The ROC and the KGB: The story of a “prodigal cohabitation”. On the involvement of the Moscow Patriarchate in cooperation with the communist special services and the destruction of the Church opposition in the USSR

Abstrakt

This article analyses the events and processes of the 1920s-1980s in subordinating the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP) to the Soviet secret services. The author examines the events of the 1920s when, with the intervention of the OGPU, an intra-church coup was organised in the ROC and a ‘Provisional Synod’ of Metropolitan Sergei Stragorodsky was established, which in 1927 proclaimed full loyalty to the communist regime. According to the author’s conclusions, these events radically changed the further development of the RPC, causing intra-church polemics and schism. Not accepting the new course of loyalty to the Soviet regime and co-operation with its repressive organs, a significant part of the episcopate and clergy formed a church opposition known as the ‘non-commemorators’ movement. Due to the total repression of the opposition by the Soviet security services, it was forced into an illegal situation in the 1930s, which gave it the name ‘Catacomb Church’ (also in NKVD investigative files this movement was often referred to as ‘True Orthodox Church’). The author concludes that by destroying the church opposition with the help of the loyal clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Soviet regime planned to destroy the remnants of the Metropolitan Sergei Stragorodsky loyal church structure as well. The events of World War II changed these plans, forcing the Stalinist regime to begin using the Moscow Patriarchate for international activities. According to the author, Stalin’s ‘reset’ of the Moscow Patriarchate took place in 1943 for this purpose. At the same time, while restoring and strengthening the loyal church structure of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Stalinist regime completely destroyed any manifestations of a church alternative after the end of World War II in the occupied territories. The structures of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), the True Orthodox Church (TOC), the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (BAOC), the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church (EAOC), the Latvian Orthodox Autonomous Church (LOAC) and other alternative jurisdictions were subjected to repression and liquidation. With the help of the brutal repressive policy of the Soviet regime in the USSR from the late 1940s, the church monopoly of one structure — the ROC MP — was secured. According to the author’s conclusion, from this period the Soviet secret services (MGB — KGB) began to actively use their agents in the ROC MP for espionage and intelligence activities abroad, participation in various international and ecumenical events, dissemination and promotion of decisions and narratives necessary for the Soviet regime. These representatives of the ‘new type’ of Soviet clergy, even with the weakening of the communist regime in the late 1980s and early 1990s, resisted democratic changes in society in every possible way, opposed the collapse of the USSR, the processes of national revival and the acquisition of state independence by the republics. Remaining in the leadership of ROC MPs after the collapse of the USSR, they not only did not free themselves from the captivity of the Soviet security services but also became in the vanguard of their return to power and neo-Soviet restoration in the Russian Federation.