WCC & KGB

- notes from The Sword and the Shield, Chapter 28 "The Penetration and Persecution of the Soviet Churches" -Since 1943, when Stalin was forced to either reopen some churches or lose the war, the CRA [Council for Religious Affairs] worked in close cooperation with the NKVD and its successors to ensure the subservience of Church to State. Both Patriarch Alesksi I and Metropolitan Nikolai of Krutitsky joined the World Peace Council, the Soviet front organization founded in 1949, and were highly valued by the KGB as agents of influence. -In 1961, with the KGB's blessing, the Orthodox Church joined the WCC. At that very moment Krushchev was in the midst of a ferocious anti-religious campaign which re-closed down many of the churches, monasteries and seminaries, and disbanded half of the Orthodox parishes. The KGB was simultaneusly seeking to strengthen its grip on the churches which remained. According to a secret KGB directive given in 1961: Up to 600 individuals are studying in the two ecclesiastical academies of the MP and five ecclesiastical seminaries. These must be exploited in the interests of the KGB. We must infiltrate our people among the students of these ecclesiastical training establishments so that they will subsequently influence the state of affairs within the Russian Orthodox Church and exert influence on the believers. -Since the Russian Orthodox delegates to the WCC were carefully selected by the KGB and the CRA, it is scarcely surprising that they denied -- often indignantly -- all reports of the persecution of their Church by the Soviet state. According to a KGB report of August 1969: Agents ALTAR, SVYATOSLAV, ADAMANT, MAGISTER, ROSHCHIN and ZEMNOGORSKY went to England to take part in the work of the WCC central committee. Agents managed to avert hostile activities ]public criticism of Soviet religious persecution]... The most important agent at the WCC was ADAMANT [Met. Nikodim] whose meteoric rise through the Church hierarchy was by itself unmistakable evidence of KGB approval. In 1960, at age 31, Nikodim was the youngest bishop in Christendom. A year later he was put in charge of the MP foreign relations department, and in 1964 he was appointed Metropolitan of Leningrad. Nikodim ensured that there was no reference in the WCC to member churches either to the invasion of Czechoslovakia or to religious persecution in the Soviet Bloc. -The KGB reported that, at the Canterbury conference, its agents had also succeeded "in placing agent KUZNETSOV in a high WCC post." This is Alexi Sergeyevich Buyevsky, lay secretary of the MP foreign relations department. Throughout the 70's and 80's he played an active role in the work of the WCC helping to draft policy statements on international affairs. In 1975, Episcopal priest Richard Holloway told the WCC assembly:

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 right violations... -In 1989, the Centre claimed that, following the secret implementation of "a plan approved by the KGB leadership," the WCC adopted 8 public statements and 3 messages which corresponded to the political direction of Communist/Socialist countries.