The KGB is coming with us!
- Putin changed Russia’s intelligence concept, — says the author, — nowadays its intelligence service puts the main emphasis in recruitment work no longer on left-wing Western intellectuals, whom Lenin wittily called “useful idiots.” Now it has begun a mass recruitment of Russian emigrants. The Kremlin subjugates the entire Slavic emigration from the former USSR, turning it into an instrument of pressure on the West, just as foreign communists did in Soviet times.
That is the title of a new book by writer and former intelligence officer Konstantin Preobrazhensky. It was recently published in the USA. This is the first book in history to describe the work of Putin’s intelligence service among Slavic Protestant émigrés in America. The subject was previously forbidden.
I told about this in my book “KGB in the Russian Emigration,” published in 2007 by Liberty Publishing House in New York and causing a great stir. While working on it, I was surprised to learn from Fr. Gleb Yakunin that the Protestant emigration in the USA is even more saturated with agents than the Orthodox one, but for some reason nobody knows about it. This secret is carefully guarded by numerous chekist pastors recruited by the KGB back in the Soviet years. Back then they would come to the West and lie about complete religious freedom reigning in the USSR. And in the eighties and nineties they managed to obtain refugee status in the USA, although they had suffered no persecution. Thus the KGB managed to saturate the Protestant emigration with its agents. Today these agents control the majority of their half-million flock, isolate it from American life, turning it into a “fifth column” of Putin’s intelligence service… The chekist pastors skillfully block human-rights activity among the Protestant emigration, and not only the Russian one. In the republics of the former USSR Protestants are persecuted — but here, in America, pastors who emigrated from there suppress the flock’s indignation. And people listen to them with respect: after all, their pastors fled from religious persecution! It is surprising, but with the collapse of the USSR it became not harder, but easier for Moscow chekists to keep the Protestant emigration in check. It was only in Soviet times that they had to send delegations from the AUCECB here to lie about how splendid the state of freedom of conscience was in the USSR. But now that is no longer needed: all potential members of those lying delegations are already living here, in America, enjoying the status of religious refugees!..
How does the KGB recruit pastors? How does it maintain agent contact with them in the homeland and here, in the USA? How do these chekist pastors block any criticism of Putin in the Protestant community? How to recognize a KGB agent among your fellow believers in America? How not to become an agent yourself? How to protect your adult children from recruitment, whom Putin’s intelligence service literally hunts as promising young agents for the future? What to do if Putin’s spies have already approached you and demanded that you work for them, threatening to reveal some secret of yours?
These and many other questions are answered by the new book of uncompromising publicist Konstantin Preobrazhensky, “KGB Arrives with Us.” The book provides the real names of KGB agents operating among Slavic Protestants in America.
One of its chapters, “Physicians of Human Souls,” became the first account in history of the KGB’s persecution of the church coming from the side of the persecutors rather than the victims. And, also for the first time, it speaks about the KGB’s work against Protestants, revealing its methods. For many years Konstantin Preobrazhensky, while serving in the KGB intelligence and concealing his faith in God, collected material for this chapter from accidentally overheard conversations. Indeed, in the KGB you cannot ask about anything, it arouses suspicion. Because of all this, Konstantin Preobrazhensky has been subjected to persecution by his former colleagues for many long years.
The final chapter of the book narrates about them.
Below we publish one of the chapters of the book “KGB Arrives with Us”. It describes how openly and brazenly Putin’s intelligence service operates nowadays. It is no longer afraid of America!..
On March 8, 2008, in the vicinity of the American city of Seattle, a congress of Protestant immigrants who had suffered religious persecution during the Soviet years took place. Called “Day of Testimony of Former Prisoners,” it aimed to unite all who suffered for their faith and to tell young people how the Soviet regime destroyed believers.
—We invite believers of all denominations, young and not so young, and even non-believers—in a word, everyone interested in this topic—to attend a worship service with the participation of former prisoners. You will hear fascinating testimonies of Christians about years of suffering and heroic struggle for the glory of God against the punitive machine of the KGB,
—stated the official press release of the Association of Former Prisoners.
The congress also kicked off the filming of an unprecedented film about the struggle of Soviet Christians against the KGB and the dictatorship of state atheism.
—Mankind has never known a period when any state openly declared war on God, and that period happened to fall to our lot. Unfortunately, not many of us former prisoners are left, so we must hurry so that future generations learn about that inhuman death machine that mercilessly destroyed thousands of Christian ministers,
—declared the chairman of the Association of Former Prisoners, Boris Perchatkin.
—Remember, you are victims and heirs of the holocaust against Christians in the USSR!
—he emphasized.
Fortunately, the current congress eventually took place, although before this, the KGB’s agent network among pastors had managed to disrupt them. Chekist pastors simply forbade believers from attending these congresses, and they blindly obeyed, even throwing stacks of invitation tickets into trash cans. Yet who in democratic America would be bothered by testimony about how Christians were tormented in Soviet prisons? Only those called to protect the bright image of the Soviet past and to promote it among naive emigrant youth. Such is the task Putin assigned to his intelligence service.
The dark Soviet past is now glorified not only inside the country but also abroad, by KGB operational methods. The fact is that shortly before the congress, in February, the first chapter of this book, “Chekist Pastors,” was published on the Internet. And this time they did not dare disrupt the congress—it seemed inconvenient for them to so openly sign their affiliation with the KGB.
But not everything went smoothly at the congress. For some reason, the pastor of the church where the opening of the congress was planned did not announce anything about it the day before, and half the people did not come. Even former prisoners among its believers knew nothing about the congress! People learned about it from radio broadcasts and Christian portals on the Internet.
—But our Baptist prisoners stayed in the homeland!
—the leaders of that church, members of the AUCECB, declared with obvious malice to Boris Perchatkin.
—And why did you move here? You should have stayed in the Homeland too!
—he retorted.
—I felt in my gut that all former Soviet religious prisoners are enemies to them. It’s no accident that the head of Baptist youth in Florida, Simonchik, shouted at the prayer meeting: ‘I would put those prisoners back in jail!’ And all this pro-Soviet orgy is happening right here in the USA!
—Boris Perchatkin later told me bitterly.
The idea of pseudo-patriotism is widely used in KGB propaganda activities among emigrants. Thus, at the entrance to the church, several young people openly distributed a leaflet accusing Boris Perchatkin and me of lacking patriotism. No, not toward America, where we live, but toward Russia, from which we left. Reading the text of that leaflet, I didn’t understand where I was—in Seattle or Moscow? It was written from the standpoint of crude Putin-style patriotism, you’ll agree, not very appropriate here in America. For example, the leaflet said that Boris Perchatkin and I serve the West. But here is the West, and its intelligence services do, after all, protect their citizens from terrorism—something you can’t say about their Russian counterparts. On the contrary, the danger here in America for each of us is precisely the KGB! In full accordance with Putin’s propaganda, the leaflet claimed that there was no religious persecution in the USSR and blamed all of Russia’s current misfortunes on the same West, not on its own rulers. As an example, it pointed out that Russia’s population declines by a million people a year. But is that the fault of Western intelligence services and not the seventy-year rule of the Communists? And not the glorious Putin’s eight years, during which public healthcare was completely wrecked? Putin did absolutely nothing to increase the life expectancy of Russians.
In the foreign Russian press, one can increasingly encounter the assertion that even the current, much shrunken, nearly 140-million population of Russia seems too large to Putin. A far smaller number of people would suffice to service the oil pipeline, and the rest, especially the youth, he has nothing to occupy. Unless they are sent to the army. In this, an old KGB propaganda technique was clearly visible: shifting the blame from the guilty to the innocent.
Incidentally, the organization’s involvement in preparing the leaflet wasn’t even concealed, because it contained a detailed analysis of all my articles about the KGB’s work in foreign churches. Who, you’ll agree, would do such work voluntarily, for free? Yet I know for sure that for such work my former colleagues in Moscow receive a steady Chekist salary.
The leaflet accused me of mocking the sacred feeling of nostalgia. The Chekists are angered that I have touched a sore spot—the use of emigrants’ sincere love for an abandoned, sometimes unfamiliar motherland for recruitment purposes.
—Help Russia!
—Chekists say in heartfelt voices to hapless pseudo-patriots who have never lived in Russia and are unfamiliar with our harsh reality. And tears of gratitude immediately flow from their eyes:
—Oh, Motherland has remembered me!…
They cannot even believe that very soon this homeland will land them in an American prison on charges of espionage. In my books, articles, and television appearances, I explain to Slavic emigrants just how dangerous nostalgia is for them—a sentiment the KGB exploits. In this way, I pull an important trump card from that organization, disrupting their recruitment work. “Damned nostalgia! The secret services play on it!” I wrote in my book The KGB in the Russian Emigration, published by the New York publishing house “Liberty” in 2007.
And one of my interviews with the newspaper Novoye Russkoye Slovo was even titled: “Moderate Your Nostalgia!” Clearly, I had hit the mark, undermining the recruitment methods of my former colleagues.This leaflet could only have been produced by them, in the quiet offices of the intelligence headquarters in the outlying Moscow district of Yasenevo. I can just picture how it was taken for approval to the head of the American department of Service “A”—the Russian intelligence unit responsible for disinformation aimed at Western public opinion. Then the visa was obtained from the head of yet another American department—in Directorate “EM,” which deals with Slavic emigration. And before that, the signature was secured from the sector head of that same Directorate “EM,” the one overseeing religious organizations of Slavic emigrants. As far as I know, his office is not in Yasenevo but closer to the center of Moscow, in an inconspicuous pink building near the entrance to the “Prospekt Vernadskogo” metro station.
Yes, friends, nothing is that simple! At the end of the leaflet were the signatures of several people unknown to me. They root for Russia, yet they live in America. For all their sympathy for their former homeland, they do not move there to live. I have not come across their names among journalists, so it is hardly likely that they themselves performed such a subtle literary-critical analysis of my publications. That was done for them by the KGB.
The astonishing thing was that they were not afraid to put their signatures under such a dubious document, thereby indirectly confirming their connection to Russian intelligence.
Alas, in the conditions of American democracy and religious freedom, they face no consequences. Let them try to do the same thing in Russia—sign their names to a proclamation glorifying America and castigating its Russian detractors! The Russian special services they so adore would be on their case at once!
Buy the Book “The KGB Comes with Us”.
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