Religion and Police Surveillance in the USSR

• In Event: KGB Archives: New Directions

Abstract

“The agent network is the main weapon of the Soviet security organs,” as emphasized in KGB documentation over the years. Countless KGB activities, including meetings, trainings, seminars, and internal publications, were dedicated to the network of secret informers and collaborators —covering agent recruitment, infiltration, classification of agent types, etc. By 1951 there were over 203,000 secret agents solely in the Ukrainian socialist republic. They “covered” every state institution, enterprise, education system, tourism section, and borders. Religious life was one of the social areas most significantly impacted by police surveillance and agent infiltration. The recently declassified KGB archives in several post-Soviet countries have brought to light that there was not a single religious group that escaped the attention or infiltration of the secret police.
Despite the apparent omnipresence of the Soviet security services and agent infiltration of every religious group, questions persist regarding its effectiveness and the objectives pursued by security agencies through mass infiltration. If the goal was to combat dangerous and hostile elements through their own members, why didn't totalizing police control, agent infiltration, or systematic state persecutions prevent religious communities from surviving and steadily growing, with many thriving by the end of the Soviet period? This paper endeavours to explore these questions, delving into the internal dynamics and societal outcomes of police surveillance and agent infiltration within various religious communities in the Soviet Union. It explores the ambiguous stories of secret agents and the intricate fate of believers caught in the web of Soviet secret police surveillance.

Author

• Tatiana Vagramenko, U College Cork (Ireland)