In 1961, with the KGB’s blessing, the Orthodox Church joined the World Council of Churches (WCC). At that very moment Khrushchev was in the midst of a ferocious anti-religious campaign which closed down many of the reopened churches, monasteries and seminaries and disbanded half the Orthodox parishes. The KGB was simultaneously seeking to strengthen its grip on the churches which remained. According to a secret KGB directive of 1961:
Up to 600 individuals are studying in the two ecclesiastical academies of the Moscow Patriarchate and the five ecclesiastical seminaries. These must be exploited in the interests of the KGB. We must infiltrate our people among the students of these ecclesiastical training establishments so that they will subsequently influence the state of affairs within the Russian Orthodox Church and exert influence on the believers.8
The head of the Second Chief Directorate, General Oleg Mikhailovich Gribanov, reported in 1962 that over the previous two years the KGB had infiltrated “reliable agents” into the leading positions of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Catholic dioceses, the Armenian Gregorian Church and other religious groups. These, he predicted, would make it possible to remove remaining “reactionary Church and sectarian authorities” from their posts.9
Since the Russian Orthodox delegates to the WCC were carefully selected by the KGB and the Council for Religious Affairs, it is scarcely surprising that they denied—often indignantly—all reports of the persecution of their Church by the Soviet state. According to a KGB report of August 1969:
Agents ALTAR, SVYATOSLAV, ADAMANT, MAGISTER, ROSHCHIN and ZEMNOGORSKY went to England to take part in the work of the WCC central committee. Agents managed to avert hostile activities [public criticism of Soviet religious persecution]…10
The most important of the agents at the WCC central committee meeting in Canterbury was the leader of the Russian Orthodox delegation, Metropolitan Nikodim (agent ADAMANT),11 whose meteoric rise through the Church hierarchy was in itself unmistakable evidence of KGB approval. In 1960, at the age of only thirty-one, Nikodim had become the youngest bishop in Christendom. A year later he was put in charge of the Moscow Patriarchate’s foreign relations department, and in 1964 was appointed Metropolitan of Leningrad. Nikodim took the lead in ensuring that there was no reference in the WCC central committee’s message to member churches either to the invasion of Czechoslovakia or to religious persecution in the Soviet Bloc. According to a report in the Church Times:
Agreement on the text of the message was not without drama… The main critic on the Thursday [August 21] when the fifth draft came up for discussion was the Metropolitan of Leningrad, Archbishop Ni[k]odim.
…The Russian leader then dropped a bombshell[:] “…If certain amendments are not taken into account which are essential to us, we shall have to reject this letter in holy synod and not send it to our Churches. I am sorry to speak in such sharp terms.”
…On Friday morning [after redrafting] there was more sweetness and light, and with the Russian leader obviously mollified, the final draft went through rapidly.
The main initiative agreed by the WCC central committee was a call to member churches to become “as fully engaged as possible in the struggle to eradicate racism in whatever form it appears.”12 While welcoming the campaign against racism, the Church Times deplored the failure of the WCC to address “grave breaches of human rights” or to offer help to the oppressed: “Czechoslovakia springs to mind as an obvious instance.”13
The KGB reported that, at the Canterbury conference, its agents had also succeeded “in placing agent KUZNETSOV in a high WCC post.” Agent KUZNETSOV was Alexei Sergeyevich Buyevsky, lay secretary of the Moscow Patriarchate’s foreign relations department headed by Nikodim. Since joining the department in 1946, Buyevsky had accompanied all the major Russian Orthodox delegations abroad and had met the most important visitors from foreign churches to Moscow. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he played an active role in the work of the WCC central committee, helping to draft policy statements on international affairs.14
In 1973 the Bishop of Bristol told the Church Times that, of the 130 members of the WCC central committee, 42 percent were Westerners, 28 percent Eastern Orthodox (mainly Russian), and 30 percent from the Third World (mainly Africa). The Russian Orthodox and Third World majority saw Westerners “primarily as the representatives of ‘colonialism’ with all the emotional overtones which that contains.” 15 KGB agents on the WCC were remarkably successful in dissuading it from paying serious attention to religious persecution in the Soviet Bloc and in persuading it to concentrate instead on the sins of the imperialist West. The Reverend Richard Holloway of the Scottish Episcopal Church told the Nairobi Assembly of the WCC in 1975:
I have observed there is an unwritten rule operating that says that the USSR must never be castigated in public. Nevertheless it is well known that the USSR is in the forefront of human rights violations. To mention this fact appears to be unsporting. I think this tradition should end. The USSR should take its place in the public confessional along with the rest of us from white neo-imperialism.16
As late as 1989, the Centre claimed that, following the secret implementation of “a plan approved by the KGB leadership,” “the WCC executive and central committee adopted public statements (eight) and messages (three) which corresponded to the political direction of Socialist [Communist] countries.”17
Members of the Orthodox hierarchy sent on missions to foreign church leaders, doubtless with KGB approval, invariably insisted that believers in the Soviet Union enjoyed freedom of religion. In January 1975 Metropolitan Yuvenali of Krutitsky and Kolomna, who had succeeded his cousin Metropolitan Nikodim as the globetrotting chairman of the Patriarchate’s foreign relations department,18 traveled to Britain for the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Donald Coggan. In an interview on the BBC World Service, Yuvenali condemned the tendency of “certain circles” in Britain, including some in the Church of England, to give a biased and one-sided view of the Orthodox Church in Russia. In a private meeting with Dr. Coggan, he attacked the Church Times for its “offensive” stories on religious persecution in Russia and denounced Keston College, the world’s leading research center on religion in Communist countries, directed by the Anglican priest Michael Bourdeaux, as “anti-Soviet.” Though courteous, Dr. Coggan was more robust than most of the Western council members of the WCC. Yuvenali appeared incredulous as the Archbishop patiently defended the independence of the Church Times and the fairmindedness of Keston College. During a visit to the Soviet Union two years later Dr. Coggan annoyed his hosts by departing from the prepared itinerary to visit Moscow synagogues and the congregation of the imprisoned Baptist minister, Georgi Vins, in Kiev, where he led the singing of the hymn “He Who Would Valiant Be.”19
Among KGB agents in the Patriarchate’s foreign relations department who were regularly used as agents of influence in meetings with Western churches was the monk Iosif Pustoutov, who was recruited in 1970, aged twenty-six, with the codename YESAULENKO. Over the next few years YESAULENKO was sent on missions to the Netherlands, West Germany, Italy and France. In 1976 he was appointed representative of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church at the Prague headquarters of the Christian Peace Conference. In order to raise his standing in the religious community, his case officer at the Prague residency, Yevgeni Vasilyevich Medvedev, arranged for him to be regularly invited to embassy receptions given by the Soviet ambassador.20
It would be both simplistic and unjust to see all the KGB’s agents and co-optees in the Orthodox Church and the WCC simply as cynical careerists with no real religious faith—though that may have been true of a minority. Most Russian Orthodox priests probably believed they had no option but to accept some of the demands of state security. One of the best-known dissident priests of the 1970s, Father Dmitri Dudko, later declared:
One hundred percent of the clergy were forced to cooperate to some extent with the KGB and pass on some sort of information—otherwise they wou
ld have been deprived of the possibility to work in a parish.
A minority, however, did successfully resist all the pressure placed on them by the KGB. In December 1991, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the last deputy chairman of the KGB, Anatoli Oleinikov, told an interviewer that, of the Russian Orthodox priests approached by the KGB, 15 to 20 percent had refused to work for it.21 The courageous minority who resisted all KGB pressure were inevitably denied advancement. The section of the Orthodox Church most compromised by its association with the KGB was its hierarchy.
It would be wrong, however, to interpret the deference shown by the hierarchy to the KGB simply in terms of the moral inadequacy of individual bishops. The Church was strongly influenced by a centuries-old tradition of Orthodox spirituality which emphasized submission to both God and Caesar. Before the Revolution, obedience to the Tsar had been regarded almost as a religious obligation.The Orthodox Church had traditionally functioned as a department of state as well as a guide to salvation. Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad, who headed the Russian Orthodox delegation to the WCC until his sudden death during a visit to the Vatican in 1978, impressed many Western Christians by his deep devotion to the Orthodox liturgy and the apparent intensity of his prayer during church services.22 Nikodim’s admirers included Pope John Paul I, who was with him when Nikodim died of a heart attack and said afterwards that he had pronounced during their meeting “the most beautiful words about the Church that I ever heard.”23 Yet Nikodim was not merely supine in his submission to the Soviet powers-that-be but also a KGB agent.24 So was his private secretary and confidant, Nikolai Lvovich Tserpitsky, who was recruited in 1971 with the codename VLADIMIR.25
A report by the Council for Religious Affairs in 1974 distinguished three categories of Orthodox bishop. The first category
affirm both in words and deed not only loyalty but also patriotism towards the socialist society; strictly observe the laws on cults, and educate the parish clergy and believers in the same spirit; realistically understand that our state is not interested in proclaiming the role of religion and the church in society; and, realizing this, do not display any particular activeness in extending the influence of Orthodoxy among the population.
Among the bishops in this category were Patriarch Pimen, who had succeeded Aleksi I in 1971, and Metropolitan Aleksi of Tallinn and Estonia, who in 1990 was to succeed Pimen as Patriarch Aleksi II.26 Both were fulsome in their public praise of Soviet leaders. Pimen even claimed to detect “lofty spiritual qualities” in Andropov, the chief persecutor of religious dissent during his patriarchate. On Andropov’s death Pimen declared that he would always “remember with heartfelt gratitude” his “benevolent understanding of the needs of our Church.”27
Like Patriarch Aleksi I, Pimen was used by the KGB to front Soviet “peace” propaganda, paying gushing and sycophantic tribute to Brezhnev’s “titanic work in the cause of international peace.”28 In February 1976 he, Metropolitan Aleksi and the other metropolitans on the Holy Synod received special awards from the Soviet Peace Fund “for manifold and fruitful activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in the struggle for peace, security and friendship.”29 A month later the Patriarch was given a similar award by the World Peace Council to mark its twenty-fifth anniversary. 30 In June 1977, Pimen hosted a conference at Zagorsk, organized behind the scenes by the KGB, entitled “Religious Workers for Lasting Peace, Disarmament and Just Relations among Nations,” which attracted 663 delegates from 107 countries, representing all the major world religions.31 The conference approved a call by Pimen to declare the years up to 2,000 “a period of struggle for peace”—thus, in the KGB’s view, preempting the danger that the Vatican might take the lead in a similar appeal.32 A month later Pimen was awarded the Order of the Red Banner “for his great patriotic activities in defense of peace.”33
The second category of bishops identified by the Council of Religious Affairs in 1974 consisted of those who, though loyal to the state and “correct” in their observance of the laws on religious observance, wished to “heighten the role of the Church in personal, family and public life… and select for priestly office young people who are zealous adherents of Orthodox piety.” Despite his use as an agent of influence in the World Council of Churches and elsewhere, Metropolitan Nikodim was included in this second category rather than the first—probably because of what was considered his excessive zeal in encouraging religious devotion. The third category of bishops (just under a third of the total) consisted of those “who at different times have made attempts to evade the laws on cults,” though without the conspicuous defiance which would have required their removal from office.34
The first sign of dissidence within the Orthodox Church to gain worldwide publicity during the Brezhnev era was an appeal to the Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Nairobi in November 1975 by the banned priest Father Gleb Yakunin and the layman Lev Regelson, who appealed for support for the victims of religious persecution in the Soviet Union—a hitherto taboo subject at WCC meetings. 35 A Swiss delegate was applauded when he proposed that a resolution on “Disarmament, the Helsinki Agreement and Religious Liberty” include the statement:
The WCC is concerned about restrictions to religious liberty, particularly in the USSR. The Assembly respectfully requests the government of the USSR to implement effectively principle no. 7 [religious and other freedoms] of the Helsinki Agreement.
Metropolitan Yuvenali complained that this proposal offended Christian charity. A KGB agent on the drafting committee, Alexei Buyevsky (KUZNETSOV), working “in the spirit of brotherly love, mutual understanding and the spirit of fellowship,” helped produce a formula which avoided any specific reference to the Soviet Union but “recognize[d] that churches in different parts of Europe are living and working under very different conditions and traditions.” The WCC’s general secretary, the West Indian Methodist Dr. Philip Potter, was asked to prepare a report on religious liberty in all countries which had signed the Helsinki Accords. The Times interpreted the WCC resolution as “a sidestep by churches on Soviet curbs.”36
There were no such prevarications in the denunciation of Western racism and imperialism. One of the keynote speakers at the assembly, Dr. Robert McAffie Brown of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, confessed that, as a white, male middle-class American, he embodied the sins of “racism, sexism, classism and imperialism.” In an attempt to avoid “linguistic imperialism,” he then began speaking in Spanish, thus forcing most of his audience to reach for their headsets so that they could hear his address translated back into imperialist English. The WCC’s refusal to consider non-white racism, such as the expulsion of Ugandan Asians in 1972, led to protests and a walk-out by some British delegates—prompting the comment by Dr. Potter that, “Wherever the British have gone in the world they have established a racist system.”37 At the end of the conference, lobbying by the Sovietfront Christian Peace Conference helped to ensure the election of Metropolitan Nikodim (agent ADAMANT) as one of the WCC’s six presidents.38
Had Andropov and the KGB leadership kept any sense of proportion about the threat of “ideological subversion” posed by the few brave dissidents within a generally subservient Orthodox Church, they would have been quite satisfied by the outcome of the Nairobi Assembly. In fact, mild though the WCC response to the appeal from Yakunin and Regelson was, it caused outrage at the Centre.39 Despite complaints by Dr. Potter’s critics in the West that he was “openly anti-Western and anti-capitalist,”40 the KGB claimed that, in reality, he had “anti-Soviet leanings” and was “known for his provocative statements about the absence of freedom of conscience in the USSR.”41 Though he had been given a carefully staged-managed tour of Soviet religious institutions two months before the Nairobi Assembly, Potter had failed to defend them against Yakunin’s and Regelson’s outrageously accurate criticisms. Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev and Gallich told a Novosti correspondent after the assembly:
We deplore the prejudiced
conviction held by the WCC leadership about our state and the Russian Orthodox Church. WCC general secretary Mr. Potter, by the way, was my guest last September and saw for himself that churches and monasteries were open. While here he attended divine services and said that he was always filled with joy when visiting this peace-loving country, in the midst of such prayerful and happy surroundings. It seemed strange and surprising to us that at the assembly he said nothing about his visit to the Soviet Union, including the Ukraine.42
The Centre organized a flood of letters to the ungrateful Dr. Potter from Russian Orthodox clergy, Baptists and other Soviet Christians, protesting at his alleged hostility towards them. It also sought to orchestrate public criticism of Potter by “prominent religious figures” in Britain, Syria and Lebanon, as well as in the Soviet Union. Further KGB active measures included the publication in Moscow of an English-language book, Religion Under Socialism, and the production of a TV documentary, Freedom of Religion in the USSR, both involving a probably English-speaking agent codenamed “K” (not identified in Mitrokhin’s notes). Attempts were also made to “compromise” Potter personally in various ways and—probably through KGB agents in the WCC—to suggest his replacement as general secretary. Archbishop Kiprian (agent SIMONOV) from the Moscow Church of the Consolation of All Who Sorrow, gave an interview denouncing “fabrications concerning the so-called persecution of believers in the USSR.”43
The absurdity of the KGB’s overreaction to the temporary embarrassment of the Nairobi Assembly and Dr. Potter’s handling of it was well illustrated by his report to the WCC central committee in August 1976 on progress to religious liberty in those countries which had signed the Helsinki Accords. His lengthy address said nothing about religious persecution in the Soviet Bloc, despite extensive, well-documented evidence of it submitted by Keston College and others. Dr. Potter did, however, insist that “it is essential for churches in Europe and north America to be aware of the problems created and maintained by European and American domination of other regions of the world.”44
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