Abstract
The purpose of the study is to show the work of the Soviet special services in the 1940s among the evangelical denominations of the Ukrainian SSR, which consisted of the formation of the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists (hereinafter ACECB). The study of the work of the Soviet special services among the Protestant denominations of Ukraine during WWII and in the post-war period is generally a poorly studied topic of modern historical science. The article attempts to fill this gap by highlighting the work of the NKVD-MGB bodies among Evangelical Christians and Baptists, which aimed to create a controlled religious union of the ACECB and an apparatus of republican and regional commissioners. It is shown that the ACECB, as a religious union of completely different Protestant denominations, was artificially formed in the 1940s by Soviet special services in order to control and reduce their numbers. It has been exposed that the positions of leadership in the ACECB were held by secret agents of the Soviet state security agencies. Their surnames and secret pseudonyms are disclosed, as well as the content of their agent-operative work. The results of the study will help in the research practices of historians and the other humanities. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the fact that it contains concrete historical processes examined through the prism of the work of the Soviet bodies of state security; their place and role in these processes are scrutinized. Type of article: theoretical, analytical.
Recommended Citation
Korotaiev, Oleksandr
(2021)
"All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians and Baptists as a Product of Work of Soviet Special Services,"
Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 41
:
Iss.
6
, Article 3.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol41/iss6/3