Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

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.” 15KGB 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, 18traveled 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 would 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. 21The 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. 22Nikodim’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.” 23Yet Nikodim was not merely supine in his submission to the Soviet powers-that-be but also a KGB agent. 24So 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. 26Both 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.” 28In 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.” 29A month later the Patriarch was given a similar award by the World Peace Council to mark its twenty-fifth anniversary. 30In 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. 31The 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. 32A month later Pimen was awarded the Order of the Red Banner “for his great patriotic activities in defense of peace.” 33