Fooling the West: Top-secret Work of the KGB Manipulating Protestants of the USSR Regarding Religions Outside the USSR, 1954-1957

Authors

Oleksandr Korotaiev, Poltava National Pedagogical UniversityFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4460-0118

Abstract

The article presents the issue of the use of the Protestant clergy by the Soviet special services in matters of intelligence and counterintelligence work abroad and among the Baptist World Alliance delegations that visited the USSR in the 1950s. The article contains the names of KGB agents and their secret pseudonyms and describes for the first time the specific areas of their intelligence work, which they conducted under religious cover in the interests of the KGB, the Soviet regime abroad, and in the USSR. The article also publishes excerpts from a top-secret KGB document (“Measures to strengthen the intelligence and counterintelligence work of the KGB along the church-sectarian line”), approved on May 25, 1959, by the head of the 4th (Secret Political) Department of the KGB of the Ukrainian SSR, Colonel Boris Shulzhenko. The document reveals the priority directions of the KGB’s “religious line” work abroad.

Recommended Citation

Korotaiev, Oleksandr (2023) "Fooling the West: Top-secret Work of the KGB Manipulating Protestants of the USSR Regarding Religions Outside the USSR, 1954-1957," Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 43 : Iss. 10 , Article 2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55221/2693-2229.2484
Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol43/iss10/2