Stalin, his idol, who always tried to encroach on adjacent territory. Having named Karelia the “Karelo-Finnish SSR,” he attacked Finland, and part of its territory passed to Russia. He named Buryatia “Buryat-Mongolia,” and Mongolia de facto became part of the Soviet Union. The absorption of the Church Abroad will mean the extension of Putin’s “power vertical” beyond Russia’s borders, spreading it to Russian emigrants.
The material expression of the “power vertical” will be the former churches of ROCOR, which will become the property of the Russian state. Participants in the negotiations have let this slip. And our foreign real estate is managed by the presidential administration—Russia’s largest owner-octopus and the only free entrepreneur.
In the churches, Putin will gain bastions of Russian political influence in all the major cities of the world. Forever. And which agency is responsible for advancing this influence abroad? Correct, intelligence. Therefore, the churches will inevitably become spy residencies.
Acquiring about three hundred new foreign locations is the dream of intelligence! They already have about as many. Doubling the number of residencies means doubling the number of general positions and foreign postings. Working abroad, which for many intelligence officers remained an unattainable dream due to a lack of vacancies, will now become accessible to everyone. Intelligence will never let such a tempting morsel slip away.
This is especially important in light of the beginning cooling of relations between Russia and the West and the shift toward isolationism. Just as the Red Army left behind sabotage groups in territories the Germans were to occupy.
Russia confidently steps into the role of leader of rogue states—Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia. Friendship with them is growing by the hour, not the day. Western leaders do not yet understand the danger. They will only cry out bitterly in hindsight, discovering three hundred new residencies under their noses, and begin spending billions to deal with the consequences. But it was always so.
That is precisely why the negotiations on the unification of the Churches are conducted in deep secrecy. However, what kind of negotiations are these? A one-sided game! Part of the ROCOR leadership is openly working for Moscow and long ago sold out its Church, lock, stock, and barrel. When I hear that Archbishop Mark once again heads the ROCOR delegation, I cannot suppress a bitter smirk: “Moscow is talking to Moscow!”
For seventy years, ROCOR was the subject of KGB cultivation. I myself held in my hands the KGB’s plan for its subversion. You must agree that over such a time one could accomplish at least something! For the Church Abroad is small, while the KGB possesses the unlimited resources of a vast state. It is capable of replacing all the clergy. Only the KGB cannot recruit all the believers. A huge number of them oppose the union with Moscow. They do not believe in the independence of the Moscow Patriarchate from the state. They are terrified by what is happening in Putin’s Russia. In this lies the hope for the Church’s revival.
For Western people accustomed to clarity, it is difficult to understand that the unification talks are being conducted not with the Moscow Patriarchate at all. For it has no levers of power and acts only as a petitioner before the state. Its own churches do not even belong to it! As they passed to the state after the Bolshevik nationalization of 1917, so they remain there.
The churches have been transferred to it only for perpetual use. But in Russia, nothing is perpetual. If Putin were to cool toward religion and the church, all the seeming might of the Moscow Patriarchate would vanish like smoke.
In the negotiations with the Church Abroad, it plays the role of a reciter, voicing a text written for it by others: the presidential administration, the Foreign Intelligence Service, and the land mafia that controls real estate in the country and abroad. It is the mafia’s involvement that explains the rush to absorb the Church Abroad: the mafia does not like to wait.
Recently, a journalist friend from Moscow called me and laughingly reported:
“Here they’ve already joined you up in absentia and divided up your property!”
That means it has already been amicably decided which mafia groups will control which parishes of the Church Abroad (though why now call it “abroad”?).
To them will be added two new tribute payments: one to the mafia, and the other to the Moscow bishops’ own pockets: they didn’t work for nothing, and where else do parishioners pay in foreign currency?
None of this can be explained to the current foreign-born priests. They will not understand this Russian custom, which predetermines their fate.
Moreover, to the new masters they will become simply dangerous! For now in every parish a group of sociable young men from the nearest Russian consulate will appear. They do not need a foreigner in the parish at all; they will perceive him as an agent of the local special services, and will prefer a tried-and-true priest with a Russian passport.
The sly calls for unification coming from Moscow are full of omissions. For example, it is said that there are no longer any differences between the Church Abroad and the Moscow Patriarchate, except for their attitude toward Sergianism and ecumenism.
In fact, differences exist, and many of them. In the Church Abroad, believers are treated with more respect. Here, parish meetings are not closed until everyone who wishes has spoken. Here, rituals are performed more carefully, following strictly the canons of Tsarist Russia. Here, pagan idols are not consecrated, as was done recently by the Chuvash Metropolitan Varnava with the full approval of Alexy II.
But the main difference is that the parishes of the Church Abroad own their churches by right of property, whereas in the Moscow Patriarchate they belong to the state. When transferring to another jurisdiction, a foreign parish can take its church with it, but a Russian parish cannot. It must leave the church and all property to the Patriarchate.
Initially it was planned that the Church Abroad would enter the Moscow Patriarchate together with its churches. But this received unwanted publicity, causing indignation among the faithful.
However, there is another way: to come under the Moscow Patriarchate while keeping the churches for itself and limiting itself to commemorating Alexy II. But along with that commemoration, the Chekists will begin replacing the parish councils. This work is extremely easy in conditions of Western laxity and universal trustfulness. The KGB has had plenty of practice at it over seventy years.
The work with parish councils will proceed briskly. Patriots will be recruited, the wavering will be bribed, the too-clever will be killed. And from Russia a wave of fake emigrants will roll in, whom the intelligence service will task with getting themselves onto parish councils. If even a thousand dollars is now considered a large sum there, the Moscow guests will contribute tens of thousands.
In the end, the parish councils will vote to join the churches to Moscow.
As for the fake emigrants, there are already many of them now. I was surprised to discover this when I came to America. These people were sent to subvert the emigration from within. Their work is bearing fruit.
Recently here in America, I became acquainted with one of the priests of the Church Abroad. As is customary, I first asked under whose omophorion he resided—Metropolitan Laurus or Vitaly.
“For now under Laurus, and then we’ll see,” he replied.
Talk of schism is heard ever louder. In the event of union with Moscow, some parishes will go to Metropolitan Vitaly, others to the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church. It is persecuted in Russia, which gives it authority abroad. Many parishes and monasteries are joining it. A saying has even appeared: “The Church Abroad is now in Suzdal.”
And all this trouble in the quiet émigré swamp was stirred up by the KGB! However events develop further, everything will play into its hands. The KGB is playing a no-lose game with the Church Abroad. Whether it merges with Moscow or disintegrates in schism, it will cease to exist anyway. The unified spiritual center of the Russian emigration will disappear. Putin will have one potential political opponent less. That is why Operation “Church Abroad” was launched.
What will happen is what already happened in Russian history: the Whites left, the Reds came. The heirs of the Bolsheviks will destroy the last, miraculously preserved institution of Tsarist Russia.

2. HAS THE GODLESS POWER DEPARTED?

On November 7, at our St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Washington, Bishop Michael of Boston served a panikhida for those slain by the godless regime. I imagined what a solemnly grim dissonance it served for seventy years against the unbridled merriment that poured out on that day in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries. Millions of people openly rejoiced, and only the emigrants commemorated their fallen.

Then Bishop Michael delivered a sermon saying that the godless communist regime, fortunately, has finally become a thing of the past.

But that this is not so, anyone could become convinced just by passing into the church hall where the meeting with the bishop was to take place. There, on the bulletin board, hung a promotional poster of the Alexandrov Ensemble of the Russian Army. The very ensemble that wrote the current Stalinist anthem, originally called the Anthem of the Bolshevik Party. That anthem is what the new Russia now sings.

The poster was dotted with red flags. The Russian army on it was called the Red Army — the very army that multiplied the victims of the panikhida that had just been sung. And in the most prominent place was displayed a coat of arms, but not the double-headed eagle at all, but the ‘hammer-and-sickle’ Soviet one. The Song and Dance Ensemble is a subunit of the Ministry of Defense. The promotional leaflet could only have been approved by them. What further proof is needed of Russia’s return to the Soviet past?

To many emigrants it is unclear what happened to the godless regime: has it gone or remained? On the one hand, it has already been buried, but on the other, all its people are still in power, starting with Putin.

They would cease to be such if they repented. But they have no intention of doing so! On the contrary, everything Soviet is extolled in today’s Russia. And the trial of the CPSU in 1991 fizzled out under the weight of the powerful communist lobby. And the Russian people have not repented of the murder of the royal family. And the Moscow Patriarchate has not repented of its collaboration with the KGB and its work for the communists. No one in Russia has repented of anything, except for a handful of intellectuals in the early nineties.

But they were atheists. As for church repentance, I think I alone made it. And then I announced it from the TV screen, on the program ‘Top Secret,’ calling all my fellow Chekists to repentance before the Lord.

The next day my phone exploded with calls.

‘We have nothing to repent of!’ shouted enraged voices, both old and young.

As a result, I had to flee to America, escaping the revenge of my former colleagues. That is the kind of repentance Russia offered.

Yet many emigrants proceed from the assumption that there was some sort of repentance after all.

Bishop Michael of Boston used to be opposed to union with Moscow, but has now become a supporter. I asked him whether he was not sorry to hand over his flock to be slaughtered by the KGB. For along with Moscow priests, Putin’s state, headed by the security services, will come here. They will begin mass recruitment of emigrants. And then the FBI will lock them all up, just as massively. Both security services will be pleased, but many lives will be ruined.

The bishop replied with a historic phrase: ‘To be Orthodox means to be loyal to Russia,’ thereby approving the recruitment. But today’s Russia is not at all the sweet and naive peasant country that his ancestors left. Putin’s Russia is more reminiscent of Hitler’s Germany. I recalled the words of the old emigrant Count Lamsdorff about his compatriots who helped the USSR: ‘They thought they were helping Russia, but they were helping Sovdepiya.’ Now they will have to help Putin’s KGB empire.

Russians are fleeing from Putin. There are more political refugees from Russia than from any other country in the world! Last year, twenty-four thousand Russians asked for asylum in the West. Hardly would they be fleeing from that pacified Orthodox country that many emigrants imagine Russia to be.

Touching on the recruitment of emigrants, Bishop Michael explained that that too has become a thing of the past together with the godless regime. Because Russia, having become Orthodox, considers emigrants not enemies but friends.

But the Russian authorities have never and nowhere declared that! It calls emigrants compatriots, nothing more. And officially Russia is not an Orthodox state. The second largest ethnic group in it are the Tatars, and Putin constantly maneuvers between Orthodox and Muslim clergy. He wants to make Russia a member of the League of Islamic States. Could such a thing have occurred to a ruler of Orthodox Russia?

And most importantly, the head of intelligence, Lebedev, has nowhere said that Russian emigrants are no longer recruited. It was Bishop Michael who thought that up for him. And why not recruit emigrants, since they are citizens of Western countries, which has once again been declared the main enemy of Russia?

Bishop Michael is offering an unconvincing and speculative scheme. Is it worth sawing off the branch you are sitting on for its sake?

And as for recruiting emigrants, Putin has made it a priority area of intelligence alongside political, scientific-technical, and illegal espionage. Life itself pushed him toward this. There are so many emigrants now that they must be kept in check. If they start denouncing Putin, trouble awaits him. And universal loyalty can only be achieved through intelligence means. And they also have access to secrets.

Working on Russian emigrants in the KGB language is called the ‘EM line.’ A deputy for this line has recently appeared at each of the numerous rezidenturas of the Foreign Intelligence Service around the world. Under his command is a group of intelligence officers who work only on emigrants. This influx of fresh blood explains the unthinkable activity in absorbing the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Young officers want to show operational results. They are gnawing into the Church from all sides.

Recruiting emigrants is easy. In the hearts of many of them lives an embellished image of the homeland, a sort of Kitezh-grad, having little in common with the harsh Russian reality. They feel a sense of guilt toward the homeland that creates a favorable background for recruitment.

If you say to such a person, ‘Help Russia!,’ the tears are already in his eyes. This is called ‘recruitment on a patriotic basis.’ Cursed nostalgia! The intelligence services play on it.

Consciousness lags behind being, as Karl Marx said. Many emigrants think exactly according to Marx: Russia is returning to Stalinism, yet they still believe that in her is Kitezh-grad.

But the main value for intelligence is not them, but Orthodox Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen: the native inhabitants. They have greater access to secrets. Their intelligence capabilities are broader. Unaware of the pitfalls of our life, trusting in a Western way, boundlessly believing the priest, they will become easy prey for the SVR. Most of them are against union with Moscow. If it takes place, they will leave the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

3. THE SIN OF OUR BISHOPS

In its loyalist fervor, the ROCOR leadership ascribes to Moscow even those virtues that Moscow does not claim for itself. For example, it openly states that it does not wish to criticize Metropolitan Sergius and considers him a saint. (Indeed, the question of his canonization is currently being discussed.) Yet the ROCOR leadership, as if deaf to all this, extols Moscow for supposedly renouncing Sergianism!

In a recent Epistle of the ROCOR Bishops’ Synod from October 2004, it is asserted that the Social Concept of the Moscow Patriarchate essentially denounces the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius and the course it declared. But I found no denunciation of Sergianism there—only its blatant glorification!

The Concept does not contain a single word about the persecution of the Church in the Soviet period. As if to mock its admirers from the Church Abroad, the authors of the Concept characterize that period through the mouth of the Local Council of 1990, convened by the Sergianists under Bolshevik rule! That Council coolly remarks that after the Council of 1917–1918, all Local Councils “took place under conditions in which history made a return to the pre-revolutionary principles of church–state relations impossible.” Just what kind of history is this? Could we have more details, comrades?

The Council then continues: “Throughout its thousand-year history, the Russian Orthodox Church has been forming believers in a spirit of patriotism and peacefulness. Patriotism is manifested in a careful attitude toward the historical heritage of the Fatherland, in active citizenship that includes sharing in the joys and trials of one’s people, in zealous and valiant labor, in care for the moral state of society, in concern for the preservation of nature.” Is this not a Sergianist text through and through? One can even hear a direct quotation from his declaration. This is exactly how Patriarch Pimen loved to express himself, carefully avoiding any mention of Christ.

But what has, of course, captivated our bishops is something else. It is the words about the Church’s complete independence from the state, even to the point of disobeying it if the state forces Orthodox Christians to renounce Christ.

Yet how is this possible in practice? Would Putin and his followers really dare to set themselves against the whole world by putting forward the slogan: “Russians, renounce Christ!”? They aren’t complete idiots, after all! And what for? Any unseemly goal can be explained as concern for the homeland—which is exactly what is happening now in Russia.

And how can the Church be independent of the state if the state owns all its churches? Does it not also supply electricity and heat? It can just cut them off, as the police already do during arrests. So much for independence.

The Moscow Patriarchate cannot exist without state support. It has swollen to enormous proportions, while the number of believers is not as large as one might wish. Genuinely Orthodox Christians make up no more than one percent—a terrible secret.

No, the passages above do not recall a denunciation of Sergianism but rather the Stalinist constitution, never meant to be applied.

Without any confession, the leadership of the Church Abroad sends the Sergianists a forgiveness they never even dreamed of asking for. It directs us toward prayerful communion with unrepentant sinners. That is its sin.

But, fortunately, a new generation of clergy has been born in the West. Unlike the elderly hierarchs who were subjected to KGB influence all their long lives, this generation has grown up free. It loves Orthodoxy and Russian culture but considers itself in no way indebted to the Russian authorities. It would never occur to it to unite with the KGB-linked Moscow Patriarchate. Therefore, a protest movement has begun among them. They even have a slogan: “We don’t need Patriarch Putin!”

III. FSB AGAINST FREEDOM OF SPEECH

1. GENETIC HATRED OF JOURNALISTS

2. RUSSIA IS LOSING FREEDOM

These actions created the psychological backdrop for the FSB’s current offensive against free speech.

Putin’s ascent to the presidency was marked by repressions against the free press such as Russia had never known.

On the morning of May 11, 2000, a crowd of FSB officers in black masks surrounded a luxurious mansion in one of Moscow’s ancient lanes, which housed the headquarters of the Media‑Most holding. Its offense was that the holding’s NTV television channel, the Segodnya newspaper, and other media outlets had supported Grigory Yavlinsky, an opponent of the current president Putin, in the presidential election and had criticized the war in Chechnya.

The lane where Media‑Most is located is called Palashevsky. In medieval Russian, palash means “sword” – a Tatar word. In the Middle Ages workshops here forged swords for the Kremlin guard. Indeed, the Kremlin itself is close by: its red-brick towers rise just above the roofs of the neighboring buildings.

From my time in the KGB I know that the lanes adjoining the Kremlin are guarded with special care. Hundreds of video cameras are trained on them. It is hard to imagine that the Kremlin’s security men failed to notice such a large number of armed people. That means Putin knew everything in advance…

In his inaugural speech he made it clear that he had no intention of supporting democratic institutions. He declared outright: “We will support democratic institutions, but they too must serve the interests of society.” Yet democratic institutions serve the interests not of society but of the individual. There are times when an entire society – duped or politically immature – is wrong, and only one person is right. Russia’s history knows many such examples. One was Academician Sakharov, a fearless fighter against communism and the KGB in the 1970s and 1980s.

As was officially reported that same day, the reason for such aggressive FSB actions was a criminal case opened earlier under Article 285, Part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code, targeting former heads of the Ministry of Finance. The article is called “Abuse of Official Powers” and carries a penalty of up to three years. Yet the Media‑Most managers saw no logical connection between the deeds of former heads of Russia’s main financial body and themselves.

The FSB officers acted with deliberate roughness, as if dealing not with journalists but with bandits. Fragile secretaries were shoved out of offices, made to stand facing the wall, and roughly searched. Those who voiced indignation were told: “If you don’t want to stand against the wall for four hours, you’ll lie handcuffed on the floor the whole time!”

Oddly enough, such aggressiveness is historically uncharacteristic of the KGB; it is more typical of the regular police. Even during Stalin’s repressions NKVD officers, when arresting innocent people, behaved more or less decently and allowed themselves to relax only in the torture chambers, out of strangers’ sight. That was the peculiar chic of the KGB – something they taught me in the Minsk Counterintelligence School in the 1970s. Today the FSB has degenerated, turning into an ordinary police force. That is precisely why it poses a particularly great danger to Russian society.

The main initiator of this barbaric operation was General Zaostrovtsev, deputy director of the FSB. In the late 1980s, like thousands of other chekists, he left the KGB and went into banking and commerce. But in Russia such activity is inseparable from crime, so Zaostrovtsev, together with a group of colleagues who were also former chekists, returned to the FSB to protect himself. Media‑Most outlets had repeatedly published information about the financial machinations of FSB General Zaostrovtsev. It was he who chaired the FSB meeting that decided to rein in Media‑Most.

What especially irritated the FSB, however, was the program Independent Investigation shown on NTV in March 2000. It claimed that not so much Chechen fighters as Russian special services were involved in the bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow in the autumn of 1999.

According to Kremlin officials, Putin took the broadcast as a personal insult.

FSB officers seized a large number of video recordings from the Media‑Most group. This was done in violation of the law, with no proper documentation. If these materials have been entered into the criminal case, the law prohibits disclosing them before a court ruling.

But that was not to be! Ever since Soviet times the FSB has considered itself above the law. That same evening, the FSB’s official spokesman, General Zdanovich, appeared on the pro‑government First and Second channels, his face twisted with spite, waving some papers and shouting that the chekists had found evidence of illegal operational‑search activity at Media‑Most.

Yet one cannot deny that practically every Russian firm is forced, to some extent, to engage in such activity. After all, they cannot count on the state’s help! Russia’s police force may be the largest in the world, but it views businessmen solely as objects of extortion. Its work is weak, and for their own security hapless entrepreneurs have to rely only on their own resources. That is precisely why so many private security firms have appeared in Russia: the state ones are unreliable.

The FSB nurses a vindictive envy toward them. After all, the very best KGB counterintelligence officers left to work for those agencies, while the worst remained after the communist coup to swell the FSB’s ranks.

Media‑Most decided to sue General Zdanovich for slander. This became the first case of its kind in recent Russian history.

And Moscow’s Kuntsevsky Court ruled that the information was untrue and damaged the plaintiff’s reputation! It ordered the FSB to refute it.

But the journalists celebrated victory too soon: the Moscow City Court, known for its favoritism toward the special services, overturned the Kuntsevsky Court’s decision! Media‑Most’s lawyer Pavel Astakhov called it “an act of unprecedented judicial despotism.”

The media demanded a clear and concrete response from President Putin about what had happened, but he pretended to know nothing, imitating his idol Stalin. Instead of Putin, his press service replied, stating that “everyone is equal before the law.”

Perhaps they are equal – but not in Russia. Maybe in Denmark, where there is no corruption at all; or in Germany, or England. In Russia, the law has always been used as a tool of political reprisal. It is still used that way today. And who better to know this than Putin, a former chekist! I am certain that during his KGB service he himself repeatedly applied the law for precisely that purpose.

The shameful raid by FSB fighters on a media firm gave birth to the first political joke of Putin’s Russia: “I wonder why all the FSB raiders on Media‑Most hid their faces under black masks? Because President Putin himself was among them.”

After that, the Media‑Most office was searched another thirty‑eight times! Up to five hundred officers from the Prosecutor General’s Office and the FSB took part in each of these operations! Did they have nothing more important to do?

So what had this media holding done to enrage Putin? Simply that in its NTV broadcasts it criticized him – and mocked him savagely in the Sunday evening program Kukly [The Puppets]. And by personal nature Putin is extremely vindictive and reacts painfully to criticism, qualities cultivated by his KGB work. In this Putin differs strikingly from his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who was not offended when the same Kukly program satirized him and did not persecute his political opponents.

But Putin did! As Argumenty i Fakty newspaper reported, in the spring of 2000 Putin’s administration issued a final warning to Media‑Most and NTV owner Vladimir Gusinsky. It demanded that Putin cease to be a character on Kukly and that NTV coordinate its assessments of domestic and foreign policy with the presidential administration.

Gusinsky refused, rightly arguing that in that case NTV’s broadcasts would become uninteresting and his revenues would fall.

And so Vladimir Gusinsky was arrested. It happened in June 2000, while Putin was on a state visit to Spain.

When journalists from around the world asked him for clarification, Putin resorted to an outright lie. He said he knew nothing because he had been unable to get through to the Prosecutor General on the phone…

But such a thing is impossible in principle! To provide the president with uninterrupted communication with the country’s top officials, there is a powerful and technically sophisticated system run by the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information – FAPSI. It was created on the basis of KGB technical units. Today FAPSI is part of the FSB.

What guided Putin in telling the press such a blatant lie? I think it was his KGB experience. After all, the KGB always lied to the world’s journalists, and no scandals ever erupted. But this time a scandal did erupt – around the entire world…

Gusinsky was placed in Moscow’s Butyrka Prison, notorious for its barbaric conditions. The formal pretext was a charge of financial fraud, but during interrogation Gusinsky was ordered to do something else: to give up part of his NTV shares so that the channel could come under state control.

Gusinsky agreed to this proposal and was released. The criminal case against him was closed, which showed that it had originally been opened solely for political reasons.

Gusinsky left for Spain and there reneged on his commitments, claiming he had made them under duress. And then a detail extremely disadvantageous to the government surfaced – one of the protocols Gusinsky had been forced to sign in prison bore the signature of the Minister of the Press, Lesin! It testified that the state had been directly involved in liquidating NTV.

Putin and the government tried to present the struggle over NTV as purely economic, not political. They claimed NTV was not paying its debts to Gazprom and other companies. However, whenever an opportunity for an economic settlement appeared, the state immediately rejected it.

That happened in January 2001, when the American media magnate Ted Turner, owner of CNN, offered to buy a stake in NTV. In exchange he demanded guarantees of Kremlin non‑interference in his editorial policy. Those guarantees were not given, and the deal fell through.

“In this whole sad story there is one positive moment,” said Dmitry Ostalsky, then head of Media‑Most’s press service. “At last all the dots on the ‘i’s have been placed. No investors, no money are needed by either Gazprom or the Kremlin. They need only one thing – total control over NTV. The commitment to free speech proclaimed by Mr. Putin and his administration is nothing but verbal chaff, covering up the authorities’ real actions against independent media.”

In the spring of 2001, NTV – the only independent television company in Russia that dared criticize Putin – was destroyed. Brazenly and roughly, as is customary in the KGB.

No, the company itself still exists, but it is run by different people. In every broadcast they swear loyalty to the Kremlin and personally to Putin. There are no more independent television channels in Russia.

True, in the autumn of 2001 part of NTV’s old creative team resumed broadcasting on another channel, but it was soon shut down because it continued to criticize Putin. In June 2002 its activity was temporarily revived, but the critical edge in its programs had diminished. All the same, it too was closed. And for breaking up NTV, several hundred chekists – FSB officers – were rewarded with medals and valuable gifts.

3. Why the FSB Does Not Know How to Work with the Press

These events have exposed another fact that the FSB is trying with all its might to hide: that it does not know how to work with the press. Well, it simply has no such historical experience!..

Indeed, in Soviet times, the KGB did not actually exercise control over the press, although that task had been assigned to it. There were so many institutions for which this work was the main business that the KGB simply stepped aside.

Firstly, the press was controlled by newspaper editors themselves, who feared losing their leadership positions because of a subordinate’s minor mistake. Secondly, CPSU district committees throughout the country meticulously scrutinized every line of every newspaper in search of sedition. And thirdly, there was also an official ministry of censorship, called the Committee for Protecting State Secrets in the Press.

This Committee published a secret magazine that informed readers what information was forbidden to publish in the open press over the next three months. In appearance it resembled the thick literary journals then popular, and it was certainly printed in the same printing houses, but under the “Top Secret” classification.

It was distributed in a minuscule print run only to the most secret agencies. These included intelligence.

Oh, how fascinatingly interesting this magazine was!

For us young intelligence officers, it served as the sole source of information about what was happening in our country. From the dull list of prohibitions, we learned the unvarnished truth.

“It is forbidden to report in the open press that on August 26 of the current year, 1977, an unidentified flying object landed at the Sharapova Okhota station 20 kilometers from Moscow. It is also forbidden to mention Professor Azhazha’s lectures on ‘flying saucers’ and the professor’s name itself,” the journal dispassionately reported. Reading these lines, we threw up our hands. So, “flying saucers” do indeed exist! But then why does communist ideology completely deny them, and why does the KGB declare those who have chanced to see an unidentified flying object insane?!

Further, the journal reported that it was forbidden to write that the chairman of the USSR Committee for the Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy, Slavsky, was also the Minister of Medium Machine Building. And this secret ministry, as we already knew, dealt with the production of nuclear weapons.

“What cynicism!” we exclaimed. “The same person is both the chief fighter for banning atomic weapons and the creator of new types of them!”

Of course, with such powerful control over the press and other agencies, there was simply no place for the KGB in this work.

Therefore, the KGB’s efforts in working with the press were directed elsewhere—at recruiting foreign journalists. Through them, to publish false materials in the world press praising communism and the Soviet Union. Foreign journalists living in other countries were recruited by KGB intelligence. Those working in Moscow were induced to cooperate by the 17th Department of the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate (now the FSB).

In the structure of today’s FSB, such a department still exists.

The KGB also recruited Soviet journalists, but by no means to use them for the same purposes. After all, all journalists were required by their professional duty to publish propaganda materials about the USSR. The KGB used them for other things. Primarily, to obtain information about the mood among dissident intellectuals.

When I served in the KGB, stories about our citizens’ refusal to be recruited circulated among us like legends. For them, this was a risky step, requiring great courage. Those who most often refused recruitment were artists, writers, and, oddly enough, military men. As for journalists, I know of not a single such refusal. And how can you refuse if only after recruitment can they let you go abroad for a few days, where you will write a series of essays that may perhaps bring you fame? Your professional prestige will rise. But if you refuse, the KGB will take revenge—you will not be appointed head of a newsroom, your dissertation will not be allowed for defense, and the publishing house where your book was being prepared for release will return the manuscript without explanation. Even the apartment you were supposed to get after 20 years of waiting will be given to someone else. But the heaviest and most humiliating thing will be the ban on asking questions about the reasons for all this: your boss will only smile meaningfully and silently shrug his shoulders…

Therefore, alas, almost all Russian journalists of the older generation are KGB agents. Especially international journalists. One international journalist of my acquaintance was recruited at the age of 14 during World War II. He was then a cabin boy on a ship carrying material aid from the USA to the Soviet Union. In Stalin’s time, the rule that every Soviet citizen traveling abroad had to be an NKVD agent was enforced even more strictly, and the age of recruits was no hindrance. And what could a 14-year-old boy oppose to Stalin’s almighty NKVD? He is an FSB informant to this day…

Only CPSU Central Committee staff and their children were not subject to recruitment. But even here, the KGB found a loophole.

In the apparatus of the CPSU Central Committee, the lowest position was that of “junior referent.” Within the country, this post was considered very high, for many it was the peak of a career. Even ministers, just in case, obsequiously bowed to a junior referent of the Central Committee. His position offered unlimited opportunities for career growth, as well as a high salary, a personal car, the right to buy caviar, and, of course, the right to travel abroad. Therefore, very many of the Central Committee’s junior referents—solid forty-year-old men—gladly agreed to become embassy staff or foreign correspondents for Soviet newspapers and magazines. What could be more pleasant than spending several years in luxurious conditions in one of the Western capitals! These people also traveled to poor or excessively hot countries, but only to very high‑level posts.

But here was the catch: the junior referent’s regular position on the Central Committee staff was not retained. They had to resign, and upon returning to Moscow to get back into the Central Committee anew, which was far from always possible…

And immediately they lost their immunity from recruitment, becoming easy prey for the KGB organs. They were recruited, and in Soviet embassies abroad they diligently performed the functions of agents. Then they returned to Moscow, again settled into the Central Committee, and the KGB left them alone. But after a few years, the junior referents would again be drawn to the West, where the same fate would befall them once more, unless they received a promotion in rank back in Moscow.

One of my acquaintances, Yuri Tavrovsky, the Novoe Vremya correspondent in Tokyo, was such a temporary agent as many as three times. He was alternately enrolled in the agent network and then his personal agent file was deposited in the KGB archive. Finally, after returning to Moscow, he became head of the China sector in the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee. The head of the China Department of the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate (the present-day FSB) told me about him. Our conversation ended with the following dialogue:

• Our agent Tavrovsky, whom you know well, has become the head of a sector in the CPSU Central Committee, and we have dropped him…
• In my opinion, it’s he who dropped you! I corrected, and we both laughed…

4. FSB GOES ON THE OFFENSIVE

After the collapse of the communist regime — temporary, as it later turned out — the Committee for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press was abolished. Now its functions are performed by the FSB. This work is unfamiliar to it, but it is made easier by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the Committee’s employees transferred to the FSB. After all, almost all of its rank-and-file clerks are women, and in the conditions of rising unemployment and the massive downsizing of bloated Soviet ministries, they had nowhere else to go. Yes, the FSB pays little now, but it’s better than nothing at all. And who, other than women, could cope with the supremely boring work of a censor, rustling pages from morning till evening without getting up from the desk!

But the officials of the former Soviet State Secrets Protection Committee also gained political influence within the FSB! After all, an ideological vacuum had reigned there. The Communists, whose ideology the Chekists supported, were in opposition to the new authorities. The Chekists were still afraid to openly express support for them. Therefore, the FSB officially took up the defense of a powerful relic of the communist system — the military-industrial complex.

The interests of the FSB and the army are closely intertwined. Because absolutely all Russian generals and about 70% of officers are agents of the FSB. It is this factor, which has no parallel anywhere in the world except in China, North Korea, and Saddam’s former Iraq, that allows one to understand the true driving forces behind current Russian politics. From the war in Chechnya to the anti-American and anti-Western hysteria.

The first victim of the new FSB was a journalist who exposed the vile secrets of our military. This was the scientist and publicist Vil Mirzayanov, who wrote in the newspaper “Moskovskiye Novosti” in 1992 that chemical weapons were being produced in Russia.

The scientist was immediately arrested. A closed trial, directed by the FSB, was announced, which was to sentence the courageous truth-seeker to 12 years in prison for revealing state secrets. The FSB was already secretly celebrating victory, naively believing that now, as in the recent Soviet past, people would be afraid to argue with it.

But times had changed beyond recognition. People were no longer afraid of the FSB (although now they are again). As a result of intense public scrutiny, the falseness of the fabricated charges became clear, and Mirzayanov was forced to be released.

Later, the FSB took petty revenge on Vil Mirzayanov by long refusing to issue him a foreign passport for a trip to Germany to attend a congress of chemists fighting for the elimination of chemical and bacteriological weapons. This was already happening at a time when the FSB was unhinderedly issuing foreign passports to members of the Russian mafia.

Having suffered defeat, the FSB calmed down for several years, but then resumed its offensive against freedom of the press using exactly the same scheme. In 1996, it leveled the exact same charge of revealing state secrets against a retired naval officer, Captain First Rank Alexander Nikitin.

The FSB accused him of revealing the most shameful secret of the Northern Fleet by informing the international environmental organization Belluna of the accident sites of Soviet nuclear submarines. They caused enormous damage to the environment of the Baltic and Northern Europe.

The catch was only that the accident sites were already known in these countries before…

The FSB, through controlled Russian mass media, launched an attack on Nikitin. Journalists, without any restraint, wrote as follows: “The KGB officer I interviewed explained to me the essence of Nikitin’s crime. It turns out that the fact that the accident sites were known to everyone is of no significance. Nikitin is still a discloser of state secrets!” This was a sign of the infantilism of the new Russian journalism. Indeed, many young people who had grown up in an era of freedom and were unfamiliar with the cynicism of the FSB had entered it.

With some of them, who reviled Nikitin albeit on the FSB’s orders but quite sincerely, I carried out explanatory work. But I could not do this on the scale of all of Russia!

Thanks to broad international support, Alexander Nikitin was acquitted at the end of 1999. However, before that he had to spend a year and a half in prison, and then, having been released on his own recognizance not to leave town and living in his apartment, he would startle at every ring and expect a second arrest at any minute.

Then, in Vladivostok, military journalist Grigory Pasko was arrested on charges of espionage. He, too, had to be released. However, the court did not fully acquit him. Pasko and his lawyers filed an appeal, and the court sent the case for additional investigation.

And it coincided with Putin’s rise to power. The rules in Russia tightened. And Pasko was sentenced to four and a half years for what he had been acquitted of not long before.

Soon after Pasko’s conviction, Putin stated that he would pardon him if he appealed to him with a clemency request, thereby admitting his guilt of espionage for Japan. But Pasko rejected this possibility and chose to courageously while away his days in prison.

5. HOW THE FSB RECRUITS JOURNALISTS

In its work with the press, the FSB actively uses the agent network inherited from Soviet times. It is very extensive, as was mentioned above. The largest number of agents is on Channel One, the state television company ORT. This is explained by the fact that television in the USSR was originally created under the control of the KGB. After all, it harbored an enormous danger for communist ideology. What if an announcer, live on the air, shouted: “Down with the CPSU! Everyone to fight the communists!” This could lead to mass unrest. That is why the KGB spent decades wrapping the Ostankino television tower in a system of double and triple control. The huge complex of buildings of Russian television in Ostankino was built with the understanding that everything in it would be wiretapped and monitored. The wires of the listening devices have been embedded in its walls since the time of construction. It is said that on the basement floor there is a huge hall belonging to the FSB. All the listening equipment converges there. Absolutely all the journalists there know about this. Not trusting the walls, they discuss only trivial matters in their offices. To have a serious conversation, it is customary to go out into the corridor. Channel One remains the same mouthpiece of the FSB that it was in the Soviet years. The best illustration of this was the slanderous film about General Oleg Kalu­gin, shown on ORT in August 1999. In the late eighties, KGB general Oleg Kalugin committed a courageous act by publishing a series of exposé articles about the KGB in the Russian press. He showed the true face of the KGB, which in the eyes of most people had a heroic-romantic halo created by communist propaganda during the Andropov era. From General Kalugin’s articles, ordinary people in Russia learned that the KGB is not a refuge of heroes at all, but of careerists and opportunists, schemers and traitors, bringing not benefit but harm to the country. Having lost the psychological support of society, the KGB began to fall apart. And with it—the entire Soviet empire, which seemed unshakable. Hundreds of high-ranking KGB generals, before whom the entire country had trembled not so long ago, instantly lost their posts and found themselves in the position of impoverished pensioners. To this day they cannot forgive Kalugin for this. But now their revanchist sentiments are supported by the state itself. It is no coincidence that the film premiered on August 19, the anniversary of the communist putsch of 1991. The film is full of nostalgia for communism and animal hatred for Kalugin. Trembling with malice, retired generals asserted that Kalugin had been an American spy for decades. The cynicism of the situation was that Kalugin’s main accuser, former deputy chairman of the USSR KGB Viktor Grushko, had himself managed to serve time in prison on charges of state treason after the 1991 putsch. Grushko, which few know, is also Kalugin’s neighbor in his apartment building. How then could he live next to a spy for so many years?.. Moreover, Grushko most certainly authorized Kalugin’s appointment to his last post in the KGB—deputy minister of the USSR Atomic Industry for security matters. How then did he appoint a spy to head that most secret ministry?.. FSB Major General A. Zdanovich, appointed in 2002 as Deputy Director of the All-Russian State
Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK). When the film ended, and the list of authors appeared on the screen, I sighed with sadness. I personally know many of them. Of course, not all of them became FSB agents, but their bosses did. Otherwise the FSB would have been afraid to push its openly propagandistic film onto the national screen… There are also many FSB agents on Channel Two. The difference is that while on Channel One the agent network and eavesdropping equipment were accumulated over decades of the Soviet period, on Channel Two all this was created after 1991. Alas, already after the start of democratic reforms in Russia… Channel Two also belongs to the state and is called Russian. It was given that name in 1991 in opposition to the All-Union Channel One, when Russia, after the election of Yeltsin as president, declared its state sovereignty. The FSB began recruiting at Russian Television only two years after the creation of the new state, in 1993, in late autumn. This happened after the failure of the second communist putsch in Russia. Then Yeltsin began strengthening the role of the FSB in Russia, thinking that the Chekists were now on his side, while they still belonged to the communist past. They say that in those months he signed a decree reviving in Russia the procedure for receiving foreigners in state institutions, the same as existed under the communist regime. At that time, each ministry had a special room for receiving foreigners, equipped with eavesdropping and peeping devices. The right to meet with foreigners was held exclusively by the staff of the international department—KGB officers or its agents. It is said that the FSB director slipped this decree for Yeltsin’s signature as he was climbing the steps of the plane, departing on another trip. Frowning with displeasure, he signed the decree without looking: the FSB often uses such a cunning trick. But what matters to us is something else—many years have passed since the decree was signed, and it is still not being implemented. In 1991, there was no KGB agent network at Russian Television at all. After all, it was created anew as a mouthpiece of the opposition to the communists. All the journalists there were young, who had not yet been recruited. In earlier years, the KGB could have recruited them even on the student bench, but fortunately, the student years of these young journalists fell in the second half of the eighties, when the KGB began to weaken. I know for certain that at that time there was no agent network at the young Russian Television. After all, I had already decided to leave the KGB and was looking for a new job. Russian Television appealed to me most of all. The intelligence service, where I was still on the books, was paralyzed, and one did not have to go to work. At least, not for me, a referent to the head of scientific and technical intelligence. I decided to use my official position for personal ends to find out how many of our agents were on Russian television. To do this, I went to the RT directorate responsible for intelligence on the territory of Russia. It has a department that conducts agent-operational work in television. “Alas!” sighed the department head, “we have no agent network there yet. We didn’t have time to recruit… Perhaps you could help us?” Without a doubt, he assumed that I was getting a job at Russian television as an intelligence officer, not as a free journalist who had broken with the intelligence service forever. Incidentally, that is why they didn’t hire me—they were afraid to deal with a former KGB lieutenant colonel. But over the past decade, the FSB seems to have managed to recruit many. That state-run Russian television is now full of agents is felt in the very tone in which news is delivered there. This tone has two characteristic features by which the presence of the FSB can always be determined. First, it excludes criticism of communism. And second—criticism of the FSB. It is by these two signs that you can recognize an FSB agent on the television screen, no matter how self-assured his broadcast. A third sign is hatred towards General Kalugin, even though this person has done nothing wrong to the particular journalist personally. A favorite trick of the FSB is the taming of journalists writing on topics of intelligence and counterintelligence. The most typical example of this is the still fairly young journalist Alexandr Khinshtein, a columnist for “Moskovsky Komsomolets,” and now a deputy of Putin’s puppet State Duma. In the early nineties, he began his journalistic career with exposé articles about the KGB. They enjoyed success. However, Khinshtein soon felt a lack of information for new articles. After all, he himself had not worked in the KGB, and was forced to turn to those he had been castigating. The heads of the press services of the SVR intelligence and FSB counterintelligence welcomed him with open arms. Knitting their brows seriously, they offered to provide the young journalist with exclusive materials. Beaming with pride, he agreed. How was he to know that such a technique had always been used by the KGB in working with foreign journalists! Under the guise of top-secret information, taken almost from the desk of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, they were handed blatant disinformation, which the pleased journalists then spread around the world. The same happened with Alexandr Khinshtein. Very soon he became a mouthpiece for the heads of the intelligence and counterintelligence press services. A characteristic feature of the Putin era is the cooperation of the FSB and the MVD in the persecution of journalists. Now, unlike the Soviet period, complete understanding reigns between the FSB and the MVD. Long forgotten are the Brezhnev times, when the CPSU Central Committee in every way fanned the contradictions between the KGB and the MVD, fearing that they might unite with the aim of a state coup. This touching unity of the FSB and the MVD was vividly manifested in the persecution of Radio Liberty correspondent Andrei Babitsky. In his reports from the second Chechen war, he allowed himself to cover events not as the Russian special services would have liked. He told about losses of Russian troops, presented evidence of their atrocities against the civilian population. In the winter of 1999, Babitsky was arrested, then a staged exchange for Russian prisoners held by the Chechens was enacted. But it turned out that Babitsky was handed over not to the Chechens at all, as the official press trumpeted, but to the very same Russian special services, among whose agents there are also Chechens. These people took away Babitsky’s passport, forcibly gave him another, fake one, produced in MVD laboratories, and after that Babitsky was arrested again for possession of false documents. The Babitsky case was shrouded in a darkness of mystery. “The FSB has nothing to do with Babitsky’s detention!” General Zdanovich swore with pain in his voice from television screens, although a few minutes before that everyone could see the footage of the journalist being handed over to unknown persons, under which ran the line: “Footage produced by the FSB.” Here too, the FSB suffered a defeat. Now it tries not to recall this incident, and the journalist himself still works for Radio Liberty. In the nineties, the FSB also had no agents in the English-language newspaper “Moscow Times,” and therefore nobody hindered me from being published there. But since 2000, they no longer publish me… On one dark evening in the winter of 1999, on the northern outskirts of Moscow, a group of youths attacked a lone woman getting out of the metro. Her purse was snatched, she was hit several times. Despite the fact that there were few passersby around, the attackers were detained. One of them turned out to be a law institute student, the son of NTV television journalist Eleonora Filina. Although the journalist-mother was horrified, she took a quite critical view of her son’s action and resigned herself to fate. One can state with full certainty that she did not beat on the thresholds of militia offices and did not beg investigators, with tears in her eyes, to have mercy on her foolish offspring. Eleonora Filina was the host of the literary-artistic program “Ships Came into Our Harbor,” filled with a spirit of romance. It featured many poems, songs about sailors. It was intended to give viewers spiritual relaxation. There was no political aspect in the criminal case of the journalist’s son either, until an FSB officer called the militia investigator and demanded that the materials be transferred to the Lubyanka.

• But what for? - the militia investigator wondered.
• That’s none of your business! - the Chekist snapped. - Hand the case over to the FSB, and that’s it. That’s an order. But the FSB has no right to order the militia. And the militia investigator decided to make this call public. He turned to the editorial office of the independent “Novaya Gazeta.” An exposé article appeared. In it, the militia investigator stated that he did not want a return of Soviet order, when all issues of society’s life were secretly decided by the KGB. Alas, a year later this investigator was dismissed from the militia, as “Novaya Gazeta” bitterly reported: The FSB is vengeful… It turned out that an FSB officer had visited Eleonora Filina’s apartment. He promised help in mitigating her son’s fate in exchange for certain services. And the word “services” in the FSB language means only one thing—to become an informer. Evidently, even then the FSB was planning a hostile action against NTV, which soon took place on May 11, but did not have enough information about the situation within the journalist collective and therefore needed informants. The publication of the article in “Novaya Gazeta” caused a scandal. NTV, of course, reported the incident on television. The scandal was so powerful that General Zdanovich himself was forced to intervene. Speaking on the government television channel, he stated that all this was lies and slander against the organs, and that the matter was different. Simply, the FSB had planned to hire the journalist’s son into its service, but after what happened to him, they declined. And it was allegedly in order to inform about the refusal that the FSB officer took the trouble to visit Eleonora Filina at home. Now this was truly a lie! Every retired KGB officer will confirm to you that such a thing cannot happen. Yes, it happens that the FSB refuses to accept some candidates who did not pass the check. But cooperation with them does not cease! They continue to be used as agents, with the words: “You will supply us with valuable information—and we will still take you on to work in the organs!” Often this is how it is: what did not work out yesterday, works out today. After all, everything is decided subjectively, by a handful of bosses in the personnel department. But that’s not all. Personnel department officers are directly forbidden to inform candidates for work in the FSB about a refusal. Because in that case, the candidate might inquire about the reason, and it cannot be disclosed. This ban was introduced after a noisy scandal that erupted in the early eighties. At that time, one young graduate of a prestigious Moscow institute was refused admission to the intelligence service because his mother was a Jew. The USSR was a country of official anti-Semitism, and Jews were not hired for any prestigious work, first and foremost in the KGB. I was refused because my mother is a Jew? - the would-be intelligence officer asked. Yes! - the officer of the intelligence personnel department confirmed, averting his eyes: he himself, as it turned out, was also young and inexperienced. The young man told everything to his mother, and she wrote a complaint to the CPSU Central Committee. It began thus: “When I was called to the front in 1941, nobody asked if I was a Jew…” A huge scandal erupted, which, however, did not go beyond the walls of the Lubyanka. The young personnel officer was given a severe reprimand, and all his colleagues were forbidden to tell their charges anything not only about the reasons for refusal of employment in the KGB, but even about the very fact… Strangely enough, the FSB has the fewest agents in the communist mass media—“Pravda,” “Sovetskaya Rossiya.” The agent network is simply not needed there, because the political platform of these newspapers fully corresponds to the one shared by the Chekists themselves. About the FSB, its past and present, the communists write only with admiration. Moreover, in Soviet years the CPSU Central Committee forbade the KGB to recruit agents in the party apparatus, to which the party press also belonged. Now in the communist publications, only those who previously worked in other mass media and were recruited there are agents. But even these agents are not used by the FSB for their intended purpose: the Chekists fully trust the communists. The ultra-left opposition newspaper “Zavtra” stands apart. It is said that during Yeltsin’s time, many leading FSB workers, being in hidden opposition to his regime, were published there under pseudonyms. I think that there is an agent network in this newspaper. It is necessary to keep secret the close contacts of this newspaper with the FSB. The FSB also has a pocket political party—LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia). Through it, the FSB throws into the press political initiatives that anticipate by a step the authorities’ actions to return the country to the communist past. However, with Putin’s coming to power, the Kremlin also started doing this… Among these measures can be noted the speech of one of the LDPR leaders, Alexei Mitrofanov, at a State Duma session on May 15, 2000. Suddenly and without any connection to other issues under discussion, Mitrofanov proposed erecting a monument to Stalin in Moscow. The deputies’ reaction was muddled, but undoubtedly this step was inspired by the FSB. Because the image of Stalin is being used ever more openly in official propaganda after Vladimir Putin came to power.

6. HOW THE FSB FIGHTS THE PRESS ACROSS RUSSIA

In the Russian provinces, the independent press is not loved. The initiators of this dislike are the authorities themselves, mired in corruption. Usually, to fight the press, they use the crudest force—the police. The FSB is brought in only in complicated cases.
It should also be noted that in the Russian provinces, the FSB is even stronger and more influential than in Moscow. The reason for this is purely psychological—people still fear the secret services, just as in Soviet times. And provincial mores are more conservative than those in the capital.
Moreover, in the provinces, unlike in Moscow, they are not accustomed to standing on ceremony with journalists. Only in Moscow is there somewhere to complain, for example, to human rights organizations or foreign correspondents. This is all absent in the provinces. Only a small fraction of cases of brutal pressure on the press become public knowledge. A huge role in this is played by the Glasnost Defense Foundation—a public organization that defends freedom of speech and the rights of journalists. It is only thanks to this Foundation that the suffering of provincial journalists in Russia becomes known to Russians. Let us talk about them in more detail. For example, about how in the Volgograd region a policeman killed a journalist and not only did not suffer any punishment for it, but also continued to serve in the police!
For Western journalists, such a case would be something incredible, but in Russia it surprises no one.
In April 1998, the judicial collegium for criminal cases of the Volgograd Regional Court considered a cassation appeal from police officer Konstantin Solodyashkin, who had been convicted on February 4, 1998, by the Central District Court of Volgograd. This policeman was accused of the premeditated murder of Alexander Konovalenko, a journalist for the newspaper Krestyanskoye Slovo. The murder took place on June 6, 1995. The investigation dragged on for three long years. The killer was sentenced to only 5 years of imprisonment. Such a sentence is considered more than lenient in Russia. The minimum punishment for murder is considered to be 7 years. And the maximum is execution by shooting, which in recent years has been replaced by life imprisonment. But the court gave police officer Solodyashkin a punishment below the minimum threshold.
Nevertheless, police officer Solodyashkin considered even such a term too long and filed an appeal with the regional court. The court left the sentence unchanged. But the irony is that Solodyashkin was never taken into custody, continuing to work in the police, arresting and bringing criminal charges against other people! Is such a thing possible in America? Or in Germany? In today’s Russia—it is possible.
On April 16, 1998, in Saransk, the capital of Mordovia, a small ethnic republic on the Volga, an attempt was made on the life of the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Stolitsa S, Stanislav Kholopov. In the morning, as the journalist was waiting for the editorial car near the entrance to his home, he was attacked by two unknown assailants, who stabbed him twice, injuring his heart and liver.
It should be noted that Mordovia is known for its harsh customs. It was here, by Stalin’s decision in the thirties, that a vast network of camps was established, which still exists today. Under Stalin, political prisoners were held here; under Brezhnev and Andropov, they were too, but on a smaller scale. It is here that the infamous Yavas camp, once belonging to the KGB, is located. In classified documents, it was referred to by the pseudonym “Dubravny.” Indeed, Mordovia has many beautiful forests, but their beauty does not soften the character of the local inhabitants, four generations of whom grew up in a prison environment. Many children here know no other life except camp life—after all, their parents work in the camps: fathers as guards, and mothers as guards in the women’s camps as well, or as secretaries, nurses, phone interceptors.
Therefore, to the local residents, the murder of a journalist is not a sensation. The criminals who inflicted severe wounds on Stanislav Kholopov managed to escape. The journalist was taken to the third city hospital, where an operation was performed that lasted an hour and a half. His condition remained grave.
To investigate the circumstances of this case, an operational-investigative team was formed from officers of the criminal investigation department, the investigative department of the MVD of Mordovia, and the Leninsky district police station. (In Mordovia, as can be seen, Leninsky districts—which have been renamed in most large cities—have been preserved to this day. This indicates that the Communists are still in power in the Mordovian Republic. And they do not love the independent press at all!…)
In the opinion of the staff of Stolitsa S, the attack on Stanislav Kholopov was connected with his professional activities. The police also did not rule out such a version—but for some reason began searches at the newspaper’s office, assuming that the cause was internal conflicts within the team, and hoping in this way to find the client of the crime. But how often do journalists hire killers to eliminate their colleagues of the pen?
It must be noted that over the past three years, both official authorities and criminal structures have repeatedly attempted to exert pressure on Stolitsa S. Stanislav Kholopov was repeatedly threatened by phone, photojournalist Eduard Retunsky was beaten, and the editorial office was robbed in May 1996. In addition, the editorial office sued the MVD of Mordovia, and attempts were made to open a criminal case against the editor. On April 21, 1998, the Glasnost Defense Foundation appealed to the head of the Republic of Mordovia, N. I. Merkushin, and the republic’s minister of internal affairs, Yu. A. Lyashev, with a letter containing a demand for “a thorough, qualified investigation of the attempt on the life of Stanislav Kholopov” and expressing the hope that “in the leadership of the republic and in law enforcement agencies, there are still people who will have enough conscience and energy to expose the criminals and those who stand behind them, whoever they may be.” Need it be said that the investigation into the attempt on the independent journalist’s life came to nothing?
It appears that the local FSB was standing behind the police. Its influence is felt especially clearly in neighboring Tatarstan, where a rigid authoritarian regime under President Shaimiev has been established. Being even more authoritarian than the current Moscow rulers, he tries in every way to emphasize his independence from Moscow. But this is independence of a special kind. It symbolizes a movement not forward, toward democracy and freedom, but backward, toward communism and Stalinism. No wonder the local FSB here is called the KGB, just as in Soviet times. No one around is surprised, and only a few foreign tourists in Kazan, with caustic laughter, photograph the KGB sign on the building of the local counterintelligence. They are still allowed to do this for now…
The KGB of Tatarstan is more influential than the FSB directorates in other Russian republics. In the event I am about to describe, the KGB of Tatarstan did not formally participate, but its breath was felt very close.
On August 21, 1999, in Ufa, the capital of the neighboring republic of Bashkortostan, where Rakhimov’s despotic regime also reigns in an oriental manner, police officers beat Nezavisimaya Gazeta correspondent Vera Postnova, who had come from Kazan to prepare a report on an opposition rally, and editor of the local newspaper Vmeste, Viktor Shmakov. The journalists witnessed a clash between law enforcement officers and demonstrators trying to break through a police cordon to the Palace of Oil Workers, where the founding congress of the “All Russia” bloc was taking place. Vera Postnova and Viktor Shmakov, along with several demonstration participants, were beaten, forcibly put on a bus, and taken to Kirovsky police precinct, where the journalists were beaten again, after which they were held in a cell for 12 hours.
In the evening, Vera Postnova, together with activists of the Tatar nationalist opposition, was returning to Kazan by car, but not far from the town of Dyurtyuli (Republic of Bashkortostan), their car was involved in an accident. The occupants suffered injuries of varying severity and were taken to the district hospital.
Much here gives food for thought: after all, the police do not deal with political opposition rallies, do not hunt journalists because of their political views. All this is done by the KGB of Tatarstan. Was it not it that arranged the car crash for the unfortunate journalists and demonstrators?..
The FSB increasingly tries to exert pressure on journalists—both directly and indirectly. Direct pressure includes the overt obstruction of journalists in the exercise of their professional duties.
Thus, on April 2, 1999, in the center of Ulyanovsk on Lev Tolstoy Street, FSB officers beat photojournalist of the newspaper Simbirskie Gubernskiye Vedomosti Mikhail Vyalov, who was trying to photograph the moment of an operation to detain criminals by a task force of the local FSB’s anti-terrorism department. The photojournalist’s film was also exposed. Later, the FSB press service informed the editorial office of Simbirskie Gubernskiye Vedomosti that Mikhail Vyalov had not been beaten. He simply “stumbled and fell” when his documents were being checked.
This example shows that in the provinces, the FSB acts impudently and with impunity, just like its predecessor the NKVD under Stalin. There, the FSB does not encounter broad public resistance.
The impudence and self-confidence of the FSB toward journalists is manifested not only in Ulyanovsk, the birthplace of Lenin. In Voronezh, the head of the law and social problems department of the newspaper Komuna, Boris Vaulin, in November 1998 approached the head of the press service of the FSB Directorate for the Voronezh region, Alexander Timashov, with a request to clarify the reason for the arrest of the deputy head of the Voronezh region administration, the head of the financial department, Viktor Sitnikov. The head of the FSB press service refused, citing that “the leadership of the directorate does not recommend giving any information to journalists.”
Even in form, this answer was false. After all, the FSB is a military organization, and its chief gives his subordinates not recommendations, but orders. But an order not to give information to journalists?.. In our time, this sounds anachronistic, reminiscent of the Stalin era. Let us declare this order to be merely a polite recommendation!..
But the story did not end there. On the same day, Voronezh journalist Boris Vaulin turned to the head of the press service of the Interior Ministry Directorate with the same request. But the chief of the police press service also denied the information, citing the secrecy of the investigation. And in the evening, probably, the heads of the FSB and MVD press services met in a restaurant, at a free meal provided by the local mafia, and, dying of laughter, talked about how cleverly they had put the overbold journalist in his place.
Increasingly, the FSB tries to act impudently in Moscow as well.
According to a report from the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, an employee of that publication, Olga Bakushinskaya, was threatened over the phone by people who identified themselves as FSB officers. In connection with this incident of telephone hooliganism, the journalist appealed to the Savyolovsky District Prosecutor’s Office in Moscow. Naturally, this appeal had no legal consequences.
On March 30, 1999, a journalist for the Moscow newspaper Versiya, Andrei Zhdankin, contacted the Glasnost Defense Foundation. He reported that after the publication in issue 11 of that publication of his article “Chekists Without Limits,” which contained information about the FSB’s protection of criminal groups in the North Caucasian republic of Adygea, he was threatened over the telephone by unknown persons.
The FSB tries to use the trick of blatant pressure on the press, developed by its Stalinist predecessors. It is based on the FSB’s confidence that the bulk of the country’s population, including journalists, does not know their civil rights. Applying this trick against Moscow journalists, the FSB sometimes suffers a crushing moral defeat.
In May 1996, an explosion occurred in the building of the Ostankino military commissariat in Moscow. As usual, the FSB and the police were completely unprepared, and they failed to obtain any information about the explosion. The security services began to hush up this explosion intensively.
And then, in June of the following year, 1997, the well-known Moscow journalist Alexander Podrabinek published a series of articles about the explosion in the magazine Express-Khronika. Naturally, the FSB demanded that he disclose the materials on the basis of which he wrote the article.
The uneducated Chekists were not even deterred by the fact that Alexander Podrabinek is one of the leaders of the “Memorial” Society, which investigates the crimes of the NKVD-KGB during the Stalin era.
Of course, he refused to give the FSB the materials, citing Article 41 of the RF Law “On Mass Media.” This law directly prohibits journalists from disclosing to the authorities the sources of their information obtained on a confidential basis. It is not for nothing that the FSB so actively advocates for the revision of this law, using controlled political parties in the Duma—the Communists and the LDPR. The new version of the law is already ready. According to it, a journalist is obliged to reveal his source of information not even to a court, but to an ordinary investigator, who could be any FSB officer.
But let us return to Alexander Podrabinek. Not only did he not disclose his source of information to the FSB, but he also used this instance to morally denounce the FSB through the mass media. He recalled that “the state security organs have never once expressed repentance for their criminal activities during the time of socialism” and that “in the FSB apparatus, people responsible for political repressions in the USSR still work.” Therefore, he doubts the ability of the FSB investigative bodies to conduct a preliminary investigation objectively and within the framework of existing legislation.
In the provinces, the FSB holds journalists accountable. In December 1997, according to a report from the Novosibirsk newspaper Moment Istiny, the Central District Court of Novosibirsk satisfied a lawsuit for the protection of business reputation, filed by the FSB Directorate for the Novosibirsk Region against this newspaper. The reason was the publication of a series of articles in which the FSB Directorate for the Novosibirsk Region was blamed for the collapse of the regional economy. By the court’s decision, the newspaper’s editorial office was ordered to pay 500 thousand rubles.
In small provincial towns, the leadership of the mayor’s office, the FSB, and the police, as a rule, constitute one and the same corrupt group. Moreover, all local leaders are old and proven KGB agents from Soviet times. Therefore, exposés by local journalists of abuses by one branch of power inevitably encounter opposition from all the others.
For example, there has long been talk that the FSB bodies unofficially support fascists. Many articles have been published about this, but, alas, only in the central press. When such articles appear in the provincial press, they greatly irritate the local leadership. Because it is precisely here, at the regional level, that the cooperation between the authorities and fascists manifests itself most clearly.
According to a report from the Nizhny Novgorod television company “Dialog,” in November 1998, the mayor of the tiny town of Kstovo, near the Volga, suddenly refused to continue his regular appearances on the local television station “Set NN.” The mayor’s irritation was caused by a series of broadcasts by the television station recounting that he, the mayor Vyacheslav Bolyachek, together with the district FSB department, was providing patronage to the local branch of the fascist organization “Russian National Unity.” This news in itself is not staggering, because it has long been known that mayors of other cities, and the heads of other FSB and police departments, do the same. The sensation would have been something else—if they had supported democratic organizations. Then everyone would truly have been surprised.
Vyacheslav Bolyachek declared that the district administration had not assisted any party, any movement, had never cooperated with any party, and demanded that the radio station apologize to him and to the heads of the relevant law enforcement agencies, that is, the FSB.
Now that is truly strange! Russian law does not recognize indirect apologies. Only the plaintiffs themselves can demand them, and the FSB could well have demanded such apologies from the television station “Set NN.” But for some reason, it did so through Bolyachek. In this, of course, only a weak knowledge of Russian laws by the provincial Chekists was revealed.
But it was not just that. By demanding apologies through the local mayor, the Chekists openly indicated that he is their comrade-in-arms. Vyacheslav Bolyachek called on representatives of state bodies, parties and movements, as well as entrepreneurs, to refuse cooperation with the television station “Set NN” and demanded from the FSB and the prosecutor’s office of the Nizhny Novgorod region a thorough investigation, the identification of the authors of the slander, and the taking of measures against the guilty. The mayor of Kstovo also appealed to the Judicial Chamber for Information Disputes under the President of the Russian Federation with a request to provide a moral and legal assessment of what had happened. Thus, the FSB uses its supporters in local government bodies to apply pressure on the free press.
Sometimes, in the Russian provinces, journalists are killed for refusing to become agents. In 1996, in Chechnya, under unclear circumstances, journalist Nadezhda Chaikova was killed. Shortly thereafter, an article was published in issue No. 42 of Obshchaya Gazeta for 1996 under the headline “Nadezhda Chaikova Refused to Work for the FSB.” The FSB was so annoyed by this article that it created a special commission for an internal investigation.
Three months later, the commission reported on the results of its work. Citing information from FSB agents in Chechnya, the commission asserted that Nadezhda Chaikova was killed by “one of the bands.”
But some of those bands, by the way, work for the FSB. And, besides, I know that commissions for internal investigations are not created at all when someone from the outside, including journalists, has been killed. These commissions are created only after the leak of undesirable information. It must be that this was what the aforementioned commission was engaged in. The answer as to who killed Nadezhda Chaikova and why is clear even without any commission. The file with materials on the murder is surely stored in one of the safes of the FSB, and, in order to familiarize oneself with them, no commission needs to be created. The permission of the department head is sufficient…
In the last years of Yeltsin’s rule, at the end of 1999, signs of a tightening of the political regime were already clearly visible in Russia. The pretext for this was the second Chechen war. The FSB again felt at ease, especially in the provinces. In its unending struggle with the press, it returned to the slogan of the Soviet era that “ill-considered” articles by journalists disturb public tranquility.
A tentative step in this direction was taken in October 1999, when in Yekaterinburg, the acting head of the FSB Directorate for the Sverdlovsk Region, B. Kozinenko, sent a significant letter to the Ural Regional Directorate for Registration and Control over Compliance with Russian Federation Legislation on Mass Media. It claimed that in some newspapers of the Sverdlovsk Region, materials had allegedly appeared that contributed to the destabilization of the socio-political situation. Among them, two articles were named in the letter: “The Mad Bomber” (published on September 7 in the newspaper Vecherniye Vedomosti iz Yekaterinburga) and “The Bomber Mukhin Was Shaking from Drunkenness” (Komsomolskaya Pravda, September 16).
These articles discussed the possibility of terrorist acts in Yekaterinburg. B. Kozinenko reported that as a result of an inspection conducted jointly with the GUVd of the Sverdlovsk Region, the information contained in both articles was not confirmed. At the same time, in the opinion of the head of the local FSB directorate, both had provoked a negative public resonance, although there was no evidence of this negative resonance either. In connection with this, B. Kozinenko proposed that the regional directorate take appropriate measures in accordance with the current legislation.
The concern of the FSB chief becomes understandable only now. After all, shortly before this, in Moscow and a number of other cities, strange explosions had occurred, as a result of which the second Chechen war began, leading to Putin’s ascension. Even then, there was much talk that the secret services were involved in these explosions. This was confirmed in September of that same year in Ryazan, where the FSB, it seems, was preparing to blow up a residential building. Vigilant residents noticed strange preparations. They called the police, and then the FSB declared it all to be an exercise. It is reasonable to assume that similar explosions were also planned in Yekaterinburg, but vigilant journalists learned about it, thereby saving thousands of human lives. The journalists thwarted the explosion, and the annoyed FSB chief, who now had nothing to report to his superiors, complained about the journalists to the regional press control directorate. Truly, such a thing is possible only in Russia.
Even in St. Petersburg, the FSB acts just as unbridled as in any small provincial town, from which complaints sometimes do not reach Moscow.
St. Petersburg also historically belongs to the cities where there was no one to complain to. After all, unlike Moscow, during Soviet times there were no foreign correspondents there, and the local KGB directorate was raised on harsh traditions of fighting dissidents.
They manifested themselves in May 1998, when Captain Nikitin, who was then accused by the FSB of espionage and later acquitted, was giving an interview live on air. As soon as Nikitin began speaking, answering the correspondent’s questions, noise suddenly appeared on the air, and then the voices of the advertising service of another radio station were heard, completely drowning out Nikitin’s press conference.
As a result of the conducted investigation, it was established that the equipment of the radio station “Gardirika,” which was transmitting Nikitin’s press conference, was in working order, and the interference that arose was explained by the connection of a jamming device to the telephone cable from which the broadcast was being conducted. The materials of the internal investigation were handed over to the prosecutor’s office of the Central District of St. Petersburg, where they, as was to be expected, safely disappeared. After all, the prosecutor’s office and the FSB are twin brothers. In Russia, complete mutual understanding always reigns between them.
But recently, the FSB has begun to act openly and crudely in Moscow as well, evidence of which was the destruction of the only independent private television company, NTV. But now, leafing through the press pages of five years ago, one realizes that the psychological conditions for this began to be created earlier, as soon as Putin became prime minister and then was declared Yeltsin’s successor.
The repressions began at the editorial office of Novaya Gazeta—an independent mass medium that reported on the FSB, the Chechen war, and the mores of Russia’s ruling elite with unvarnished truth. On August 24, 1999, the radio station “Echo Moskvy” reported that the bank accounts of Novaya Gazeta’s editorial office had been blocked, according to the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov, by “the maximum claims of the tax inspectors being the improperly bureaucratically formalized business trips of our correspondents to the combat zones in Chechnya. They were connected with the ‘Forgotten Regiment’ action, which told how the command of our troops abandons, betrays its soldiers in battle. Also, the tax authorities’ attention was drawn to business trips to the North Pole and to representatives of the extremist Muslim movement ‘Taliban’.”
Dmitry Muratov also reported that during the previous four months, the editorial office of Novaya Gazeta had been repeatedly subjected to inspections by the tax authorities. Moreover, the tax inspectors performed functions that were not inherent to them. They acted as agents of the FSB. Without hiding it, the tax inspectors told the employees of Novaya Gazeta: “You must know whom to be friends with and which headlines to print.”
Nevertheless, the editor-in-chief emphasized that, despite such actions by the tax police, the newspaper would continue to be published. He suggested that possible reasons for the situation could be a series of publications about corrupt FSB generals, and Yuri Shchekochikhin’s appearances on this topic.
On August 26, Dmitry Muratov reported that the newspaper’s accounts had been unblocked, and the public relations department of the State Tax Service of Russia issued a statement that the territorial tax inspectorate had been instructed to suspend the collection of fines imposed on Novaya Gazeta.
But the repressions against Novaya Gazeta did not end there. They merely took on a covert character. On March 7, 2000, unknown criminals hacked the computer network of Novaya Gazeta. The issue that was to include materials concerning the financing of Putin’s election headquarters was planned for publication but did not appear because of this. Editorial representatives noted that in recent times, pressure had been exerted on journalists in connection with publications about the situation in Chechnya and the ties of high-ranking officials with business. The editorial office also received proposals to change the newspaper’s political line in exchange for financial assistance. The editorial office, in the course of its own investigation, concluded that the possibility of a technical error that could have led to the destruction of the newspaper issue was completely ruled out.
A powerful impetus to the FSB’s attacks on the free press was given by the second Chechen war. With its start, the FSB began feeding the press the thesis that the USA had illegally imported a large batch of dollars into Russia to bribe journalists who criticized the actions of the Russian troops in the Chechen war. The goal was perfectly clear: to declare everyone who dared to expose the Chechen war an American spy and a traitor to the motherland.
To instill in ordinary people the idea that a journalist cannot defend human rights, stand up for the humiliated and insulted out of the call of the heart, but only for money. The FSB stirs up the idea that journalists are venal creatures capable of working only for a bribe.
But the funniest thing is that the overwhelming majority of Chekists indeed think so! I remember how many times during my years of service in the KGB I had to argue with my colleagues, proving that writers and journalists, far from all writing for money, sometimes even to their own detriment. This does not fit into a Chekist’s thinking. They compare writers and journalists to themselves.
To promote such views, the FSB uses its people in the State Duma. But, as always, unconvincingly.
Thus, on February 2, 2000, in St. Petersburg, a press conference was held at which State Duma deputy Alexei Alexandrov declared that a large batch of US dollars had been illegally imported into St. Petersburg to bribe Russian journalists…
Everything about this press conference looked foolish, and first of all, the choice of venue—the St. Petersburg branch of ITAR-TASS. This agency, although no longer officially state-owned, remains the mouthpiece of the authorities, as it was throughout all the Soviet years. It is noteworthy that precisely at ITAR-TASS, the former head of the Foreign Intelligence Service’s press service, Yuri Kobaladze, was sent to the position of deputy to its president after his dismissal from his previous post. The presence of the secret services in ITAR-TASS remains very strong. A significant portion of ITAR-TASS correspondents, as in Soviet times, are intelligence officers. Clearly, without coordination with the FSB, the St. Petersburg branch of ITAR-TASS would never have dared to provide its hall for any press conference.
Deputy Alexandrov himself also gave a stupid answer to journalists’ questions about which news agencies had reported the money allegedly being lent or already received. He stated that he had no such information (then why did he hold a press conference, may one ask?), but he had no doubt about the reliability of the dollar import and even called on journalists and law enforcement agencies to be vigilant. This means he received this information from the secret services. But why, in that case, do they not hold press conferences themselves?
However, almost on the same day, the head of the FSB Public Relations Center, Alexander Zdanovich, stated that the Russian secret services were verifying information about the injection into Russia, through Arab and American banks, of 1.5 billion dollars to lobby for the interests of Chechen fighters in the mass media.
The FSB continues, dully and unconvincingly, to accuse of corruption all journalists who reveal the dirty truth about the war in Chechnya. Thus, considerable annoyance to the military top brass and the FSB was caused by the articles of the courageous journalist from Novaya Gazeta, Anna Politkovskaya, about the crimes of the Russian military in the Chechen war. At the risk of her life, she traveled to the front, met with ordinary Chechens and Russian soldiers, and learned much of what the country’s top leadership in Moscow would not have wanted to hear at all—for example, reports of torture, executions, and abductions of peaceful civilians carried out by Russian soldiers in Chechnya.
In February 2002, a representative of the Public Relations Center of the army stationed in Chechnya, Ilya Shabalkin, declared that Anna Politkovskaya traveled to Chechnya “to resolve her financial problems and disagreements with certain foundations, in particular with the Soros Foundation,” which allegedly paid for the journalist’s trips. This lie appeared especially cynical precisely in relation to Anna Politkovskaya, who risked herself while working in Chechnya. She was subjected to silent obstruction and even provocative detentions by Russian soldiers. On October 7, 2006, Anna Politkovskaya was killed in the entrance of her own apartment building.
Since 2000, when Putin officially became president, pressure on the press intensified. Regional FSB directorates, sensing the mood reigning in the Kremlin, themselves began to undertake actions to restrict the rights of journalists in their regions.
Thus, the FSB Directorate for the Volgograd Region forced the editors of some newspapers to conclude a cooperation agreement with it. This cooperation implied that the newspapers would cease publishing sharp critical materials, and in return would receive the favor and support of the FSB. Those who refused to conclude this agreement would be recognized as dissidents and outcasts.
In April 2000, the Moscow correspondent of the Franco-German television company ARTE, Philippe Lanier, decided to take a telephone interview on this matter from the head of the press service of the Volgograd FSB Directorate, I. Kuznetsov, but the latter refused to speak with Lanier on the phone. But isn’t the press service seemingly created precisely to communicate with journalists! However, in the Russian secret services, it apparently operates for other purposes—concealing the truth and conducting disinformation actions.
The trend towards restricting this freedom is especially strong in regions permeated by the mafia and corruption. The most vivid example is the Far East. There, the introduction of “information security” is implemented on a grand scale!
On March 11, 2002, in Vladivostok, the first meeting of the information security council under the governor of Primorsky Krai was held. And the governor of this krai, Darkin, is a prominent figure of the local mafia, which is known to everyone. Many Russian mass media have repeatedly reported on this.
The Primorsky Information Security Council included 17 people, mainly representatives of the power structures. It is headed by the former acting head of the FSB Directorate for Primorsky Krai, Alexander Gromov. At its first meeting, of which journalists were not even informed, the council defined its main tasks. The chief among them is the implementation of decisions of the highest state authorities on the technical protection of state secrets.
But this task has long been solved! There are state bodies that professionally handle the protection of secrets. These are the same FSB and the relevant subdivisions of the Ministry of Defense. Why force oneself on

This article in «Izvestia» was clearly written under the dictation of the FSB. It was precisely there that the newspaper’s journalists gleaned information about my patronymic and my telephone number. They were taken from my officer’s personal file in the intelligence service’s personnel department. But what caused particular bitterness was something else — the fact that the journalists of «Izvestia», once renowned for their democratic convictions, now, upon hearing the name of General Kalugin, immediately call the FSB.
Nevertheless, I managed to publish the full text of Kalugin’s letter to Putin! It was done by the popular newspaper «Versiya». In its editorial commentary, it wrote only the following: «The opinion expressed by General Oleg Kalugin in this letter does not necessarily coincide with the point of view of the editorial board. Nevertheless, the editorial board of «Versiya» considers it possible to give the floor to a man who has been publicly called a traitor».
These words testified that not all of the Russian press was yet under the FSB’s control at that time. And that the FSB is not all-powerful. The publication of Kalugin’s letter in «Versiya» provoked terrible irritation of the FSB and the wrath of Putin. This wrath was also directed at the FSB, which had failed in its task of preventing the publication of Oleg Kalugin’s open letter in Russia. Among «Versiya»‘s readers, this letter evoked a deep response. And I was triumphing…
But trouble soon began for «Versiya». In the winter of 2001, a group of FSB officers descended upon the editorial office. They conducted searches and interrogations. The formal pretext was that «Versiya» had published a photograph of the location of the sunken submarine «Kursk», taken from a foreign satellite. This information was deemed secret, even though it was already known to the whole world and, in fact, had come from abroad. But this circumstance did not embarrass the Chekists. Nowadays, they are generally prone to fabricating false espionage cases. And the investigation in «Versiya» was conducted by military counterintelligence, which is distinguished by its particular brazenness and unscrupulousness in its methods. After all, it was accustomed to working among disenfranchised Russian soldiers and officers who had nowhere to complain.
«We don’t like all your publications about the FSB!» the military counterintelligence officers meaningfully told the editorial staff in private conversations. Without a doubt, among these publications was also General Kalugin’s open letter to Putin.
A stormy investigation unfolded in the editorial office of «Versiya», but in reality it was merely a cunning Chekist game. Journalists began to be summoned for interrogations, although there was, in general, nothing to talk about: well, they published a photograph, so what? Nevertheless, the journalists were interrogated many times over dozens of hours. They had no right to disclose the content of the interrogations. But what kind of conversations took place there can be easily guessed — they were recruitment-type conversations. That is precisely why so many journalists were summoned: so that later it would be impossible to guess which of them had been recruited and was now secretly cooperating with the FSB. Nothing other than recruitment goals can explain why the FSB demanded the journalists’ personal files from the personnel department. There, compromising materials can be found, which are easy to use for recruitment.
Soon the investigation ceased, having yielded no results. But it only seems that it gave nothing: it appears the FSB managed to bring «Versiya» under control.
The newspaper was as if substituted. The tone of its articles became slightly more sluggish, conciliatory. Yes, there are still materials critical of the FSB’s activities, but I can’t shake the feeling that they are written under its dictation.

6.

In 2000, my book «KGB in Japan» was finally published by the publishing house «Tsentrpoligraf». It was the Russian version of the book «The Spy Who Loved Japan», published in Tokyo in 1994. It was precisely that Russian text that I was hiding under the bed at that time. It was what the FSB was trying to get hold of by any means. And now — it can familiarize itself with it on the pages of the book. The Russian book is larger than the one that came out in Japan. For it, I wrote several new chapters describing the work of the Russian KGB and FSB on the territory of Russia. This activity causes direct damage to the civil rights of Russians.
Seven leading Moscow publishing houses rejected the manuscript, unwilling to spoil relations with the FSB. However, the eighth, «Tsentrpoligraf», agreed. This shows that at that time, freedom of speech in Russia had not yet been completely stifled. A journalist wishing to break through the obstacles erected by the FSB in 2000 could still do it. But day by day it became ever more difficult…
APPENDICES. Selected appearances by the author in the press.
HOW THE KREMLIN INFLUENCES THE WHITE HOUSE
(Interview of Vladimir Bukovsky by writer Konstantin Preobrazhensky)

(Published: newspaper “Novoye Russkoye Slovo”, 2009)
MYOPIA

In the 1990s, one could encounter laments in the Moscow press that the twentieth century could have become the Russian century, but it did not. Well, one can agree with that. But the twenty-first century certainly has, at least its first decade. The West is on its knees before the Russian Federation, whereas it regarded the much more powerful Soviet Union with contempt and mockery. Nothing like this has ever happened in world history.

How easily Putin’s Russia achieved this “authority” in just ten years! Its current rulers are cleverer than the Soviet ones. Alongside oil blackmail, they masterfully exploit the West’s weaknesses and prejudices: its gullibility and misplaced gentlemanliness, political correctness and tolerance, softness and love of comfort, inability to overcome life’s difficulties. Western people are raised for a safe life in a society of gentlemen. They do not know how to react to our Soviet boorishness; they are at a loss, do not know what to answer—after all, they have never encountered it in their lives!

France is especially deeply penetrated by Russian influence. But in June of this year, 2010, it allowed itself a small act of rebellion. Its intelligence services came to the conclusion that the cathedral of the Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP), which Russia is to build on Quai Branly in Paris, could become a center of espionage. Nearby are strategically important sites—such as the headquarters of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI). High-ranking French officials also live in this area.

And on top of that, the French philosopher Alain Besançon stated in an interview with the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita that “the Russian authorities also use for these (intelligence) purposes the Orthodox Church, which is in the hands of the FSB.” I could not believe my eyes: just a few years ago, saying such things in the West about the Moscow Patriarchate was considered a sign of bad taste. I have experienced this myself more than once.

But even this rebellion revealed a profound misunderstanding of today’s Russia. What do you think worried the French counterintelligence officers most? The fact that the documents for the acquisition of the land plot for the church were signed by the property manager of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Kozhin. And he is a former KGB officer…

And what about the rest of Russia’s top officials? They are all the same, and the word “former” is merely a legend that the West gladly swallows for its own peace of mind. So call a spade a spade, dear French counterintelligence officers! But they are prevented from doing so by the political correctness Moscow skillfully exploits.

How can one not recall another statement by Alain Besançon from that same interview with Rzeczpospolita? “Moreover,” he said, “French companies are poorly informed about the situation in Russia, because they receive information from pro-Russian organizations, and those deceive them. I am referring to such ‘think tanks’ as the French Institute of International Relations in Paris, which is swarming with Russian agents. These people keep babbling, against all common sense, about Realpolitik in relation to Russia. For several decades the French refused to believe that the Soviet regime was criminal. Yet it never went away—it was simply hiding behind a Potemkin façade. Now the French are once again closing their eyes to everything. The West is again captive to the same illusions.”

Yes, it must be acknowledged that the KGB empire created by Putin has proved highly effective in foreign policy.

Alain Besançon gave this interview in connection with the crash of the plane of Polish President Lech Kaczyński near Smolensk. Alas, the West “swallowed” this very strange catastrophe too, and did not let it aggravate relations with Russia. One wonders, what will it have to swallow next time?

Naturally, Vladimir Putin personally gave the French side a fitting answer. “This is yet another delusion of journalists, which has no foundation whatsoever,” he declared during a meeting with former French President Jacques Chirac.

I think he was right in his own way. France is so saturated with Soviet agents that the new cathedral of the Moscow Patriarchate adds nothing fundamentally new to the matter. One ROC MP cathedral more or less does not change things. But this cathedral is destined for a broader function: to be a symbol of the Russian presence in the West. Just as the ROC MP itself will no longer limit itself to espionage, which is essentially a mere legacy of the Soviet era. It will become the guiding ideological organ of the Orthodox-Chekist realm, an analogue of the Central Committee of the CPSU of the Soviet era. And then criticism of state officials will be equated no longer with extremism, as now, but with sacrilege. Many in the West will greet this “Russian Vatican” with enthusiasm. And from there it is only a step to the restoration of the monarchy. Then there will be no need to stage the comedy of elections.

And yet someone in France dared to address Putin with such an indelicate question! Is that possible in America? After all, the presence of the ROC MP here is far greater…

Alas, here no one dares to criticize the ROC MP! The attitude toward religion in America is even more cautious. Here the subject of religion is generally avoided, not mentioned in vain. The idea that Church and state are separated by an insurmountable wall is too deeply ingrained here. The thought of using the Church for espionage provokes irritation. Not toward the cynical spies, but toward those who speak of it. And I have experienced this more than once.

Sometimes I polish the Russian of graduates from American universities. They are already fully formed specialists on Russia, but even they find it difficult to understand what is so dangerous for America in the fact that a significant part of the Church Abroad has been seized by Moscow. I explain this to them at length and persistently, but they still look at me with disbelief. Their left-leaning professors have offered them a more optimistic conception of Russia.

Besides that, in America the very idea that someone is trying to influence this country is unbearable. History has conditioned them to think so. “It is impossible to influence America,” they say with pride.

Yes, one cannot influence America from a position of strength. But from a position of weakness? Using the tactic of judo, which translated from Japanese means “the way of weakness”?

A mouse can never influence an elephant. But if it gets into his ear, it will gnaw its way right to the brain. This Indian parable was popular in Russia half a century ago, in my childhood, but today it has been forgotten.

Over the past two years, I have had to speak at prestigious institutes and clubs in Washington with lectures on Kremlin influence in the USA. They were met without enthusiasm. Americans found it unpleasant to hear all this.

In the summer and fall of last year, I published several rather sharp articles and interviews on this theme in Frontpage Magazine: “Putin’s Spies in America”; “Ayatollah Putin”; and an interview with Vladimir Bukovsky, “How Putin Is Separating Europe from America.” The interview with Bukovsky was not translated into Russian in Moscow.

One may agree or disagree with my assessments, but there is, after all, freedom of speech here in America.

After that interview, some Russian Americans called me and said, with alarm in their voices, that America wants to be friends with Russia, and I am whipping up passions. From their frightened intonations, I could feel that they were expressing more than just their own opinion.

Indeed, America is counting on Russia. In particular, it hopes that Russia will help America with its strong influence in the Islamic world. But Russia is itself a half-Islamic country! If it starts helping the “infidel” Americans too actively, its Islamic friends may not like it…

Meanwhile, Moscow is actively working against the remaining independent “fragments” of the Russian Church Abroad. It sends agents to us, fans the flames of schisms. And, it seems, no one around is concerned.

(Published: Credo.ru portal, 2010)

The Priest and the Scouts

(Published: portal Credo.ru, 2010) POISONINGS IN THE CHURCH ABROAD Part One: Why Archpriest Lev Lebedev Was Poisoned

The subjugation of the Church Abroad by Chekist Moscow carries a persistent whiff of criminality. The KGB killed many of its priests, and the best ones at that. In the Russian emigration, some knew about this but preferred to keep quiet. Some—out of false patriotism, others—because they themselves worked for the KGB. That is why I had to apply all my experience as a former Soviet intelligence analyst to reconstruct an approximate picture of events by questioning many people.

At the end of April 1998, a Russian priest from Kursk, Archpriest Lev Lebedev, died a strange death in the building of the New York Synod of ROCOR. He was an implacable opponent of unification with the Moscow Patriarchate. The First Hierarch of the Church Abroad, Metropolitan Vitaly, had invited him to speak before the bishops in order to open their eyes to this peril. But the hierarchs’ eyes were already fixed on Moscow. They soon chose to get rid of Metropolitan Vitaly himself and removed him from office.

The Russian priest Lev Lebedev acquainted those gathered for the Council with his report, and shortly thereafter was found dead in his guest room in the Synod building, not living to see the opening of the Council of Bishops on May 5, 1998. As former cell-attendant of Metropolitan Vitaly, Fr. Pavel Ivashevich, recounted to me, it was easy for an outsider to enter that room through the balcony door. Many of the young Synod employees did just that when they lost their keys to the front door. The KGB certainly knew this. Who was the nighttime visitor of the Kursk archpriest—an operative from the Russian consulate in New York, officially listed there as a sports and recreation organizer? Or a Russian illegal intelligence agent? The recent murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London shows that the KGB has many methods.

Some eyewitnesses to those events believe that Fr. Lev Lebedev was poisoned already on the Aeroflot plane en route to New York, because he felt unwell after arriving. Well, that too is possible, since Aeroflot to this day remains a branch of the KGB, and they also tried to poison Anna Politkovskaya in 2004 precisely on a plane so that she would not make it to Beslan.

All power in the ROCOR Synod by that time had already been seized by the pro-Moscow faction, and it silenced the report. The text of it was even considered lost, but we reproduce the report from a private archive. In this, one may see God’s providence, for the prophetic meaning of Archpriest Lev Lebedev’s words is becoming evident precisely in our days, when the heretical Moscow Patriarchate has begun to crumble even before unification with the Church Abroad. After all, the revolt of MP Chukchi Bishop Diomid is only the beginning.

Here is the text of a report by Archpriest Lev Lebedev:

“To the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. 1998, New York.

1. The period we are experiencing.
   The world, mankind, is ever more and more rapidly plunging into the state of Sodom and Gomorrah, rushing unstoppably toward the completion of a new Tower of Babel—a new world order, i.e., toward the Antichrist. After him—the Second Glorious Coming of Christ. That is the essence of the moment of time we are living through.

2. The situation of Orthodoxy.
   Against the background of these global phenomena and in connection with them, it looks particularly sad that the majority of once-Orthodox local churches, through the ecumenical and inter-religious movement, are actively being drawn into the worldwide construction project and are drawing their flock into the Ziggurat (the center) of that Babylon. The only island of God’s truth in this world until now remained the Russian Church Abroad. Small islets of firm standing in the truth have become certain Old Calendarist groups in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and individual zealots of Orthodoxy in other countries.

3. The situation of the Moscow “Patriarchate”.
   Lawless (uncanonical) in its origin, the Moscow Patriarchate by its very NATURE is such a church organization that (since 1927) UNDER THE GUISE of serving Christ actively SERVES THE ANTICHRIST. Therefore, it is not at all surprising but entirely logical that the MP now actively participates in completing the construction of the Babylon of the new world order, as has been precisely and accurately stated in the “Appeal” of the Conference of Russian Bishops of ROCOR of October 30 – November 12 in Yalta.

Certain outbursts of anti-ecumenical sentiments within the bosom of the MP, as well as protests by individual clergy against the countless other apostasies from the truth, are nothing more than weak convulsions of a dying or already dead organism.

All of this is explained by the fact that the present-day Russian-speaking population of the Russian Federation, including its Orthodox-believing part, is in a state of TOTAL BELIEF IN FALSEHOOD, characteristic of people in the times of the Antichrist and described by the Apostle Paul as GOD’S PUNISHMENT for the fact that they “did not receive the love of the truth” (2 Thess. 2:10-11).

4. The situation of Russian-speakers in Russia.
   The entire Russian Orthodox people as a whole (around 80 million Great Russians alone), with Holy Rus’ at its foundation, was PHYSICALLY EXTERMINATED in the period from 1917 to 1945—in just 28 years! Thus did the Lord arrange for the Russian people, through crucifixion on a historical Golgotha, a VICTORIOUS RESURRECTION into the Heavenly Jerusalem of the Kingdom of Heaven, withdrawing this people from the contemporary historical process. At the same time, from 1917 onward, a NEW, “Soviet” people was artificially bred in the USSR, a “new historical community,” as the party and government of the USSR put it in 1977. But in reality, this “new Soviet people” turned out not even to be a people, since there is no sense of unity, but rather a conglomerate of a RUSSIAN-SPEAKING POPULATION, which crumbled into gravel after 1991. Therefore, APART FROM A SMALL REMNANT OF RUSSIANS ABROAD, THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE NO LONGER EXISTS on earth.

5. The state of Russian-speaking believers.
   Characteristic of Russian-speaking believers in Russia is a predominance of earthly interests over spiritual ones, a fraudulent character of psychology, belief in falsehood, “fearfulness, little faith, and abomination” (Rev. 21:8). Sorcery and folk healing have become extraordinarily widespread. Christ and His truth NO ONE SEEKS; each seeks “his own things.” The most indicative phenomenon has become the fact that after 1990–1991, in conditions of REAL FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE in Russia, a mass, nationwide turning of Russian-speakers to the Church, to Christ DID NOT OCCUR.

A certain insignificant upsurge of faith and an influx of young people into the Church has taken place, but now even these phenomena are diminishing. If one does not exaggerate the data, at the present time in the Russian Federation there are no more than 15–20 million Orthodox believers, and those attending church regularly are half that number. According to MP data, whereas in 1993 receipts from voluntary donations of the people constituted 43% of all the “Patriarchate’s” income, in 1997 they constituted only 6%! The rest the “Patriarchate” receives from usury, trade in oil, vodka, tobacco, “Bush legs,” other kinds of “business,” and also from very unclear foreign sources.

It is sometimes said that even now there are many kind, good people in Russia. But there are also not a few such among Catholics and Protestants in any Western countries. It is also said that even in Russia one can still encounter, even within the bosom of the MP, pious people who zealously labor in prayer and fasting. But one must know that these are not rays of sunrise but the last RAYS OF SUNSET. On a large garbage dump one may happen upon antique items, icons, and even objects of gold, but all of this is not a palace or a temple, but precisely a garbage dump…

A hundred years ago, in 1899, Vladika Anthony (Khrapovitsky), having in mind the DECHLURCHED PART of Russian society of his time, wrote: “It is no longer a people but a rotting corpse, which takes its own decay for life, and only moles, worms, and foul insects live on it and in it… for in a living body there would be no satisfaction of their greed, there would be no life for them” (Talberg, History of the Russian Church, Jordanville, 1959, p. 831). At the end of the last century and the beginning of this twentieth century, this rotting part of the Russian population accounted for roughly only 5–6%. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, it constitutes 94–95% in Russia. The “rotting corpse” is the entire Russian Federation as a whole.

6. The position of ROCOR with regard to the MP.
   It must be admitted that such a condition of the population is, on the whole, fully matched by the apostate, heretical, and criminal condition of the overwhelming majority of the hierarchy of the MP, as one of the “moles” or “worms” greedily devouring in the rotting corpse whatever can still be seized and devoured.

What can the Russian Church Abroad possibly have in common in such a case with the Moscow “Patriarchate”? NOTHING! Hence any “dialogues” or “conversations” with the MP aimed at clarifying what divides us and what unites us are either the height of failure to understand the essence of things or a betrayal of God’s truth and the Church. Literally EVERYTHING divides us! And NOTHING unites us, except perhaps the EXTERNAL appearance of churches, clergy vestments, and the order of services (and even that far from in everything!).

Therefore, it is necessary to clearly realize and officially affirm that NOW ROCOR IS NOT A PART of the Russian Church, but the ONE AND ONLY lawful Russian Church IN ALL ITS FULLNESS!

It is also necessary to understand that this is realized by the Moscow “Patriarchate.” It is precisely for this reason that it seeks RECOGNITION of itself, as it is (without renouncing its apostasy and heresies), by the Council of ROCOR. Such “recognition” of the MP by ROCOR would grant the MP the APPEARANCE of full legitimacy in the eyes of the whole world. But this cannot be permitted.

ROCOR must renounce its dreams and illusions concerning the “revival” of Russia. Unless some extraordinary and unforeseeable intervention of God in earthly affairs occurs, and things continue by His permission and providence as they are now, Russia is finished. God grant only that, out of excessive attachment to her, we do not fall with her into the abyss of ruin. Now it is necessary only to firmly “hold fast what you have.” And if one’s soul still aches for the Russian-speakers in Russia, it is only by CONSTANT AND FIRM DENUNCIATION OF THE MP, and not by flirting with it, that one can save in Russia those who are still seeking salvation and are able to accept it.

It is essential therefore to RETURN to that position of INCOMPROMISING OPPOSITION TO THE MP that the Russian Church Abroad originally maintained.

And one must not, under the pretext of the “benefit of the Church” and the improvement of its “office work,” undermine the authority of the First Hierarch of ROCOR, who is capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood and discerning spirits.

Recently ROCOR has been beset by a series of calamities, one after another. Especially terrible was the murder of the guardian of the Iviron myrrh-streaming icon, Joseph Muñoz, and the disappearance of the icon itself. Let us recall that miraculous signs from it began in 1982. Before that, in 1981, ROCOR glorified in the ranks of the saints the Holy New Martyrs of Russia, headed by the Royal Family, and in 1983 an anathema was proclaimed against the ecumenical heresy. It is clear that the myrrh-streaming of the Iviron icon was a sign of God’s approval of a firm standing in truth against all falsehood, including the falsehood of the MP. But then, after the very ambiguous decisions of the Bishops’ Council of ROCOR in 1993–1994 and further steps by some of our hierarchs in the direction of rapprochement with the MP, there began, one after another, such calamities as clearly testify to the withdrawal of God’s good favor from our Church for her departure from the truth. How many more calamities do the supporters of fraternization with the criminal and heretical MP wish to bring down upon our heads?”

Now, could the KGB’s network of agents have left such a conclusion unpunished? Could they have allowed Archpriest Lev Lebedev of ROCOR to continue his hostile activity?
The cause of his death was not established, even though medical care in New York is, after all, somewhat better than in Kursk. Father Lev’s body was, with suspicious haste, transported back to his homeland.

Part Two: Killing Priests is Easy

The absorption of the Church Abroad by Chekist Moscow carries a persistent aftertaste of criminality. Kremlin intelligence killed not a few priests of the Church Abroad, and the best among them.
The first part of this article recounted the murder of a Russian priest of the Church Abroad, Archpriest Lev Lebedev, at its New York Synod in May 1998. A few hours after he delivered an incriminating report there about the red Moscow Patriarchate, he was found dead.
Former cell attendant of Metropolitan Vitaly, Fr. Pavel Ivashevich, is convinced that Archpriest Lebedev was poisoned.
In 1986, Fr. Pavel Ivashevich himself mistakenly ate poisoned food intended for Metropolitan Vitaly, whom the Kremlin also greatly disliked (and later got rid of him through its agents in the Synod). At that time, Fr. Pavel lost consciousness, and a Russian doctor called to him confirmed the poisoning. Fortunately, Fr. Pavel was 19 years old at the time, and his young body coped with the poisoning. But he never fully recovered: to this day Fr. Pavel has to take stomach medication. He was then ordered to keep silent about the incident.
In 1970, a priest of the Australian-New Zealand diocese of the Church Abroad, Vladimir Evsyukov, accidentally witnessed a certain Soviet intelligence operation at the customs office in the Australian city of Melbourne. Father Vladimir worked there part-time, away from church services: for many priests from poor parishes of the Church Abroad had to seek additional income.
Had he been a professional counterintelligence officer, he would have immediately reported where necessary, and for the rest would have kept his mouth shut. But Fr. Vladimir was simply a priest and therefore told many of his brethren, and even a bishop, about what he had seen, and only then went to the police.
But the KGB’s agent network acted quickly, and Fr. Vladimir Evsyukov’s car was rammed by another vehicle. After which its driver approached Fr. Vladimir, who was still alive, and performed some manipulations on him. Father Vladimir was found with his hand stretched toward an icon of Blessed Xenia. Neither that car nor its driver was ever found by the Australian police. I think it was one of the Soviet illegal intelligence officers, an officer of Directorate “S” of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate. Who knows, perhaps I even met him later at holiday gatherings…
In the same seventies, KGB assassins chased through the streets a deacon of the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Buenos Aires, Fr. Pyotr Golofaev. Born in 1921 in the Donbass region into the family of a repressed entrepreneur, he was a descendant of a tsarist general Golofaev, under whose command M. Yu. Lermontov served. A staunch anti-Soviet, Pyotr Kirillovich during the Second World War created an armed detachment to fight communism, the “Hunting Team,” which later retreated with the German army and joined the 5th Regiment of the Russian Corps under General Schteifon.
Deacon Golofaev knew that in the “socialist motherland” he had been sentenced to death by firing squad, and therefore was always on his guard. He immediately recognized the Soviet killers in the Argentine crowd by their clothing and broke free and ran away from them, after they had surrounded him as he stepped off a bus. He managed to escape, but upon returning home, he found a poisoned needle in the folds of his leather coat.
In 1975, Bishop Dionysius of Rotterdam of the Moscow Patriarchate died in the Netherlands. Shortly before his death, he gathered Dutch journalists and informed them that he was leaving the MP and joining the Church Abroad. The reason was the public statements by Soviet Patriarch Pimen that people in the USSR were not persecuted for their faith.
Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh had a strange connection to his death; in everyday life he was a most refined and charming man. During the Second World War, he fought in the ranks of the French partisans — the “Maquis,” which were subordinate to the French Communist Party and the NKVD. At the end of the war, Soviet intelligence agents made contact with him and advised him to establish a Patriarchal parish in London in order to report on the mood of the White emigration through the material of confessions to the NKVD. The future Metropolitan Bloom agreed, and very soon he was consecrated a bishop of the Moscow Patriarchate.
This case was told to me by the well-known English church writer Vladimir Moss. Shortly before the death of Bishop Dionysius of Rotterdam, Metropolitan Anthony informed Vladimir Moss’s wife Olga that he was forced to go to the Netherlands to punish Bishop Dionysius for causing a serious crisis in the Church.
And a few days later, Olga Moss herself found herself in the Netherlands and even met with Bishop Dionysius’s cell attendant, Fr. Arseny. In tears, he told her that he had left the hierarch alone for only a few hours after the liturgy in order to visit her parents, and upon returning found him dead.
“And do you know that Bishop Dionysius was visited by Metropolitan Anthony at that time?” inquired Olga Moss.
“I had no idea!” Fr. Arseny admitted in horror.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh was a professional surgeon. God alone knows how he used his skill on Bishop Dionysius of Rotterdam. But it can be asserted that this most refined man was also a KGB militant.
However, the most sensational event of this kind was the murder of the First Hierarch of the Church Abroad, Metropolitan Philaret, in 1985. A convinced anti-communist and anti-Soviet, an implacable opponent of any rapprochement with the red Soviet church, he was a thorn in the side of the KGB.
Judge for yourselves how prophetic his words about the MP turned out to be, spoken back in 1980: “But it is not true Orthodoxy that spreads there. There, under the guise of Orthodoxy, the Russian people are fed Bulgakovism, Berdyaevism, and other nonsense of the Eulogian schism; there, sects — Baptist and the like — flourish lushly. The official Church preaches cooperation with the theomachist authorities, praising them in every way. The true Orthodox Church has gone into the catacombs — hidden from the masses… Is this the ‘rebirth of Orthodoxy’?”

Unfaithful son — Father Potapov

The above words are taken from a letter of Metropolitan Philaret to Fr. Victor Potapov, the current rector of St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Washington and the main driving force behind the transfer of the Church Abroad under Moscow’s authority. Back then, in the stagnant and grim year of 1980, Fr. Victor Potapov declared that Russia was rising from the dead and that Orthodoxy was being reborn within it. That year, I already held a solid post in the KGB and knew perfectly well that Orthodoxy was under our tight control, and there could be no talk whatsoever of its rebirth. Soviet reality provided no facts that could have moved Fr. Victor to such a conclusion. Such a conclusion could only have been suggested to him by Soviet communist comrades. Yes, precisely by them, since non-communists were not let abroad, though it is not customary to recall that now. This means that Soviet communists were already working with Fr. Victor back then. Surely, you will agree that over the course of more than a quarter of a century, one could have achieved a fair bit.

In the same letter, Metropolitan Philaret reproached Fr. Victor for having begun to commemorate one of the Soviet hierarchs at the Great Entrance. His name is unknown to me, but this hierarch was most certainly a KGB agent, like all the rest of his colleagues, and perhaps even a member of the CPSU, because the top brass of the Patriarchate held party cards.

Metropolitan Philaret categorically forbade not only prayerful communion with the Soviet church, but even everyday contacts with the “Sovietniks.” He, along with his successor as First Hierarch, Metropolitan Vitaly, objected to Fr. Victor Potapov’s unsanctioned trips to the USSR as a correspondent for the “Voice of America,” and, as they say, even intended to bring him before an ecclesiastical court.

One cannot deny either metropolitan their foresight. For upon arriving in the USSR, Fr. Victor fell entirely at the disposal of the sole agency permitted to deal with representatives of the “anti-Soviet emigre center,” as the Church Abroad was termed in the USSR. For all other citizens of the USSR, such contact was dangerous.

That agency was named, however you slice it, the Committee for State Security, and not at all the Moscow Patriarchate or Intourist. It was not only the hierarchs of the MP, with whom Fr. Victor associated, who were from the KGB, but also the maids, the chauffeurs, as well as those who never caught Fr. Victor’s eye: the officers of the external surveillance service, tracking his every step; the telephone operators of the OTU (Operational-Technical Directorate of the KGB), eavesdropping on his phone conversations; the young, smirking officers of the same directorate, observing Fr. Victor through the peephole in the ceiling of his hotel room (in KGB parlance, this is called measure “O”). And if you add to this the officers at the Lubyanka, maintaining his file, and the chiefs, endorsing resolutions on him and reporting to Andropov, it becomes clear that each arrival of Fr. Victor in the Soviet Union provided work for a multitude of “fighters on the invisible front.” By now, his file already occupies several bookshelves. I wonder, what is Fr. Victor’s pseudonym in the KGB?

And one does exist, for using the real surname of the target of an operational development case was forbidden. I am also certain that this pseudonym is mockingly contemptuous and borders on indecency, so that a superior, even before reading the operational development file, would immediately understand what kind of person it concerns.

An operational development case was opened on every anti-Soviet emigre who arrived in the USSR. Such a case is opened only on enemies of the state. On those merely suspected of hostility, a milder operational verification case was opened. That one could still be closed.

But an operational development case is the second and final stage of the KGB’s interest in a person. It could only end in recruitment or arrest. Yes, it could also be closed, but then its authors would face a severe reprimand. The KGB had no intention of passively observing Fr. Victor for 25 years: when, after all, would they get their medals? His development surely involved the First Chief Directorate of the KGB (intelligence), the Second (counterintelligence), and the Fifth (the fight against religion). Each wanted to get its hands on the fat American chicken.

Yes, precisely American, and not at all Russian. The bureaucratic state of the RF determines a person’s nationality exclusively by their passport, not by what they consider themselves to be.

To the disappointment of numerous Russian emigres — American admirers of the RF, mostly elderly and having never lived in Russia — I must report that the state of the RF also considers them to be only Americans.

It is precisely for this reason that the idea of this pseudo-national community is now being actively inculcated in the Russian emigration by KGB agents. One can often hear this thought here: Let us first unite with our Russian brothers in the bosom of the church, and then we will explain to them where they are wrong. Alas, esteemed gentlemen (but not comrades, as people in the RF still address each other): no one will listen to you! They do not need overseas Sovietniks!

I am certain that the fact of Fr. Victor Potapov having been under KGB development for over a quarter of a century somehow escaped the attention of the American authorities, with their misplaced political correctness. Soviet intelligence, on the contrary, surrounds with harsh suspicion those who consort with Americans, even on business. Therefore, we, its officers, were afraid to get acquainted even incidentally with an American abroad, for it promised us a stamp like this in our personal file: “Was under development by the CIA.” This predetermined the end of a career. The KGB is far stricter with its employees than the CIA.

It is especially important to understand this because Fr. Victor Potapov is an American government employee. I believe he has access to secrets. He has access to the White House and other important government institutions. The instinct of the former referent to the head of Soviet intelligence tells me that there, Fr. Victor presents the surrender of the Church Abroad to Chekist Moscow as some sort of subtle operation beneficial to America. Supposedly, the Church Abroad will put pressure on the Patriarchate, and the latter on Putin, and… Alas, his words are met there with great enthusiasm.

Re-educating Putin is a favorite pastime of the Americans. They think he does not understand all the advantages of Western democracy and try their best to explain them to him. But in reality, the transfer of the Church Abroad under the authority of the neo-Stalinist Putinist state brings no advantages to America. On the contrary, it creates a powerful threat to its national security. Now, Putin’s intelligence service no longer fears killing U.S. citizens in the streets of Washington. I wonder, will this finally sober up the American authorities?

Father Victor Potapov benefits from the vagueness of the historical moment, which the Soviet satirists Ilf and Petrov in the 1920s described as follows: “The era of silent film had ended, but the era of sound had not yet begun.” The RF already loudly calls America enemy number one, but America still considers the RF a friend. Yet if Fr. Victor were a citizen of the RF and worked so openly for America, he would long ago have been put away for fifteen years, like Doctor of Sciences Igor Sutyagin and other pro-Western-minded intellectuals.

The Murder of Metropolitan Philaret

The Committee for State Security had long been closing in on Metropolitan Philaret. In the early 1980s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned him that the Soviets planned to shoot him during the Easter procession. The Metropolitan nonetheless took part in the procession, but young subdeacons shielded him with their bodies, and many Russian émigrés later wondered why Bishop Philaret could not be seen.
In 1984, in the kiot (icon case) of the myrrh-streaming Montreal Iveron Icon of the Mother of God, now lost, a listening device disguised as several electric batteries was found. Experts from the American intelligence services, summoned by Bishop Gregory (Grabbe), confirmed this.
But why did this fact not become public knowledge? Who stood to benefit from covering it up, if not the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service? After all, it was listening in on all conversations that took place in the Synod’s assembly hall! And only KGB agents with access to that hall could have planted those batteries in the precious icon case.
Then came the tragic day of November 19, 1985. Metropolitan Philaret and all the bishops dined together. Except for one—Hilarion—who ate separately. Yet the summoned doctor for some reason diagnosed influenza, not poisoning.
Protodeacon Nikita Chakirov, Metropolitan Philaret’s cell attendant, was also deemed to have fallen ill. On sanitary grounds, he was strictly forbidden to go up to the metropolitan’s chambers. Thus, Bishop Philaret was left there alone for the entire night. The whole floor of the Synod building was likewise completely deserted. Nothing like this had ever happened in the entire history of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.
Need it be said that the next morning Bishop Philaret was found dead? He was lying on the floor, and there were traces of vomit all around. They could have pointed to poisoning and provided invaluable evidence for determining the cause of death.
At the cry of Fr. Nikita Chakirov, who discovered the body, Bishop Hilarion—then, as now, openly working for Moscow—came running. The first thing he did was to send the cell attendant away. As many émigrés have told me, he then thoroughly washed the floor, moved the metropolitan’s body onto the bed, and only then summoned the doctor. Naturally, the doctor pronounced death by cardiac arrest.
Fifteen years later, Metropolitan Philaret’s tomb was opened, and everyone saw that his relics were incorrupt. Many faithful demanded his canonization, but power in the Church Abroad had already been seized by Moscow’s appointees. Metropolitan Laurus ordered the relics to be buried and even added the blasphemous phrase, ‘let him rot like everyone else.’ He even forbade the distribution of photographs of Metropolitan Philaret’s incorrupt relics.
A. G. Shatilova, the daughter of Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) and his long-time Synod secretarial assistant, told me that shortly before his repose, Bishop Philaret learned that the bishops close to him were deceiving him. Taking advantage of his ignorance of English, they were slipping him the wrong documents to sign. The Bishop intended to expose and even depose certain bishops. But, as so often happens, death washed away all traces.
The Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church has glorified Metropolitan Philaret as a saint. His spontaneous veneration also takes place among the parishioners of the still-existing Church Abroad.
One asks: why is the Church Abroad uniting with its very own murderers?

(Published: Credo.ru portal, 2007)

LIE, MAKE NOISE, SHOUT, REPEAT THE LIE — SOMETHING WILL STICK
Open letter of Fr. Victor Potapov to KGB Lieutenant Colonel K.G. Preobrazhensky

Notes:

1 Aleksei Stepanovich Golubev, the future bishop Hermogen, was born in 1896 in Kiev to the family of S. T. Golubev, a professor at the Kiev Theological Academy and Kiev University and a Doctor of Church History. During the rectorship of Bishop Feodor (Pozdeevsky), he graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy with a candidate’s degree in theology. He received monastic tonsure at Moscow’s St. Daniel’s Monastery and was there ordained a hierodeacon. In 1919 he was transferred to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra as a missionary, and the following year in Moscow, His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon himself ordained him a hieromonk and appointed him a member of the spiritual council of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. In 1922 Father Hermogen became an archimandrite. Because of his steadfastness in the faith and his lofty spiritual life, the brethren elected him abbot of the Lavra in 1926.
This was a critical time for the Russian Church. The authorities supported the Renovationist schism, and practically all the churches of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra had been seized by the Renovationists. Yet even in these extremely difficult conditions, Archimandrite Hermogen managed to preserve the purity of Orthodoxy within the Lavra’s walls. Such zeal did not remain without consequences: in 1931 he was arrested “for anti-Soviet activity” and sentenced to ten years in camps. In the camp he developed a severe lung illness, on account of which he was released early in 1939.
On March 1, 1953, Archimandrite Hermogen was consecrated Bishop of Tashkent and Central Asia. From that time forward, the state authorities, who had long regarded the activities of this Church zealot with great suspicion, began to persecute him—first covertly and then openly. Archbishop Hermogen, “being one of the reactionary adherents of the Russian Orthodox Church, takes active measures to strengthen the material base of the Church and to spread religious views among the consciousness of Soviet people”—such was the characterization given to the bishop by the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church under the USSR Council of Ministers. In 1959 the Commissioner for Religious Affairs of the Uzbek SSR wrote: “Observation of the activity … of Archbishop Hermogen has convinced me that he harbors an extremely hostile attitude toward Soviet reality. Not content with the role that the Soviet state has assigned to the Church, Hermogen in his activity has crudely trampled upon socialist legality. As an adherent of the enemy of the Soviet system—the former Patriarch Tikhon—this hardened churchman strives by cross and ruble to strengthen the foundations of the Russian Orthodox Church…” Such “commendations” from the God-haters had, after all, to be earned. What, then, so alarmed the authorities? First of all, one must recall that the late 1950s was a period of renewed persecution against the Church, of church closures, and of harassment of active preachers of Orthodoxy. Yet here, in Tashkent—this “model and showpiece” symbol of socialist Asia—a huge Dormition cathedral, capable of holding up to four thousand worshippers, suddenly went up. It goes without saying that obtaining permission from the authorities for such construction was impossible. So the bishop resorted to a ruse. He obtained permission to restore an old church housed in an adapted building, and immediately began the rapid construction of the cathedral. The church was built around the old church, and daily services continued there until the construction was completed. The authorities came to their senses; inquiries, clarifications, and approvals began. By the time the ponderous bureaucratic machine creaked into motion and the construction was banned, it was too late—the church was standing. Just as swiftly, a church was built in Samarkand as well. Thoroughly acquainted with secular laws and the principles of Soviet bureaucracy, Bishop Hermogen often left the local authorities at an impasse.
A systematic campaign of harassment ensued, and overt pressure on the Church leadership intensified. As a result, in 1960 Archbishop Hermogen was removed from the Central Asian see and sent “on leave.” This “leave,” which the bishop first spent in the Zhirovitsy Monastery in Belorussia and later in the Odessa Monastery, ended only in 1962, when Patriarch Alexy I (Simansky)—who, in all likelihood, sympathized with and protected the persecuted zealot (as the reports of the commissioners also indicate)—elevated him to the Omsk see.
Archbishop Hermogen expressed his disagreement with the resolution of the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church of July 18, 1961, concerning amendments to the “Statute on the Administration of the Russian Orthodox Church,” specifically to Section IV—“On Parishes.” In his response to the council’s decisions, he voiced the opinion that the rector of a church can and should be elected to the executive body of each church and should not remain an outside observer but rather be an active participant in both the spiritual and administrative life of his parish. He was the author of a letter, subsequently signed by several bishops, that contained this same proposal.
On May 29, 1963, Archbishop Hermogen was transferred to the Kaluga see, which became the last in his archpastoral ministry. Unbroken by the repressions of the godless authorities, the sixty-seven-year-old hierarch once again entered into a solitary struggle whose outcome was already predetermined. Bishop Hermogen gave his blessing for the composition of the famous Yakunin-Eshliman letter of 1965.
On November 25, 1965, Archbishop Hermogen was retired to the Zhirovitsy Monastery. Here the bishop continued the life of a true monk and man of prayer, and soon acquired great spiritual authority among the monastery’s inhabitants. Sensing his approaching death, the bishop requested that he be buried in his native Kiev. On the feast of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos, April 7, 1978—the anniversary of the death of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon—Bishop Hermogen surrendered his soul to the Lord, to whose service he had devoted his entire life.
(The main contours of this biography are taken from the site

https://www.krotov.info/spravki/persons/20person/golubev.html.)

2 During the years of its existence (1976–1991), the Committee supported the Russian Public Fund founded by A. I. Solzhenitsyn in providing aid to political prisoners in the USSR, held a number of prayer vigils in defense of persecuted Orthodox Christians, established contact with families of Orthodox confessors arrested in the USSR, directly transferred subsistence funds to the families of the victims, and made a significant contribution to the purchase and shipment of religious books to Russia.
Moreover, representatives of the Committee spoke in the U.S. Congress and also before the American and Russian public with reports on the situation of Orthodoxy in the countries of godless communism.
In 1978, in the capital of the USA, under my editorship, the Committee’s quarterly publication The Orthodox Monitor (Pravoslavnoe Obozrenie) began to be issued. Many of the materials from this publication were printed in various Western publications, broadcast over the Voice of America airwaves in my weekly program “Religion in Our Life.” The BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Radio Liberty made use of our materials. The Committee organized conferences and held demonstrations. Committee staff spoke in Congress, at the White House, at university seminars and other forums.

(Published: portal Credo.ru, 2007)

WE WILL PRESERVE THE CHURCH ABROAD!
Konstantin Preobrazhensky’s Response to the Open Letter of Fr. Viktor Potapov, Rector of St. John the Baptist Cathedral of the Church Abroad in Washington

Dear Father Viktor,

Indeed, you know very little of our Russian life! You are more an American than a Russian. People like you are easily fooled by Putin’s intelligence service. That is why, while reading your open letter to me of April 21, I smiled ironically more than once.

Thank you for the abundant quoting of my article “Poisonings in the Church Abroad.” That is great progress compared to Soviet trials of dissidents, at which it was forbidden to quote the defendants’ works, in order to protect listeners from their propaganda effect. They were to be referred to as: “The article beginning with the word ‘Down with…’.”

Dissidents were tried for “slandering the Soviet social and state system.” This charge does not apply to me, because in my article I assert nothing, but only cite the testimony of other people. At the same time, I have shown that in your long-standing, self-sacrificing, and noble rapprochement with your historic homeland, Moscow assigned you merely the role of a KGB guinea pig. Isn’t that offensive? Yet excessive rapprochement with Soviet Russia has never brought happiness to any American.

I understand your indignant pathos. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine a worse gift for the supporters of the unification of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia with the red Church. It turns out that we are uniting with the KGB not only as an intelligence service, to which everyone has already grown accustomed, but as a gang of criminals and murderers, which American law views very askance.

And the timing could not be more inappropriate. Recently, Putin’s intelligence service has carried out a series of political murders and assassination attempts, including in Washington. Many of your parishioners are now scratching their heads: is it worth uniting with such a dangerous country?

I completely agree with you. Yes, I “made a career in the KGB, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel” (by the way, in Russian one says not “rank” but “zvanïe.” “Rank” is a calque from English). But Putin did exactly the same thing! Where is your indignant outrage at him? Why is it permissible for him, but not for me? Moreover, I fled Russia to escape persecution for my revealing publications about the KGB, while Putin has rebuilt it to Soviet proportions and extols its criminal past. Yet for some reason you call me, not him, a KGB agent.

By the way, try calling him that to his face when you meet. I assure you, he will not take offense, but will only smile modestly and say: “Yes, that is so, and I am proud of it.” If you call your acquaintances among the Russian bishops and priests KGB agents, they will not be offended in the least either. And with the same smile they will explain that this was their patriotic duty.

What a predicament! If in America being considered a KGB agent is bad, in Russia, on the contrary, it is good. There, people once again take pride in it, just as in Soviet times. The KGB now rules Russia, with which you intend to unite.

Legally, the term “agent” does not apply to me. I was not an agent, but a collaborator, a KGB officer. Agents there are informers, snitches; they are treated with contempt. These people are not part of the KGB staff. There are several hundred thousand of them. Among them are both Russians and foreigners. However, in American intelligence services, both staff officers and their snitches are called agents. It is strange that you have not figured this out. After all, you have read my books The KGB in Japan and The KGB in the Russian Emigration! All of this is explained there.

In your letter to me, you ask a sarcastic question: am I a former Soviet intelligence colonel (more precisely, lieutenant colonel)? That is, not an active one now? But if that were the case, I would be fighting for the absorption of the Church Abroad, not against it. Because at present there is no more important task for Russian intelligence. For, besides political advantages for the neo-Stalinist Putin regime, it brings many material benefits to the intelligence officers. Residencies gain vacancies, the number of general’s positions increases. At the ceremonial reception in the Kremlin on May 17, numerous intelligence chiefs, presenting themselves as Foreign Ministry advisers, will inevitably crowd around. You will certainly be introduced to them and made to raise a toast “to the common cause.”

And after the signing of the unlawful union, a mass exodus of your parishioners will begin, similar to the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. Because, having grown up in the hothouse conditions of the West, they will encounter the Soviet boorishness, greed, and unbelief of the Moscow Patriarchate, and will experience a feeling of horror. But we will preserve the Church Abroad.

Incidentally, among your acquaintances there is a person to whom the title “KGB agent” applies one hundred percent. That is Patriarch Alexy Ridiger. Why do you not recoil from him with disgust? I assure you, you will recoil! He is unworthy of your friendship. He will betray you on the very first day. According to my information, he has already appointed Vsevolod Chaplin to your place. Let us rather go together to the American Congress and present a report there on how the KGB is infiltrating the USA under the guise of the Church. I am confident that both of us will have something to tell!

So who, after all, is annexing the Church Abroad – the Patriarchate or Putin? It is precisely he, being the most important person in the KGB empire he has created. Then let us admit that this operation is not ecclesiastical, but secular, strategic. And that the Patriarchate here plays the role of a bright smoke screen, which is what it always was for Soviet power.

However, the Russian side itself gives this away. For example, the “Union of Orthodox Citizens,” after one of my publications, accused me of undermining precisely Russia’s strategic interests, and by no means ecclesiastical ones. Following its logic,
you, on the contrary, strengthen those interests. In America. As an American citizen. How does that accord with your American patriotism?

You aim many arrows in your letter at the late Archpriest Lev Lebedev, who in 1996 delivered a revealing report about the Moscow Patriarchate at the New York Synod of the ROCOR and immediately died there a strange death. You reduce this to his tendency towards alcohol, which, alas, is confirmed by people who knew him. But, nevertheless, Fr. Lev’s report was so sensational that the Synod hushed it up. It made a stunning impression again on Russian émigrés when reproduced in my article, which you so disliked.

Further, you write that Fr. Gleb Yakunin supposedly learned of Fr. Lev’s cooperation with the KGB from secret documents to which he had gained access. Fr. Gleb did not confirm this in a telephone conversation with me. After all, those documents spoke only about the highest church leadership. But he said that he had heard about Fr. Lev’s possible connection to the KGB agent network from Priest Vasily Fonchenkov, who himself was a KGB agent with the code name “Friend.”

I fully admit that Fr. Lev Lebedev could have been a KGB agent. You write about this as something terrible and exceptional, while nearly all Soviet priests were KGB agents, especially in the provinces. There the conversation was simple: if you don’t agree to work for the KGB, we will revoke your registration. All the more praise, then, for Fr. Lev’s selflessness and fearlessness in denouncing the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian leadership.

But then you, like a Soviet journalist, subtly shift the emphasis. Citing Fr. Gleb Yakunin, you write that the KGB tasked Fr. Lev Lebedev with watching you. “It seemed strange to me at the time, until I learned from Fr. Gleb about Fr. Lev’s informing, that wherever I appeared in Moscow, Fr. Lev was right there,” you write.

Was the KGB really so destitute that it sent the same spy to you? There were dozens of them; you simply could not see them. However, the subtle subtext of your words implies that since Fr. Lev was watching you, the others were not. That is, that after all there were independent people in the Moscow Patriarchate who freely associated with a colleague from the country of the “main adversary,” and that the abbreviation MP does not necessarily translate as KGB, as some ill-wishers claim.

Alas, all your friends from the Moscow Patriarchate, every single one, devoted their agent reports to you. For the KGB and the MP are one and the same organization. Stalin created the MP in 1943 for political reasons, through the hands of the Chekists. The MP was designed with a relatively open part, the clergy, and a hidden part, the Council for Religious Affairs, a KGB department. But both were two sides of the same coin. Hence, all your heartfelt communication with the MP in Soviet times was communication with Andropov.

The same is happening in our days. All your friends at the Russian Embassy in Washington are officers of the Foreign Intelligence Service. Firstly, because it is precisely it that is entrusted with work with the Church Abroad. And secondly, only intelligence officers are permitted to have contact with odious personalities and repentant anti-Soviet figures. Moscow never forgives anything. You are still on its “black list.”

It is precisely by this that I explain your noble indignation at the possible connection of Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh (Bloom) to the KGB agent apparatus. For every foreign priest who, whether out of naivety or calculation, joined the MP, automatically joined the KGB as well. To admit this is impermissible for you and your Moscow patrons (very unreliable ones; you will see this soon).

You put forward arguments, each worse than the last, and all of them confirm my version. For example, you write that “Metropolitan Anthony Bloom was renowned in Russia for many years primarily as an amazing preacher.” But surely there were other such bishops in the USSR. And they were KGB agents. Why could Anthony not be? Because he was a foreigner? Then his recruitment would be all the more valuable!

And can an amazing preacher not love his historic homeland, the Soviet Union? That is where they recruit him on a “patriotic basis.” Did this not happen with you as well? You defend the interests of Russia – a state hostile to America – all too zealously.

And what of your argument that “the future Metropolitan Anthony had been a parishioner and an altar boy in the Church of the Three Hierarchs Metochion (Moscow Patriarchate) in Paris since 1931”? That only speaks of his possible early contacts with the NKVD and pro-Soviet sympathies, making him easy prey for intelligence!

At that time, the Church was being destroyed in the USSR. Its members were fanatically killed without trial, subjected to cruel torture, exiled to Solovki – and yet they were allowed to have a metochion in Paris, the center of the white emigration! Does this not seem strange to you? I fear that the metochion belonged to an entirely different department.

Archpriest Mikhail Ardov considers Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) an agent of influence. And for what other purpose did the Soviet authorities open foreign dioceses and parishes? Could it truly be for the propaganda of a religion that they ruthlessly suppressed in their own country? By the way, Fr. Mikhail asked me to convey the following to you:

“I reflected for a very long time on the metamorphosis that occurred with a man I respected and valued – Fr. Viktor Potapov. In his time, he was a determined enemy of the MP, but now he has become such an ardent supporter of the merger of the Church Abroad with this dubious church organization. At that time, he fought the MP not as a representative of genuine Orthodoxy, but as an American for whom the highest values are human rights and freedom, which the MP, together with the Soviet authorities, grossly violated.

And now I have understood what happened. The key to this understanding was the last visit of Fr. Viktor and his wife Masha Potapova to my home in Moscow.

During dinner, Masha Potapova was telling about her childhood and adolescence in France. And then Fr. Viktor said with sincere envy: ‘I should have been born and lived in France! I cannot go to the American Autocephalous Church, which no one respects!’

Here he was referring to the fact that the Autocephalous American Orthodox Church is not particularly recognized by anyone; its reputation is highly questionable. I recalled that Fr. Viktor and Masha Potapova, being members of the Church Abroad, would unprincipledly associate with the Greek New Calendarists and with clergy of the MP. It is clear that they yearned for ‘world Orthodoxy.’ Now they will profess the same dubious values together with them. Fr. Viktor will be able to concelebrate with anyone without risking any unpleasantness.”

I have nothing to add to these excellent words of the priest, and so I conclude the letter.

Yours,
Konstantin Preobrazhensky.

(Published: portal Credo.ru, 2007)
STOP SENDING ARCHIVES TO THE HOMELAND: THEY ARE NEEDED HERE!

“I coped with the task!” – such is the phrase the KGB usually ends positive character references for its officers. I think it was precisely this phrase that the Rostov Oblast FSB Directorate used in the order awarding K. Khokhulnikov. And how could they not encourage him? He wheedled out the émigré archive and hid it in the FSB forever from human eyes. Or perhaps he destroyed it, now there is no way to check. But all this is exactly what the current pro-Soviet authorities need.
You will say that Khokhulnikov had nowhere to store the archive, that he has a small apartment? But he could have handed it over to a civilian institution! But there readers would have access to it and would unwittingly become imbued with the spirit of anti-Soviet struggle, and in today’s Russia they do not allow that.
And a retired KGB colonel cannot serve as an example of Soviet poverty, as G. N. Kelin good-naturedly believes. In the provinces, KGB colonels are respected and given spacious apartments. A colonel is entitled to at least a three-room apartment.
G. N. Kelin writes that thanks to Khokhulnikov many works by Cossack émigrés have been published. But this only indicates that the revival of Cossack traditions is taking place under the hand of the FSB. And it is also trying to infiltrate the Cossack émigré circles.
This conjecture occurred to me many times in the 1990s, when I visited Novocherkassk and other Cossack places as an interpreter for Japanese journalists: they too are interested in the Cossack theme.
Strange Cossacks spoke before us then! Former militiamen, Komsomol secretaries. On the uniforms of some of them the Japanese even spotted anniversary FSB badges, which filled them with the greatest astonishment. But there is nothing strange about it: after all, it is not aliens who serve in the Rostov Oblast FSB Directorate, but the same Cossacks, local natives. Would they really pass up the opportunity to control the Cossack movement?
G. N. Krelin calls the Cheka–NKVD–KGB a criminal organization. For him this is an indisputable fact. But let him ask Khokhulnikov whether he thinks the same. I am afraid that his answer will disappoint G. N. Krelin.
And where did this craze among émigrés come from – sending anything that is lying around to Moscow? Could it really be that there is a shortage of historical relics there? But there is an overabundance of them, museum storerooms are bursting!
I think the reason is the desire to somehow help the homeland understand the émigré experience. As if it were not in the know…
But ordinary Russians are not interested in this problem. They think about how to survive. Émigré archives interest enthusiasts, scholars, and also intelligence officers, something we somehow do not think about. The Chekists identify future targets for recruitment approaches there, developing their cover stories for contacting them: “It turns out that my grandfather worked together with yours in the ROVS sixty years ago! I remember how he told about it.”
Well, how can you resist recruitment? Maybe, if only for this reason, it is worth stopping sending our archives to the Russian Federation? After all, they come back as poisoned arrows.
Many émigrés for some reason think that with their archives they are communicating something new to Moscow. But even before, it had plenty of our archives, obtained by various means. On the whole, the picture of the life of the Russian emigration was always clear to the Lubyanka, otherwise the operation “Russian Church Abroad” would not have proceeded so easily for it.
(However, it is not yet finished. It seems that some kind of military actions are starting again. Suspicious noise has arisen around the name of General Vlasov. It is being fanned by people clearly connected with the KGB. The most odious heroes of the absorption of the Russian Church Abroad have been granted Russian citizenship. In the churches of what is now the former Russian Church Abroad they are calling to refrain from reviling the “Oskolki”. I think an offensive against us is coming. We need to unite. But about this – in the next article.)
However, cases of strange disappearances of émigré archives have occurred before. The latest one only frankly highlighted the integral task set before the FSB: pumping émigré archives back to the homeland for their subsequent neutralization.
So it turns out that the work to subjugate the Russian emigration did not end at all with the seizure of part of the Russian Church Abroad. Moscow continues it. It is trying to spiritually bleed us dry, to deprive us of historical memory. So that new generations will never learn about the glorious struggle of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers against the godless Soviet power. Moscow is waging a war against us, and we do not even notice it!
The reason for this is nostalgia, which Putin’s intelligence masterfully exploits.
Many of us still hope that in the Russian Federation things are not so bad. That grandmother’s fairy tales about the shining city of Kitezh will turn out to be reality at least to some small degree. But here is what former Russian political prisoners write about the RF: “We are not surprised that certain veterans (of Soviet power?) filed a complaint with the prefecture of the Northern District about the sign of the restaurant ‘Anti-Soviet’. This, you see, offends their feelings. They correctly sensed the trends of the time, decided that their time is coming – the time of the Soviet past. And can it be otherwise in a country where human rights are systematically violated, journalists and human rights defenders are killed, police arbitrariness reigns, extrajudicial executions are carried out, and torture flourishes? In a lawless state led mainly by people who in the past made Komsomol and party careers.”
Well, can one feel nostalgia for such a country? We need to define our attitude toward it. Alas, hopes for the renewal of the RF are illusory. The FSB has permeated it like metastases. You cannot remove them.
We need to build here, in emigration, our own Russia Abroad. And for that we need the archives. Stop sending them to the homeland!

(Published: newspaper “Nasha Strana”, 2009)

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