Special Services and Religious Organizations in the Soviet State: Collaboration Mechanisms, Survival Strategies, Sources

Abstract

In this article the authors formulate generalizing observations on the mechanisms of interaction between the Soviet secret services and religious communities in the USSR during the whole period of its existence. The basis for these generalizations was the research of the past thirty years as well as the materials of the international symposium “Special Services and Religious Organizations in the Soviet State: Collaboration Mechanisms, Survival Strategies, Sources” held by the Centre for the Study of the History of Religion and Church History at the Department of Modern and Contemporary History, Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences, on 27—28 October 2021. Infiltration and a complex operational game involved the control and instrumentalization rather than destruction of even those religious communities whose existence was considered unacceptable in the USSR. Instead of the declared reduction of the influence of religious organizations, cooperation was indirectly helping to stabilize their position and even increase the influence of their leaders. On the part of the believers, cooperation with the secret services proved to be a complex survival strategy both at the micro level (parish, congregation, group) and at the institutional level. In light of these observations, the authors raise the question of the need to develop analytical criteria for cooperation, based on a comprehensive and qualitative analysis of case-by-case information, rather than formal criteria (the presence or absence of a cooperation agreement). In addition, the authors draw attention to the change in the position of the researcher, who is no longer an “unmasker” of the hierarchs and laity who collaborated with the special services. Here, the question of ethical norms and the research tools of the historian working with the documents of the secret services arises with new urgency.